Former European Tour player Mike Clayton is the latest pundit to suggest the Presidents Cup should become a mixed-team event.
Speaking on the latest edition of Golf Australia’s Inside the Ropes podcast, the respected course designer said it might be the only way to give the biennial contest the same status as the Ryder Cup.
“I think the only way to make the Presidents Cup more interesting is to make it a mixed event with each team comprising six men and six women,” the 64-year-old Australian said. “It’s always going to be the poor man’s Ryder Cup in its current format. I don’t think there is any doubt making it a mixed match would make it much more interesting.
“It would showcase women’s golf. It would show how great they are. It would be something everyone would watch.”
Clayton believes introducing women would make the Presidents Cup more competitive. Since its inauguration in 1994, the international team has won just once. The 1998 team, with Peter Thomson as captain, beat a U.S. squad led by Jack Nicklaus, 20½-11½, at Royal Melbourne. The 2003 match at Fancourt in South Africa was tied.
Adding women into the equation would enable the international team to choose from an impressive list of players including South Koreans Jin Young Ko, Inbee Park, Sei Young Kim; Japan’s Nasa Hataoka; Australia’s Minjee Lee; Thailand’s Patty Tavatanakit and the Jutanugarn sisters, Ariya and Moriya; New Zealand’s Lydia Ko; Canada’s Brooke Henderson; and Yuka Saso from the Philippines.
Indeed, with 18 eligible international players currently inside the top 25 on the Rolex Rankings, it would make competition for places hotter than any other team event.
“You just have to look at how many great international players there are,” Clayton added. “The international women are certainly stronger than the American women so it would be a really interesting event to watch.
“There would be more fans, and it would be massive in Asia where women’s golf is bigger than men’s golf in both (South) Korea and Japan. I just don’t see any downside to it. It’s all upside for me.”
Englishman Lee Westwood says he will make two significant changes to the qualification system if he captains the 2023 European Ryder Cup team at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club near Rome.
The bookies’ favourite also suggested he still is undecided on whether he would accept the job at this stage of his career.
The 25-time European Tour winner says he prefers four captain’s picks rather than the three available to Pádraig Harrington. Westwood also said he thought it was wrong to conclude the qualification process at a tournament as prestigious as the BMW PGA Championship.
“My first thought would be four, four and four,” he said. “Four off the European points list, four off the world list and four picks.
“There’s got to be some sort of qualifying because you want your players to play under pressure. But I just feel like Wentworth is a massive tournament which should stand on its own and shouldn’t have the distraction of it being the last qualifying event.”
It is widely expected that the Ryder Cup committee, chaired by David Howell and also including Harrington and fellow past captains Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjørn, will ask Westwood to captain the next European team. However, the Englishman is reticent about accepting the job.
“I don’t know. I love playing,” he told Sky Sports after beating Harris English by one hole in singles to record his 21st victory in a Ryder Cup career that began in 1997. “I don’t know if I’d miss it too much. I feel like I’ve still got the nerve and I proved it today.
“Playing beats sitting watching other people playing. I can’t tell you how frustrating it was for me in Paris (as a vice captain) sitting there watching the lads play. There is nothing that replicates feeling the nerves and wanting to do it.
“It (accepting the captaincy) almost feels like going into semi-retirement. You’re retired a long time and I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m going to have to sit down and think about it because I’m not sure what I want to do yet.”
Those comments were made at a time when emotions were running high and differed completely from a previous statement the Englishman made in early 2019: “I’d love to have it (the captaincy) in Italy. I’ll be 49 and that’s the ideal time to be captain as far as I’m concerned. I’ll still be playing out here. I’ll still be in touch with the players.”
Luke Donald, Graeme McDowell, Henrik Stenson and Robert Karlsson, who acted as Harrington’s vice captains at Whistling Straits, would all be strong candidates should Westwood turn down the job.
The decision on who succeeds Harrington is expected to be announced early next year.
Jim “Bones” Mackay said last week he will return as a full-time caddie, taking the bag for Justin Thomas.
The 2017 PGA Championship winner had worked with Jimmie Johnson since coming onto the PGA Tour in 2015. But the two announced a split earlier in the week.
“It came out of left field very recently. I have just tremendous respect for (Thomas) as a person and a player,” Mackay told Golf Channel on Thursday. “It was an incredible phone call to get and I said, ‘Yes.’ ”
Thomas posted on Twitter that he and Johnson agreed to separation. “I 100% did not fire him, as Jimmy came to me after the Ryder Cup and told me he has decided to pursue other opportunities,” Thomas wrote.
Also last week, Bubba Watson announced he and his long-time caddie Teddy Scott will go their separate ways after 15 years. Scott was on the bag for both of Watson’s Masters wins.
Spain’s Alejandro Del Rey created a slice of golfing history at last week’s European Challenge Tour event at Golf Saint Apollinaire when he became the first golfer to shoot a 14-under-par round of 58 on a major golf tour.
