Golf:Padraig Harrington will join fellow Irishmen Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell on the European Ryder Cup team after being handed a wild-card by Colin Montgomerie. Luke Donald and Edoardo Molinari are the other two captain's picks for the match at Celtic Manor.
The decision means Paul Casey and Justin Rose will not be part of Europe’s bid to win back the trophy in southern Wales in just over a month.
“Padraig Harrington has won three major championships in the last three years...the stature of Padraig . . . he is someone we feel that nobody in matchplay golf wants to play,” Montgomerie said this evening.
“He is a great competitor and someone that will bring everything to the team that we know about European golf. Luke Donald has played seven times in Ryder Cup and has lost only once.
“And Edoardo Molinari, what can one say about his performance today? In my time on the European Tour, over 24 years, I have never seen a finish like that. All credit to him, having to win and doing just that.”
Because the so-called FedEx Four — Harrington, Casey, Donald and Rose — chose to stay in America in the last two weeks when returning to Europe could have seen them qualify, Montgomerie was left with five players in the world top 22 chasing a pick.
He had leave one of the four out and it also left him facing calls to omit another because they put their US Tour careers ahead of the Ryder Cup. Montgomerie asked them all to play at Gleneagles and they all turned him down, but the Scot, who was critical of Poulter for doing the same two years ago, insisted that at the end of the day his job was to pick the strongest side.
No brothers have played in the same match since Bernhard and Geoff Hunt in 1963 and Edoardo Molinari piled on the pressure with a three-birdie finish to win the Johnnie Walker Championship in dramatic fashion.
Meanwhile, Rose was lying fifth, Casey and Harrington 12th and Donald 28th with a round to go in New Jersey, but Montgomerie chose not to wait for the final result there before making his announcement. In Harrington’s favour was that he was the only three-time major winner amongst the candidates. Against him, though, was the fact that he did not win a game either in the defeat two years ago or the nine-point victory at The K Club in 2006.
The biggest pluses for Donald, who missed the last match following wrist surgery, were that he has lost only one of seven cup games, has a perfect four wins out of four in foursomes, was third at Celtic Manor in June’s Wales Open and was ranked 10th in the world.
Casey was one higher than that and his head-to-head record also strengthened his hand. He won the World Match Play at Wentworth in 2006 and was a finalist in the last two WGC-Accenture Championships in Arizona.
Against that, he needed a wild-card last time after staying in the States then as well and scored only two half-points from three games. Rose was much more successful with three points out of four on his debut, partnering Poulter to two wins and beating Phil Mickelson no less in the singles.
He has played less than anybody in Europe this season, though, and after two brilliant US Tour victories earlier this summer he missed the halfway cut in the last two majors — just like Harrington.
And then there was Edoardo Molinari, whose brother clinched his debut on Thursday when England’s Ross McGowan pulled out of the final counting event through injury.
They won the World Cup together last November and Edoardo, winner of Europe’s “second division” Challenge Tour last season, also stakes his claims by winning the Dunlop Phoenix title in Japan and the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond — as well as coming second to Ernie Els in the US Tour’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Against him, though, was his lack of experience both in majors and
the Ryder Cup — and, of course, Montgomerie already had five debutants in McIlroy, Kaymer, Fisher, Francesco Molinari and Hanson.
Out from the last team are Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Robert Karlsson, Oliver Wilson, Soren Hansen, Casey and Rose.
Only eight of the American side are known at the moment. Captain Corey Pavin adds four wild cards on Tuesday week and Tiger Woods is among those waiting for a call.
European Ryder Cup team:Lee Westwood, Rory McIlroy, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Ian Poulter, Ross Fisher, Francesco Molinari, Miguel Angel Jiminez, Peter Hanson, Padraig Harrington, Edoardo Molinari, Luke Donald.