Shane Lowry has made the Ryder Cup his number one goal this year but the battle with LIV Golf has left many casualties and Paul McGinley admits it could be the end of the road for many of the European legends who took the Saudi cash.
s Lowry, dead last on the greens, closed with a rollercoaster one-over 72 to finish tied 67th on one-over in the RBC Heritage yesterday, McGinley was in many of the British Sunday newspapers to promote his return to the fairways in June’s Irish Legends event at Seapoint.
At 56, he still loves to play when his broadcasting career allows and admits he would probably have jumped at the LIV Golf millions with one proviso — he wouldn’t have tried to have his cake and eat it too.
“You know, in all probability, I may well have gone to LIV at 46, 47 years of age,” McGinley said. “If I’m offered $20, $30 million to go and play in a rival league, I’d have done it.
“But I wouldn’t have done the LIV Tour then come back and played the European Tour as well. I think that’s greedy. You can’t be on both buses.
“As great as those players were for Ryder Cup and, you know, they’re personal friends of mine, I have a disagreement with them.”
DP World Tour Chief Executive Keith Pelley hosted the tour’s annual dinner at Augusta Country Club during Masters week and explained to a host of decisions-makers from the major professional tours and governing bodies that these are “transformational times” for golf and the DP World Tour will be “changing emphatically” over the next 12 months.
All will become clearer at the Genesis Scottish Open this summer when the future of the Strategic Alliance and Europe’s role in the PGA Tour’s designated events model becomes clearer.
A co-sanctioned Horizon Irish Open appears unlikely in the short term, but Pelley admitted that “trying to appease” every player in a members’ organisation is “an unattainable goal” given golf’s complex geo-politics.
That includes the Ryder Cup and Pelley has made it clear that Sergio Garcia, Graeme McDowell and Martin Kaymer can never be Ryder Cup captains or vice-captains because they didn’t play the minimum number of events as members.
However, many LIV players are eligible for Rome and while it remains to be seen if Luke Donald would pick one, McGinley (left) is dubious about the wisdom of such a move.
Though he doesn’t rule out seeing Ian Poulter captain a Ryder Cup team in the future, the damage LIV Golf has caused the DP World Tour is serious.
“I’m not going to close the door to that, but it’s odds-against now,” he said of a Poulter captaincy. “There’s consequences with big decisions. And these are big decisions. The Ryder Cup is partly owned by the European Tour.
“These guys are involved in an entity that is now harming the European Tour financially.
“So, unfortunately, they’ve removed themselves from the Ryder Cup, as far as I’m concerned.”
As for Lowry, the Clara man was negative for strokes gained on the greens for the fourth day running at Harbour Town.
Like Séamus Power, who missed the cut in Hilton Head and so falls out of the top 10 in the FedEx Cup standings, he’s got two weeks off before the next designated event, the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow.
Meanwhile, Stephanie Meadow joins Leona Maguire in the opening women’s Major, the Chevron Championship in Texas this week, following her tie for 31st on one-under in the LOTTE Championship in Hawaii on Saturday.
She finished 11 shots outside a playoff that saw Australian rookie Grace Kim (22) beat China’s Yu Liu and Korea’s Yu Jin Sung with a birdie at the first extra hole.
Source: News