Jim Furyk (PGA Tour), Stephen Jäger (Korn Ferry Tour), Ryo Ishikawa (Japan Golf Tour) and Seong-Hyeon Kim (Japan Golf Tour) all previously shot rounds of 58 but they were achieved on par-70 golf courses, whereas Del Rey’s record round was on a 7,374-yard par-72 course.
The 23-year-old Arizona State University graduate began his round on the No. 10 with three birdies and two eagles in his first six holes. He started his second nine with five more birdies in a six-hole stretch before capping a superb performance with an eagle 3 on the 553-yard ninth hole.
His 58 was 16 strokes better than his opening 74 and helped him to catapult up into a share of fourth place, two shots ahead of second round leader Marcel Schneider.
“It was just great golf all round,” he said. “For a round like that you need a couple of good bounces which I got today. I definitely managed to drop some putts out there but I think the key was that my driving was just great today. I hit every fairway super deep.
“I should take a nap because I need it but I don’t know if I’m going to be able to take a nap right now because I’m pretty pumped.”
Del Rey carded closing rounds of 68 and 70 to finish tied for 10th place, seven shots behind winner Marcus Helligkilde from Denmark.
Bryson DeChambeau wound up with a seventh-place finish at the Long Drive World Championships last week in Mesquite, Nevada.
The 2020 U.S. Open winner and U.S. team member at the Ryder Cup fell 6 yards short of a place in the final four on Friday. His long-drive mentor, Kyle Berkshire, won the event.
“I was super excited to get to the final eight,” he said. “I never expected that in my first competition. I think I have shown the world that I can perform at these high speeds and still go play golf on the PGA Tour.”
The Ladies European Tour lost a key member of its management team when commercial director Emma Allerton died unexpectedly at age 49.
Allerton first worked for the LET and the Solheim Cup in a series of management roles from 1993 to 2009, and then returned to work full-time under chief executive officer Alexandra Armas following the announcement of the tour’s joint venture partnership with the LPGA.
In the past 18 months, Allerton became an integral part of the LET, helping the organisation navigate through the COVID-19 pandemic. She also played a key role in building a new commercial strategy alongside new and existing partners.
Allerton was passionate about women’s golf in general, and the Solheim Cup in particular. It was at the biennial match at Interlachen Country Club in 2002 where she first met and formed a working friendship with LPGA chief sales officer Kelly Hyne. The pair worked together again at Barsebäck in 2003 and Halmstad in 2007. They met up again at the end of August as Europe came from behind to defeat the U.S. side this year at Inverness Club in Ohio.
It was while in the United States Emma started to feel unwell. She was admitted to hospital on her return to the UK.
“Emma put her heart into building the Solheim Cup at a pivotal point in its history and formed a bond across the ocean with colleagues in the U.S. that fondly recalls many laughs and mutual support when faced with the challenge of 9/11 and having to dramatically change planning in ’02 and move up a full year in ’03 when the Solheim Cup first shifted years,” Hyne said.
“People are put into your life for a reason and Emma was a sister to me and, no matter the time between our visits or calls, we knew each other was always there. She will be missed terribly but her spirit will live on in each of us she touched.
“She has truly left the game and each of us better than she found it.”
Allerton is survived by her husband, Iain, and daughter, Lily.
Monday morning readers of Global Golf Post have just hours to apply for tickets to attend the 150th Open Championship at St Andrews next summer.
The ballot for tickets closes today at 12 pm BST, after which applications will be reviewed. Successful applicants will be informed by late October or early November.
The R&A introduced a ticket ballot for the first time to allow as many people as possible to register for tickets for the 150th Open. More than 1.2 million applications have been lodged since the ballot opened in July.
The ballot is the only way fans can secure tickets for the 150th Open at the Home of Golf.
“We want to ensure that as many fans as possible have a chance to be part of this momentous occasion as St Andrews next year and so we are reminding them that the deadline for the ticket ballot is fast approaching,” said Johnnie Cole-Hamilton, the R&A’s executive director of championships. “Whilst we have already received thousands of ticket applications from throughout the UK and around the world, the ballot process ensures that everyone has a fair and equitable opportunity to obtain a ticket for the 150th Open.”
Fans wishing to enter the ballot need to register their details through the One Club. Ticket prices are £95 for an adult on championship days and range from £20 to £50 on practice days. Free tickets are available for children through the R&A’s successful “Kids Go Free” programme while half-price youth tickets are available for 16- to 24-year-olds.
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Ticket availability began for the 2022 Presidents Cup, scheduled for 20-25 September at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina (READ MORE). … The PGA Tour announced last week that the 2022 Farmers Insurance Open will shift to a Wednesday-Saturday schedule (READ MORE). … PGA Tour Latinoamérica announced its schedule for qualifying for the 2021-22 season, with two events in Florida and one each in Mexico and Argentina (READ MORE).
Colin Callander and Alistair Tait