Westwood, Kaymer, Pieters get captain’s picks for Ryder Cup

Darren Clarke finalized the European Ryder Cup team by naming veterans Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer to the biennial matches, as well as USA first-timer Thomas Pieters.

Knox, who has won two PGA Tour titles this season, totally deserved a place in the team, but Pieters has been exceptional lately.

Westwood and Kaymer are understood to be the favourites from that list, with Westwood a long-time friend and former Ryder Cup partner of Clarke who is seeking a 10th consecutive appearance in the event.

Westwood has not won a tournament since April 2015, but he came joint-second behind compatriot Danny Willett – one of Clarke’s automatic picks – at this year’s Masters.

After a win in Denmark last week, Belgium’s Thomas Pieters did enough to persuade Clarke to choose him over Scotland’s Russell Knox.

Russell Knox misses out despite being the highest-ranked European of the non-qualifiers, rising to world No 20 following his win at the Travelers Championship earlier this month.

Pieters finished fourth at the Olympics and second at the Czech Masters. Davis Love, the U.S. captain, indicated that he would love to have the 31-year-old at his disposal, but Clarke was not about to apologise for favouring Pieters, a player more than 20 places below Knox in the rankings. “Every year there’s a guy in my position that doesn’t get picked and it’s a story right now, but in a couple of week’s time when it all starts, I’m sure it’ll be forgotten that I’m not in the team”.

“I’ve always been a huge Thomas Pieters fan from when I first witnessed how he hits a golf ball, and how he plays”.

“It was still only something like a 5% chance – it wasn’t as if I just had to show up to make the team”.

That made Pieters an irresistable choice for the captain, but Knox insists he does not believe it was a mistake not to make that last ditch attempt to qualify for the team automatically.

“Martin Kaymer is somewhat of a Ryder Cup stalwart and a man I have enormous trust in”.

Belgian Pieters will be making his debut in the biennial competition.

“The rookies on our team are experienced at playing over in the States”. Unfortunately, you know, the two guys who would have fallen into that category, GMac [Graeme McDowell] and Luke, are not quite playing the way we know they can play.

Clarke said Luke Donald – another former No. 1 and a four-time Ryder Cup victor – and Graeme McDowell would also have been in contention for a pick if their form had been better.

“To get it down to those three has certainly been very hard”, said Clarke.

Clarke admitted he lost sleep over the wild-card decisions, calling the phone call he had to make to Knox “probably one of the toughest phone calls I’ve ever had to make”.

He said: “The past few days have been some of the toughest of my golfing career but it’s been wonderful to see the team take shape”.

He won’t find watching Hazeltine easy, but he’ll still back the team.

Clarke added: “It’s going to be a very, very big task ahead of us”.