Peter Hanson- where does he go from here?

Hanson by all accounts had quite a set to with Ollie when he was told he was sitting out the second day. When Kaymer sank his putt, from the images I could see of the celebrations the rest of the team seemed to ignore him or he was always on the fringes of any celebration. I heard also that Ollie embraced every player at the presentation, bar Hanson who he only shook by the hand. I am happy to stand and be corrected if non of the above rings true but I am sure that even Butch Harmon mentioned that they had some sort of 'set too'.

matelot,
I watched the presentation and am 99% sure Ollie hugged everyone, especially long hug with Westwood, though apparently they certainly had words on Saturday.

As I said in my Notes, I reckon Hanson is an "A" rank player and his omission looked more than odd. If anything it will propel him closer to the USA where he already lives for much of the year and where it looks as if he'll play in 2013.

I hope he bounces back from this to compete in more Ryder Cups - it all looked very cliquey, but Ollie's winning will overwhelm any criticism. Rightly or wrongly.

If he keeps playing well he will be in the next Ryder cup squad, although if the rumours of tensions are true then maybe it will have to be as a qualifier and not a captains pick.

I have no doubt that players like westwood and poulter yield as much power as the captain when it comes to picks – further diminishing the impact of a captain – and will use this to ensure they play. Possibly to the detriment of players like Hanson who are not in the inner circle. Can we then be surprised when someone like Hanson gets a little angry - while sitting on the sidelines - who feels they can contribute see’s Westwood stinking the place up?

You are always going to have a bit of fallout at a big team event, be amazed if it didnt happen to be honest.
Hanson is a quality player and Id rather have a guy in my side who was hacked off for not being picked than one who was melting meekly into the background (not saying anyone did that by the way).

Yes there may be an inner circle, which Hanson is not part of. On the other hand I think he gets along well with the other “quieter” players, including with Bjorn.

I think it’s necessary to have a well balanced RC team, not only consisting of Brits (who, together with Sergio, seem to be the dominant figures in the inner circle), but also with continental players, as they do seem to bring a slightly different mentality to the table.

I also think it’s preferable to have players being disappointed when not playing, thus putting pressure on the captain to select the guys who really wants to go and get a point.

The other day Westwood jokingly said that the RC selection process should be altered, so that the captain picks should consist of two players + Poulter. Joking aside, I think he is spot on. If Poulter is just in close to decent form coming into 2014, why waste a potential captains pick on him, when his place in the team is a no-brainer?

I think they need to increase the number of captain's picks again. Two is too few. In fairness, if Poulter is capable of playing as he did last weekend, he is surely capable of qualifying for the team automatically. It's amazing that he hasn't missed a cut all year and still failed to qualify.

Whatever number of picks they decide on, they will then have to stick with that for the duration of the period. They can't just knock out the 9th or 10th player depending on Ian Poulter's place in the rankings.

Fact is Poulter failed to qualify outright the last 2 of 3 RC’s, yet was the best European player every time.

Using stroke play events as qualification criteria for a match play event apparently isn’t ideal. In lack of better options, maybe the few match play events we have (Volvo, WGC) could be given a higher weight in the qualification? I know Poults went out in R1 of WGC, but fact is the good match play players aren’t necessarily fabulous stroke play players, and vice versa. (Woods?)

The easiest solution would probably be, as Tinmar said, to increase the no. of captains picks to 3, to allow for a more qualitative/subjective evaluation of the candidates.

"good match play players aren’t necessarily fabulous stroke play players, and vice versa. (Woods?)"

Woods probably has one of the best matchplay careers ever.

McLaren wrote:"good match play players aren’t necessarily fabulous stroke play players, and vice versa. (Woods?)"

Woods probably has one of the best matchplay careers ever.

Yeps, I meant to write RC. Don't know his record in PC but guess it's better than RC.
ANd yes his US Amateur and WGC record is pretty awesome.

Woods is brilliant playing for himself - surely, that's never been in doubt?


Regarding numbers of RC "Captain's Picks", I'm not sure why Europe should change their current system - it seemed to work well this year and there's no-one who should feel aggrieved at being omitted.
4 "picks" certainly didn't help Davis.

Kwini, I'm not sure the final result should be allowed to disguise possible problems with the current system.

With hindsight, Davis Love might have been better picking two from Mahan, Watney & Fowler instead of Furyk & Stricker. Furyk didn't play badly, he just seems to tighten up on the final holes. Stricker really struggled.

It was good to see Kaymer hole two vital putts at the end but I'm not sure that he really earned his place. He qualified on the back of a WGC win 11 months ago. Is it right that that event, held in 2011, should hold as much weight as any of the Majors in 2012? Mahan won a WGC in 2012, also won in Houston, and still failed to qualify for the US.

