It looks like Garcia will be on the outside looking in at the Ryder Cup

Inever thought I would have been writing this 12 months ago, but I don’t see a place for Sergio Garcia in Europe’s Ryder Cup team. Instead of battling for a place in Thomas Bjorn’s team, Garcia has spent the past few weeks scrapping to get into the top 125 for the PGA Tour play-offs. This all seemed highly unlikely after his win at The Masters last year. But rather than kick on after finally breaking his Major duck, his game has gone backwards. Garcia’s world ranking of 25 is not too bad. But 131st on the FedEx standings is more indicative of how he’s played in 2018. To miss the cut in all four Majors this year is most unlike Sergio. The Spaniard has usually played so well in those events. It all started with that octupletbogey 13 on the 15th at Augusta as defending Champion. It must have knocked Garcia’s pride and confidence for six and I’m not sure he’s regained it since. Missing the cut in last week’s US PGA was probably his last chance. Bjorn would have wanted to combine Sergio with Jon Rahm at Le Golf National as an all-Spanish pairing. It could have been reminiscent of Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal, but that pairing may now have to be Rahm and Rafa Cabrera-Bello. Garcia has been a Ryder Cup great, but you need your best 12 players at that particular time. If you don’t have your best game going in, you won’t find it there. Then you worry about letting your team-mates down, and that is a big thing for a player. The situation reminds me of my first captaincy in 1991. I was desperate for Sandy Lyle to make the team but he was struggling for form. Ahead of the last counting event, the German Open, I had breakfast with Sandy and told him that he had to win to have a chance of a wildcard. Sandy took it on the chin. Sadly, he couldn’t manage that and I had to look elsewhere. Garcia is not the only European heavyweight struggling to make the team. Former Open Champion Henrik Stenson is 16th on both qualifying lists and likely to need a pick. However, he is almost helped by Garcia’s struggles as Bjorn won’t want to face the Americans without both of them. The opportunity is there for someone to state their case in the next couple of weeks before the four wildcards are announced on September 5. One of those is Russell Knox, who has taken a calculated gamble to sit out the Wyndham Championship and prepare for the play-offs. Coming over to Europe in midsummer – and winning in Ireland and finishing tied for second in France on the Ryder Cup course – will have ticked a lot of Bjorn’s boxes in terms of results and his commitment to qualifying. But Russell still has a lot of work to do. He’ll need a big finish at either of the first two FedEx events to make him unavoidable for a place in the European team. We don’t want him to be the odd man out again as he was two years ago when he just missed out on a spot at Hazeltine.