Jimenez fighting for Ryder spot

MIGUEL ANGEL JIMENEZ has chosen to fight for a Ryder Cup place at Glen-eagles this week after canceling plans to attend his nephew’s wedding.

Pushed down into the ninth and last guaranteed spot on the points table by Peter Hanson’s win at the Czech Open, 46-year-old Jimenez flew home to Spain and on arrival decided that it was next stop Scotland, rather than going along to Saturday’s family celebration.

The Dubai Desert Classic and French Open champion will betrying to secure a fourth Ryder Cup cap at the Johnnie Walker Championship – providing he makes the halfway cut, that is.

“Miguel feels that this is quite likely to be his last opportunity to play in the match,” Jimenez’s manager Sarah Phillips said. “He looked at the points situation on his flight back to Malaga and then texted me to say he was going to play. It’s sod’s law that one of the players who can pass him would do so if he wasn’t there.”

Jimenez, who playing with Hanson dropped from second to seventh on the last day in the Czech Open, could be overtaken by English pair Ross McGowan and Simon Dyson or by his fellow Spaniard Alvaro Quiros.

McGowan needs a top-two finish to have a chance, while Dyson and Quiros have to win on Sunday.

Meanwhile, the European Tour’s chief operating officer Keith Waters has quashed speculation that bad weather at Gleneagles might offer an amazing lifeline to Luke Donald, Pádraig Harrington and Justin Rose who are competing in the US. The qualifying rules for Montgomerie’s side state that automatic places will go to “the leading four players on the Ryder Cup World Points List as of Sunday, August 29, or at the conclusion of the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles, whichever is the latter.”

With heavy rain and fog in the forecast, there is the possibility that it will not finish until Monday – and by then Donald, Harrington and Rose might have been able to gather sufficient points at The Barclays tournament in New Jersey to climb into the top four.

But Waters stated: “The Barclays does not count, irrespective of the Johnnie Walker Championship finish time.”