Only time will tell if Thomas has got it right with Sergio wildcard
We will only know on the Sunday night of the Ryder Cup if Thomas Bjorn has made the right decisions with his four wildcards.
Only when the result of the contest has been determined will history be able to tell us how choosing Sergio Garcia will be remembered.
Personally, I think it’s a brave call. All the barometers of form point to a player who has been struggling for a while.
I said in previous columns that I thought Garcia would miss out. But Sergio is fortunate to have a captain that has played in his era.
Thomas has talked about Sergio being like a “captain”. That only works if your game is fine.
Because in golf, your natural instinct is to look after No. 1 first and foremost.
It’s one thing being confident in the team-room. You need it on the course. To beat this American team, Europe cannot afford a weak link.
In 1993, Seve Ballesteros – a wildcard pick – asked me to be left out of a match with Jose Maria Olazabal as he was struggling.
Seve had been an inspiring figure for so many years. But it had the opposite effect on the rest of the team to see him like that and we ended up losing.
That is my concern for Sergio. He has been playing so poorly since The Masters and his confidence must be low.
Are you doing the team any favours? You are pitching someone into the most-intense golf they will ever play.
Sergio will now be the focus of attention in Paris and he must be prepared for that. But first, he needs to find his game.
He missed out on the Fedex Cup play-offs, so he is having to shoehorn in the Portugal Masters in the week before the Ryder Cup – a tournament he would never normally consider.
Hopefully he can find something on the practice ground with dad Victor, take that on to the course in Portugal and then on to France.
Being Spanish, Sergio looks like a natural partner for Jon Rahm. Bjorn will want them to play a good number of matches. But that only works if Sergio is on form.
The other wildcards – Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson and Paul Casey – were obvious choices. Bjorn has certainly packed his side with experience.
Having five rookies in the eight automatic qualifiers affected his thinking – although it’s hard to class last year’s Race To Dubai winner Tommy Fleetwood as a rookie!
As he collected his third win of the year, in Denmark last Sunday, there was a late clamour for Matt Wallace to be picked.
But he has won three times and not made the team by right, so he must have won in lesser company. That obviously was in Thomas’ thinking.
The player who was unlucky is Rafa Cabrera-bello. If the Fedex Cup event in Boston had counted, he would have pipped Thorbjorn Olesen to the last spot.
He has played solidly on both tours all summer, and was unbeaten on his Ryder Cup debut at Hazeltine two years ago.
Things were a lot more straightforward for US captain Jim Furyk, though, with Bryson Dechambeau, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods getting the nod.
Bryson is in electric form after winning the first two play-off events, and he’s a player who does things his own way.
But in Germany in July, he capitulated in the final few holes, which allowed Richard Mcevoy to win the European Open.
Bryson was very upset with himself and came over as a bad sport.
So when the pressure is cranked up in Paris, you just never know whether that sort of thing might happen again.