Jose-Maria Olazabal tried everything to play down his prospects of bridging the 23-year gap since he last won the Irish Open Championship.

This country has produced many of the game’s finest but for reasons not always easy to fathom, their record at the Irish Open is a long way short of what might have been expected.

Even though the country’s four Major champions, Pádraig Harrington, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy — along with 2009 champion Shane Lowry — are in the field, the Irish Open at Carton House on June 27 continues without a title sponsor this year.

Ryder Cup legend Christy O’Connor Junior last night claimed a failure to appoint Paul McGinley as Europe’s 2014 captain would be “an absolute disgrace.”

It now seems only Colin Montgomerie can come between Paul McGinley and the captaincy of the 2014 European Ryder Cup team.

Darren Clarke has thrown his hat into the ring to captain the European team in the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles.

It was a comeback that has already established itself among the most astonishing in the annals of sport and must have come as a relief to victorious European captain Jose-Maria Olazabal, who would have serious questions to address had his side have been wiped.

American hopes of regaining the Ryder Cup at Medinah received a major boost with Brandt Snedeker’s victory in the FedEx Cup and Tour Championship while European pair Rory McIlroy and Lee Westwood faded.

All 12 of the US Ryder Cup team have qualified for next week’s Tour Championship, the final tournament on the PGA Tour’s lucrative FedEx Cup play-off series, but it’s a safe bet Europe’s Jose-Maria Olazabal was the slightly the happier of the two captains after events in Indiana and the Netherlands over the weekend.

Pádraig Harrington’s omission from the European Ryder Cup team ends a run which began in 1999 with his debut in the infamous Battle of Brookline.

Even though the Ryder Cup at Medinah is only a month away, massive interest has already switched to the identity of the European captain for the 2014 clash at Gleneagles.

It seems outrageous, but there is a strong belief a festering nine-year-old spat with the present European Ryder Cup captain could cost Pádraig Harrington one of Jose-Maria Olazabal’s two ‘wild card’ picks on the European team to face the Americans at Medinah on September 28-30.

Pádraig Harrington has his last chance of making the European Ryder Cup team when he travels to Kiawah Island this week in search of a second US PGA Championship.

With the top two spots on the leaderboard held by a South African and an Australian, the British Open provided considerable food for thought for the rival Ryder Cup captains Davis Love III and Jose-Maria Olazabal.

Despite his many fine performances in recent weeks, including top 10 finishes in the Masters along with the US and Irish Opens, Pádraig Harrington is still a long way off clinching one of the automatic 10 places in Europe’s Ryder Cup team to face the United States at Medinah in October.

Graeme McDowell and Pádraig Harrington, 2nd and 4th in the US Open, spearhead the home challenge in next week’s Irish Open at Royal Portrush.

The big guns of Irish golf will contest this week’s BMW PGA Championship, the European Tour’s flagship tournament, at Wentworth.

Graeme McDowell goes into today’s first round contest against Sweden’s Robert Karlsson in the Volvo World Match Play Championship at Finca Cortesin near Estepona in Southern Spain hopeful that a change from the regular diet of stroke play to head-to-head confrontations will provide the kick start that his career badly needs.

HAVING consolidated his place at the top of the world rankings by finishing third in the WGC Cadillac event at the weekend, Rory McIlroy takes a three-week break before the Masters at Augusta on April 5.

Whether you agree paying Tiger Woods more in appearance money than the entire prize fund was worth in Abu Dhabi at the weekend or not, he contributed hugely to the success of the tournament.

HE has turned 40, fallen to 89th in the world rankings and lost his most benevolent sponsor.

EUROPEAN TOUR chief George O’Grady wasn’t exaggerating when he claimed on Sunday that 2011 has been the greatest year in his organisation’s history.

NOT once since the event began in 1927 has an Irishman captained a Britain & Ireland or Europe Ryder Cup team.

APPEARANCE money had been a major problem for the European Tour for a decade or more by the time the Irish Open first came to Kerry in 1991.

THE passing of the peerless Seve Ballesteros at the weekend has overshadowed everything else in the game of golf to such an extent that it seems almost disrespectful to discuss anything else.

SEVERIANO Ballesteros knew as soon as he set foot in Ireland for the first time in 1976 that he would love the country and that the affection would be returned a thousand fold.

WITH a fortnight to the Masters, several stellar names bid to sharpen their game for Augusta in the Arnold Palmer Invitational Bay Hill Classic in Orlando this week.

THE increasingly lucrative “Gulf Swing” on the European Tour begins Thursday with the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.

THE formal ratification of Jose-Maria Olazabal as captain of the European Ryder Cup team at Medinah next year takes place shortly after lunch today.

THE many American commentators who wondered aloud about Graeme McDowell’s worthiness to be crowned US Open champion after his great victory at Pebble Beach last June have been forced to eat another dose of humble pie after the latest heroics by the Portrush man in the Hyundai Tournament of Champions in Hawaii on Sunday.

GRAEME McDOWELL emerged from what he described as a war of attrition at Valderrama yesterday to capture his third title of a momentous season and appreciably narrow the gap between himself and the German Martin Kaymer in the European Tour’s Race to Dubai order of merit.

GRAEME McDowell was quick to stress that there’s a long way to go in the Andalucia Masters at Valderrama.

AFTER Paul McGinley came out publicly yesterday in favour of Jose-Maria Olazabal for the job at Medinah, Chicago, in two years’ time, it is now a virtual certainty that Ireland will have to wait at least another four years before being honoured with the captaincy of the European Ryder Cup team.

PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON admitted “it’s very bitter when you don’t win your singles” but took considerable consolation that no matter what he did himself, it might not have been enough to beat an inspired Zach Johnson, who had thrown no fewer than seven birdies at him.

IRELAND’S greening of the Ryder Cup matches at Celtic Manor in October deepened in hue yesterday not only with Padraig Harrington’s inclusion as one of Colin Montgomerie’s wild card picks but also the call-up for the 29 year-old Italian Edoardo Molinari.

ONE month he wins the Champion Hurdle with Binocular, the next it’s the Aintree Grand National, and it seems life just couldn’t get any better for JP McManus.

COLIN Montgomerie may surprise us but it is difficult to believe he would include two people among his assistants at Celtic Manor next October who have never played in the Ryder Cup.

AFTER the excitement of the Race to Dubai and Lee Westwood’s successes on Sunday, the attention switches to the World Cup of Golf which starts Thursday at the Mission Hills Golf Club in China.

Sweden’s Michael Jonzon is living proof that in golf it takes just one week to make it a great year.

Sweden’s Michael Jonzon, with one European Tour win in 290 starts and fighting for his future, leads the Castello Masters in Spain with a round to play.

Martin Kaymer has given himself the chance to regain the European Tour number one spot in his first event back from breaking toes in a go-kart crash.

IT WAS only after “a good, lively debate” here this week that Colin Montgomerie was given his third ‘wild card’ pick for the 2009 Ryder Cup match at Celtic Manor, Wales.

THE colourful John Daly has been drawn with Ireland’s Paul McGinley and English Ryder Cup player Oliver Wilson in the first two rounds of the 3 Irish Open at Baltray.

DONEGAL giant Michael McGeady feared he might have thrown away his chance of appearing in this week’s 3 Irish Open at Baltray when he faltered over the closing six holes of the Italian Open in Turin on Sunday.