The European Tour has delivered an unprecedented ultimatum to those European born players who choose not to take out European Tour membership.
The changes, and detailed below, sends out a clear message to the like of England’s Paul Casey who chose not to join the European Tour at the start of last year.
Casey declared his decision was based purely on wishing to concentrate more on the PGA Tour and also spend more time with his young Arizona-based family.
However after Casey performed so well at the end of last year, and including finishing runner-up in the FedEx Cup Play-Off Series Deutsche Bank Championship and then second in the following week’s BMW Championship in Indianapolis, there were calls from the likes of Rory McIlroy who won the event at TPC Boston, that Casey should be considered for selection even though he was not a member of the European Tour.
Paul Casey working on the range today ahead of this week’s Career Builder Challenge. (Photo – www.golfbytourmiss.com)
In fact, had Casey been a member of the European Tour his overall form on the 2016 PGA Tour would have seen him easily qualify for Darren Clarke’s Hazeltine team despite his pair of second place results that came at the end of qualifying.
However the European Tour has ruled against that move while the Tour has also declared from 2018 onward that any player, who chooses not to be a member of the European Tour, can become a European Ryder Cup Captain or a vice-captain.
Qualification for The 2018 Ryder Cup Team:
● Ryder Cup qualification points (both R2D Points and World Points) to be multiplied by 1.5 for tournaments later in the qualification process. The starting point for this will be the BMW PGA Championship in 2018.
● No Ryder Cup qualification points will be available from tournaments staged anywhere in the world opposite Rolex Series tournaments in both 2017 and 2018.
● Qualification for the 2018 team to change to four players from the Ryder Cup European Points List, four from the Ryder Cup World Points List and four Wild Card picks for Captain Bjørn.
Ryder Cup Qualification – General:
● Players must be a member of the European Tour to be eligible to play for Europe.
● Players cannot be a European Ryder Cup Captain or a Vice-Captain if they decline membership of the European Tour or fail to fulfil their minimum event obligation in any season, from 2018 onwards.
