Bjorn may face USA with weaker Ryder Cup team
THE Ryder Cup is being used as the bargaining tool in the European Tour’s on-going efforts to compete against the PGA Tour.
That was the only conclusion I could draw after changes to the qualification process for France next year were announced in Abu Dhabi last Wednesday.
Europe has won seven of the last 10 Ryder Cups. The message after losing at Hazeltine was not to panic. The system was more-or-less working.
Instead, there has now been a knee-jerk reaction and wholesale changes.
Rather than trying to strengthen for Le Golf National, captain Thomas Bjorn will be left with a weakened team.
When I study the alterations, my first thought is that they are trying to strengthen the Tour. Winning back the Cup is secondary.
The new Rolex Series events offer increased prize money. But the big carrot is that players cannot earn any points towards Ryder Cup qualification in clashing events.
They are effectively being told they must play in these heavilyweighted tournaments. The chance to play in the Ryder Cup is the leverage for that.
To be a member of the European Tour from now on, it’s only necessary to play four events outside the Majors and WGCs.
That is one fewer, but it’s still a big effort if you are in the top 50.
Take Russell Knox or Paul Casey. They both could play their four events, but if they do not include any of the Rolex Series, it would be almost impossible to make the Ryder Cup.
They could win a PGA Tour event in the same week, yet receive nothing on the points lists. The system will be heavily weighted towards those based full-time on the European Tour.
All events after next year’s BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth will see the points multiplied by 1.5. So a player hitting form at that time in Europe could play their way on.
This is to stop a situation where Alex Noren won in Scotland and Switzerland last summer but didn’t make the team.
With four wildcards now instead of three, they are hedging their bets in case a couple of star names don’t buy into these new ideas and need a pick.
Having a captain like Bjorn, who was Chairman of the Players’ Committee for so long, meant there was always a chance something like this would happen.
Bjorn will say the right things. But the main aim is to get Rory McIlroy and Henrik Stenson to play more in Europe.
And, at the younger end, chief executive Keith Pelley will hope these new incentives will stop the likes of Matt Fitzpatrick and Thomas Pieters from taking up a PGA Tour card.
I always refer back to 1981, when the European Tour tried to take a hard stance with Seve Ballesteros and it failed spectacularly.
He was excluded from the side at Walton Heath in the Ryder Cup, meaning we had to face an all-powerful American team without our star player. We lost 18.5-9.5.