The 2016 Ryder Cup ‘Year to Go’ celebrations kick off at Hazeltine tomorrow (MON) but with five-time Ryder Cup representative Stewart Cink questioning the USA Team selection task force.
European Team captain Darren Clarke will join Starts and Stripes rival Davis Love 111 for two days of engagements, dinners, speeches and more importantly inspecting the Minnesota course to play host to the 41st staging of the biennial competition.
Love 111 is desperate to make amends for the events of 2012 at Medinah while the American team in general will be under even more pressure following the Gleneagles post matches controversy to win on home soil for a first occasion since 2008.
Cink, who is contesting this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland, was considered by many prior to the Tom Watson captaincy backlash to be in line for a captaincy role but was clearly over-looked when the notion of a task force was floated.
Five-time USA Ryder Cup star Stewart Cink asks questions of the American task force. (Photo – Eoin Clarke/www.golffile.ie)
“I thought I was in line for the Ryder Cup captaincy but the selection process has changed and when they picked Tom Watson for the captaincy in 2014 it changed the order of who was in line to lead the team.
“But now there’s no line so I don’t know where I am and whether or not I will be ever selected or considered for the captaincy.
“The thing is also I’ve played on five Ryder Cup’s and I was never considered to be invited onto the task force. I guess it’s the fact they must feel I have not played bad golf the last four to five years that I cannot make decisions about the Ryder Cup.
“Basically the guys leading the task force are Davis (Love 111), (Phil) Mickelson, and (Steve) Stricker and I am their contemporaries, and at the least I have the experience some of those guys have.
“So I would like to have a say in it but then Davis is one of my best friends and I will just talk to talk to him about it behind the scenes.”
Stewart Cink tees off in the 2010 Ryder Cup watched by the all-Ireland pair of Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell. (Photo – www.golffile.ie)
Cink made his Ryder Cup debut in 2002 when he and Jim Furyk handed out a 3 & 2 defeat to the all-Ireland pair of Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley.
He then was also a member of the losing 2004, 2006 and 2010 American sides and with his only tastes success at Valhalla in 2008.
The 2009 Open Champion has played in 19 Ryder Cup matches winning five, losing seven and halving seven.
And the now 42-year old Atlanta-based Cink has a simple theory why the U.S. have won just two of the past 10 Ryder Cup encounters.
“I don’t know if the task force is right or if there is a right way to go to win a Ryder Cup,” he said.
“There is so many vagaries about it all and at the end of the day the players simply have to play and if this task force is trying to eliminate some of the dizziness of the week, I don’t know if they are barking up the right tree.
“The European Team has also gone down a similar path in picking a new captain and they win while our team have not performed well.
“It just seems like the States play to not lose and I’ve been there and it’s no fun at all to lose.
“Even though it is a team match one player can single-handedly turn the team around, and maybe an underdog winning a match.
“I remember my opening Ryder Cup in 2002 at The Belfry when Phillip Price took down Mickelson in the Singles and it was a huge momentum turn for Europe and a few matches later you saw McGinley holing the winning putt.
“But then I am still competing and not yet looking at any post-golf career, and also not ruling out on playing on another Ryder Cup.”
