Monty: If I Were Captain, Padraig Would Be Selected!

Okay, I officially feel like an idiot.

Merely trying to stir up a little Ryder Cup discussion and maybe a nasty Tweet from Ian Poulter, I suggested Padraig Harrington would make a great Ryder Cup captain's pick even though he has the yips.

Well, now European Captain Emeritus Monty has endorsed Paddy, reports Brian Keogh.

“I would encourage Jose to pick as many experienced players as possible but that is not my position right now.”

I feel ashamed, yes.

Comments

[Ghillie]

And if he were Sam Torrance Parnevik would be selected.

Monty is famous for "never having met" players he played rounds with, if they were not of the tribe. Happily, JMO is not a Brit and his eye may be able to look farther.

However, he (JMO) asked a lot of Harrington at the PGA and to a good extent Harrington delivered. It would be a dodgy pick, but better than when Monty picked him. Harrington is a great player, throughout his career, but he is no more on form now than Colsaerts, and is no great shakes as a match player to make up for it.

The European team looks more and more shaky, and yet they seem to have a good bead on this sort of thing. No lock -- they are facing perhaps the toughest US team in 15 years -- but match play is a whole new world of problems, and stroke play results are not always the key. That's what makes it such fun.

Let's see what Gleneagles delivers. There is another Spaniard in the pick-mix...it would be controversial, but no more so than the E. Molinari pick (a good one) last time. It ain't over yet. And for the first time in ages, it's not one of the Brit-Mafia doin' the choosin'.

[canaptious and camsteerie]

Oh well, that's Harrington screwed!

[Hawkeye]

I feel I must come to Parnevik's defense here! He was picked by Sam Torrance for the 2001 matches, a year in which he was a PGA Tour winner and in contention at the British Open. The previous year he won twice on the PGA Tour and was ranked #7 in the world. Nobody said a word about him being a bad pick at the time. However, by the time the matches were eventually played in 2002, he had lost his game all but completely (as had David Duval on the US team), and that's likely why we remember him as a bad pick. We need to remember that the 2002 matches were still billed as the 2001 matches, and they didn't come with any mulligans for the captains.

[Ghillie]

Perhaps. But I remember being dismayed when Parnevik was announced by Torrance, in the summer of 2001. I assumed his rationale had been that he also picked Sergio and the unlikely pair had been very effective in 1999's lost cause. But there must have been some others who seemed more deserving to me at the time -- I have not dipped back into the OWGR or Volvo Order of Merit of the time, but I had a vague notion of unfairness to some ET player.

[Rose]

Tee to green, Harrington has played great golf all year. If he had only been able to manage the putter with half a degree of reliability, he may have won at Augusta or at least been there at the end. He will get past the yips.