McGinley and Watson announce 2014 Ryder Cup teams
The 2014 Ryder Cup is just three weeks away and the USA and European teams have been finalised.
The 2012 Ryder Cup was quite possibly the best golf tournament I have ever watched. So it’s fair to say that despite not an Aussie golfer in sight, I’m pretty excited about the upcoming Ryder Cup.
The 2014 Ryder Cup will be held at Gleneagles in Scotland and overnight Paul McGinley and Tom Watson announced their captain’s picks to round-out the 12-man teams.
Paul McGinley’s selected Ian Poulter, Stephen Gallacher and Lee Westwood as his wild card picks to complete his powerful European team. They join Rory McIlroy, Henrik Stenson, Jamie Donaldson, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Martin Kaymer, Thomas Bjorn, Victor Dubuisson and Graeme McDowell in the team.
McGinley’s hardest decision was to overlook Luke Donald.
“It was a very difficult conversation with him for a number of reasons,” McGinley said.
“My relationship with Luke [Donald] is very close. He has played in every Ryder Cup I’ve been involved in apart from 2008, which we both missed.”
Tom Watson also had a difficult decision to make on his wild-card choices on the back of Tiger Woods, Jason Dufner ruling themselves out with injury and Dustin Johnson, well Dustin Johnson just ruled himself out.
In the end the USA team captain selected Keegan Bradley, Hunter Mahan and Webb Simpson but it was perhaps Watson’s reasons for picking Simpson that raised the most eyebrows.
“It came to me this morning, I kind of had a revelation,” said Watson. “I took a look the last time the Ryder Cup was played and I just realized Webb was the guy.”
Simpson hasn’t exactly been in great form so it seems past Ryder Cup performances were enough to get him over the line.
These three players join the following nine players who automatically earned a berth on the team due their performances over the past two years: Rickie Fowler, Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson, Matt Kuchar, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Jordan Spieth, Jimmy Walker and Bubba Watson.
