GRAND SLAM:USPGA Championship winner Rory McIlroy will be a conspicuous absentee from the elite end-of-season PGA Grand Slam of Golf in Bermuda in October due to a scheduling conflict, organisers said yesterday.
McIlroy, who clinched his second major title by a staggering eight shots at Kiawah Island, had already committed to the European Tour’s BMW Masters in China, the PGA of America said.
The BMW Masters, which was added to the European Tour schedule in April, will be played at Lake Malaren Golf Club in Shanghai from October 25th-28th.
The PGA Grand Slam of Golf, a 36-hole strokeplay event which brings together the winners of the year’s four majors, will be held from October 23rd-24th at Bermuda’s Port Royal Golf Course.
American Keegan Bradley will replace world number one McIlroy on the picturesque Atlantic Ocean island of Bermuda, where he will defend the title he claimed by one shot last year when he qualified as the 2011 USPGA Championship winner.
Fellow Americans Bubba Watson, who won this year’s Masters, and Webb Simpson (US Open), plus South African Ernie Els (British Open), complete the elite four-man field.
NEWS:Ramon Sota, an uncle of Seve Ballesteros and a successful tournament player in the 1960s and 70s, has died at the age of 74.
Sota was a key figure in the growth of the game in Spain and a major inspiration for his nephew Seve, who passed away in May last year after battling a brain tumour.
After turning pro in 1956, Sota won the Spanish Championship four times as well as a slew of other tournaments around the globe.
He finished seventh at the British Open in 1963 and eighth in 1971 and was sixth at the US Masters in 1965, the best result by a European up to that date.
JUNIOR RYDER CUP:The Island's Gavin Moynihan and English pair Toby Tree and Bronte Law will be part of Europe's side for the Junior Ryder Cup at Olympia Fields, Illinois, on September 24th-25th.
The team, comprising four under-16s and eight under-18s, is Covadonga Sanjuan and Harang Lee (Spain), Renato Paratore (Italy), Emily Pedersen (Denmark), Linnea Strom and Victor Tarnstrom (Sweden), Dominic Foos and Quirine Eijkenboom (Germany), Matthias Schwab (Austria), Tree and Bronte Law and Moynihan.
EISENHOWER TROPHY:Ireland will send possibly their strongest-ever trio to the World Amateur Championships for the coveted Eisenhower Trophy in Turkey in October.
Rathmore’s British Amateur champion Alan Dunbar will spearhead the challenge and after his exploits this season goes into action in this gruelling 72-hole tournament full of confidence.
Alongside him will be American-based Kevin Phelan, a highly-talented performer and young Gavin Moynihan, who has enjoyed a magnificent season winning the Irish Open Amateur Championship and the important McEvoy Trophy, as well as earning Junior Ryder Cup team selection.