Tinmar,

I think we'd probably all devise different formulas for success!

I'd have as few choices as possible, less chance of cronyism which has marred selections (especially US) in the past, but Azinger, for instance, was adamant that going from 2 to 4 choices was his single most important move as captain. Didn't work for Love though, and Furyk instead of Mahan was the only pick that raised so much as a murmur when it was made.

But Mahan's form for the past five months was no better than Kaymer's.

I think playing foursomes almost single-handedly on Friday morning knocked the stuffing out of Stricker - Couples separated them (Stricker & Woods) after one hapless round in Melbourne, sure Love wishes now he'd done the same.

I predicted Furyk and Sneds would be frazzled - the trouble with Zinger's policy of picking hot players is that they burn out. Snedeker's never been in that rare air before and Furyk crashes when he plays a lot of events - perhaps the secret to his 2010 FedEx success!

Oh well, some would go to 12 picks, or Poulter plus 11 others.

Sunday was incredible and I still can't understand how it happened. On Saturday night, my prediction of the final result would have been 17-11 or 18-10 the US. That was based on how few of the Europeans were playing anywhere near their usual form and how well the US were playing.

If the first two days form had carried into Sunday and the US had won heavily, I'm sure there would have been a lot of calls for change. There's no such urgency now but I still think they should have a look at it before the next qualification starts. If they still only want two picks, fine. But they should certainly do something about the disproportionate effect that 3 or 4 big money events in late 2013 will have on an event not held until September 2014.

Id go with no picks myself, one at most. The expectation to a degree is that these guys will almost build a season around gaining qualifying points via one of the available methods, so I think it should be a merit based qualification personally.

What happened to Anthony Kim?

"What happened to Anthony Kim?"

his career plummeted in some coke fuelled spiral. or something to that effect.

The US Presidents Cup qualification might provide a clue.

And I'm not 100% sure of this but:
It's entirely based upon money earned and the qualifying period extends from the 2011 Wyndham Championship through the 2013 BMW, with the top ten qualifying automatically plus two "picks".
The only wrinkle is that prizemoney won in 2013 counts double.

That rewards guys who have played consistently year in and year out, but with a heavy emphasis on more recent results.

The International Team qualification, on the other hand, is the daftest yet devised, just taking the top ten from the owgr's.

McLaren wrote:"What happened to Anthony Kim?"

his career plummeted in some coke fuelled spiral. or something to that effect.

Oh really? I never liked him, arrogant little prat.

You still watching Glee, Mac?

"The International Team qualification, on the other hand, is the daftest yet devised, just taking the top ten from the owgr's.."

At least the OWGR has a bias towards recent results, which I think is good.

Anthony Kim has been out injured for most of the past three years with thumb surgery, shoulder problems and achilles tendon surgery - quite apart from anything else.
Expected to return to the Tour next spring.

The OWGR rankings would have got Poultry in on a rare automatic qualification.

kwinigolfer wrote:The International Team qualification, on the other hand, is the daftest yet devised, just taking the top ten from the owgr's.

I don't have a massive problem* with the "Norman" method - rewards long-term consistency with a degree of emphasis on recent performance... You'd need to be off-the-charts good to get in as a tour rookie though.

[* but then again, I can sometimes be as daft as a brush... having been over-exposed to daytime TV.]

"You still watching Glee, Mac?"

I have not bought the third season box set yet. Actually, is it even out?

I'm fairly sure this year's European team ended up being the Top 12 players on the OWGR on the date Olly announced his picks. It's interesting that despite all the complicated criteria, we would have had the same team if we just used the world rankings and had no captain's picks.

In some ways it would actually be fairer as it would provided a greater weight to events played more recently which the current system fails to do. The only problem with the OWGR for Ryder Cup is it would provide little motivation to play in Europe. The Tour are presumably trying to protect themselves by having a separate qualification from the Tour itself.

McLaren wrote:"You still watching Glee, Mac?"

I have not bought the third season box set yet. Actually, is it even out?

Yeah think it came out on Monday.

Tinmar wrote: The only problem with the OWGR for Ryder Cup is it would provide little motivation to play in Europe. The Tour are presumably trying to protect themselves by having a separate qualification from the Tour itself.

That's exactly why. That's also the danger in allowing more captains picks. For sure Poulter could now give a sh*t about loyalty to the ET (if we wanted) as he would be sure of a pick as long as his form come 2014 was just close to decent. And in all honesty we wouldn't want to have too many players giving a sh*t about the ET just because they knew they'd be sure of a pick. Every time up to the RC, we have the discussion about players prioritising the FedEx Cup and hoping for a pick (Casey, Poulter, Rose, Harrington etc. in the past), rather than trying to qualify outright by playing Gleneagles, KLM Open, Czech Open etc.