The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Four assistants for Olazabal
Ryder Cup captain Jose Maria Olazabal has confirmed he will pick four vice-captains for Medinah this September.
EUROPEAN RYDER Cup captain José María Olazábal will pick four vice-captains for the European Team to defend the trophy against the USA at Medinah in Chicago in September.
The Spaniard moved to confirm his decision to have a full back-up team after reading media reports that he was considering only two assistants.
He is expected to start firming up his list candidates this week at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.
Olazábal said yesterday: “I don’t know where these suggestions that I was planning to have only two assistants could have come from, or whether there has been some misunderstanding, but I want to make it clear that I will be selecting four vice captains.
“This is what (American captain) Davis (Love III) and I agreed in Chicago at the Year Out meeting last September.”
Olazabal confirmed that his experiences in 2008 and 2010 as vice-captain to Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie had convinced him of the need for as much back-up as possible.
The twice former Masters champion was Faldo’s only official assistant at Valhalla four years ago when Europe plunged to defeat, while he was co-opted on to Monty’s team at Celtic Manor two years later as an extra hand when severe weather delays in the tournament required extra matches to be scheduled on the Sunday.
“I have said many times that as a vice captain myself in 2008 and 2010 I learned that you need a lot of help that week,” he continued.
“You need extra eyes to follow the players in the practice rounds to gather as much information as you can about how everyone is playing.
“Then it is important to have each match watched because you have to hand in your pairings for the afternoon matches when the players are still out on the course. That means it is absolutely essential to have all the information you can get before you put those pairings down on paper to be handed in.”
Faldo was widely criticised from all quarters for his failure to delegate or add an extra assistant after Paul Mcginley, one of his original choices, pulled out of Valhalla.
Montgomerie already had employed Mcginley, Thomas Bjorn and Darren Clarke on his back-up team before adding Sergio Garcia after the Spaniard failed to qualify to play.
Olazabal joined the team after an approach when he came to Celtic Manor to represent a tournament sponsor.
Mcginley, hotly tipped to be Europe’s captain for the matches at Gleneagles in 2014, is a leading candidate to do the deputy job again while Bjorn, Clarke and countryman Miguel Angel Jimenez provided none qualify to play are favourites to be Olly’s other picks.
He added: “I would actually say it is borderline to do the Ryder Cup with less than four vice-captains.
“So I want to make it quite clear to everyone that I will be selecting four and that never at any time have I considered reducing that number to three let alone two.”