Captain Olazabal?

Just in case Monty had any delusions of Captaining Europe's Ryder Cup squad from 2010 to 2014, Derek Lawrenson reports that Jose Maria has been offered the '10 gig at Celtic Manor.

What on earth did Sandy Lyle do wrong?

Update on Thursday, April 10, 2008 at 07:01 PM by Geoff

John Huggan looks at the murky process of selecting European captains.

Comments

[JB]

What did Sandy Lyle do wrong? The same thing Larry Nelson did wrong - nothing.

John

[Hawkeye]

Nothing but turning down play out of fear of embarrasing himself in 1989.

[Tuna]

Hawkeye,

There is another way of looking at Lyle pulling himself out in '89.

Maybe it was an entirely unselfish way of trying to help his team.

I just don't think that should be held against Lyle forever.

Unless I'm mistaken, I also don't think Lyle was ever accused of or caught in the act of cheating, which to my way of thinking should be an immediate and permanent disqualifier of a potential RC captain.

[TK421]

Surely Lyle '10, Olly '12, Monty '14 would make sense for everyone... then leave the current Clarke-Westwood-Harrington to pick up from there on. Seems mad do do otherwse.

But Sandy has finally realised that he needs to start getting his face in the press a bit more if he wants to have a chance. I wouldn't think this is a done deal yet.

[Hawkeye]

Tuna, I agree with you that he probably thought he was doing the team a favour. And since Christy O'Connor Jr, who stiffed that 2-iron on the 18th, got the nod instead, he actually did the team a favour by default.
But my point is that being that "realistic" about your playing status when you're actually the reigning World Match Play champion and the previous year's Masters champion, suggests that you're not one to "dig deep" in the face of adversity. And adversity is one thing that you certainly will face when you're captaining a Ryder Cup team.