Shunned trio have motivation to impress
Lucas Herbert was “p***ed off” to have been snubbed for Presidents Cup duty this year, while Ryan Fox was “definitely disappointed” to have been overlooked for the team event.
Herbert, Fox and another player unlucky to miss Presidents Cup selection in September — Min Woo Lee — are part of a star-studded field at Royal Queensland currently playing the Australian PGA, which started yesterday.
All had strong claims for Presidents Cup selection, but were overlooked by Internationals captain Trevor Immelman.
Six automatic qualifiers — Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im, Tom Kim, Corey Conners, Adam Scott and Mito Pereira — were joined by Immelman’s six captain picks.
They were K.H. Lee and Si Woo Kim, Taylor Pendrith, Cameron Davis, Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Sebastian Munoz.
The Internationals were beaten 171⁄2 to 12.1⁄2 at the Quail Hollow Club in North Carolina by the United States, who maintained their Presidents Cup dominance.
New Zealander Fox, currently ranked 27th in the world and a twotime winner this year on the DP World Tour, felt that for him and Lee, it was a case if “out of sight, out of mind” because they played mainly in Europe.
“You always feel like maybe the guys playing on the (American) PGA Tour don’t quite respect DP World Tour players quite as much,” said Fox, whose wins included his success at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in October.
“For me, I hadn’t played a whole lot in the lead up to the Presidents Cup. I’d played a lot up to the (British) Open in July and then took a bunch of time off and then the couple of events I did play, I didn’t play very well, so I can kind of understand it from Trevor’s point of view — it looked like I was a bit out of form.
“I was definitely disappointed but it was nice that week at the Dunhill to know that if I had have been picked, I was still in decent form and could have gone well for the team.
“I still watched a fair bit of it and heard great things about how the team went . . . so, it’s a bit of motivation to get there for two years’ time.”
Fox was “surprised” that Herbert, a winner last year on the PGA Tour, missed selection.
Herbert felt he had a “lot of offer” the Internationals.
“I was really p***ed off I didn’t make that team,” the 26-year-old Victorian said.
“I felt like my form was decent leading up to it. I didn’t think I was out of form, so I was pretty disappointed when I got the call to say that I wasn’t in the team.
“I’d like to think that I’ll play one of these (President Cups) eventually but yeah, it was pretty disappointing to miss out on that one.
“It’s easy to sit here now and say that I could have offered more than what those guys (who were picked) did, but they obviously think they made the best picks they could leading into that week.”