Olly banks on green card

European Ryder Cup captain Jose Maria Olazabal last night underlined just how highly he values his Irish stars by claiming Rory McIlroy was almost as good as Tiger Woods in his circa 2000 pomp and Graeme McDowell was one of his main men at Medinah this week.

McDowell’s contribution to Europe’s win over the United States at Celtic Manor in 2010 is already the stuff of legend after he kept his nerve to clinch the victory for Colin Montgomerie’s team with a singles defeat of Hunter Mahan, while McIlroy completed an assured debut at his fellow Ulsterman’s side in two fourballs and one foursomes match before halving his singles with Stewart Cink in the 14.5-13.5 success.

McIlroy has since won two Major championships and risen to the top of the world rankings and when asked about both his and McDowell’s importance to the European cause this week in Chicago, Olazabal said: “Well, it’s important to have the best players on your team, and according to that, we do have two great players.

“Obviously we have the world No 1, he’s playing great. Even though he didn’t win the FedEx Cup, but the way he’s played the last few months, he’s been outstanding.

“I would say that he is at this moment very close to how good Tiger was at that stretch of time between ’99 and 2002, the way he’s playing. He’s full of confidence. He’s got the whole game, and in that regard, it’s great to have players like that on your team.”

Of McDowell, Olazabal was equally complimentary, adding: “He’s one of our main men, to be honest. He loves this competition. I think this competition brings the best in him. He’s a very gutsy player.

“Doesn’t matter if he’s not striking the ball well. He will fight until the very end. He will fight for every shot, for every inch. And we saw that in the past.

“You know, he was at Celtic Manor, for instance, he was last in that single matches on Monday, and I have to say that he was a little down on himself on Sunday night [after being chosen to go out last in the singles]. But you know, as the match progressed that Monday, what he did was outstanding. So that’s why I said he’s one of my main men.”

Olazabal’s praise came as the American media continued to speculate whether McIlroy was the main focus of their team’s attention as regards his place in the order for Sunday’s singles and who USA captain Davis Love III may try and send out against him.

It was a topic that Love did his best to skirt around during his press conference last night.

“They have a lot of good players,” the American captain said. “I think the best strategy for me is to put our best teams out there and not really worry, because you can’t in this format, you can’t really. It’s hard to target a guy. In this format, you don’t know who is going to be their hot team.

“Certainly in my Ryder Cup history, we have run up against some guys that you didn’t expect were going to be hot. And we can just run a big list of it. Like Monty; Monty would come in not playing well and he would play great every time. You just never know.

“Now I’m not aiming at guys. The ultimate would be if Jose Maria could sit up here and he could put one out and I could put one out and then I could put one out and then he could put one out. That would be fun.

“Then you could target guys, but it’s hard to guess, hard to play that game. It’s a challenge to put them out there. We are going to put them out more in the order we like guys to play in.

“We might like certain guys to go first because they are raring to go, and then certain guys lay in the back because they want to see what’s going on; they want to see how the matches are playing out, so I’m going to let guys pick a little bit and then I’ve got a couple ideas on who should go first and who should go last.”