Focused McGinley plays down Clarke rift

Ryder Cup captain Paul McGinley has pledged to draw a line in the sand over any ill feeling with Darren Clarke over their rival candidacies to lead Europe against the USA at Gleneagles next year.

The Irish pair will tee off together alongside US Ryder Cup captain Tom Watson in today’s opening round of the 95th PGA Championship seven months after going head-to-head in a bid to captain the European team.

McGinley, 46, had been widely assumed to have a free run at the captaincy, with 2011 Open champion Clarke, 44, following him into the role for the 2016 contest at Hazeltine, Minnesota.

Both men had served as vice-captains to Jose Maria Olazabal at Medinah last year as Europe dramatically defended the Ryder Cup and following that Clarke made a late bid to upset the order, only to lose out in a vote by the European Tour’s tournament committee in January.

There has been little communication between the two since but if there is any bad blood between the two, McGinley said yesterday it was forgotten and the pair would act like professionals in each other’s company over the opening two rounds.

“I saw him in registration. We shook hands and we’ll see each other on the tee tomorrow,” McGinley said of his meeting with Clarke on arrival at Oak Hill earlier this week. “I knew I’d be playing with Watson and Darren was drawn with us. That’s no problem. Deal with it and move on. That’s fine.

“I want to leave all that behind me. Listen, it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is the guy is there. Darren could be part of the team next year and I’m certainly not going to burn any bridges or fall out with him. It’s a question of being professional about it and I will be and so will he and we’ll move on.”

McGinley praised Clarke’s impressive outing at The Open last month when the Portrush resident finished as the leading Irishman at Muirfield in a tie for 24th but was not inclined to add his opinion on the current state of Rory McIlroy’s game.

McGinley played a practice round with the struggling McIlroy, one of his strongest backers for the Ryder Cup captaincy, and their compatriot Shane Lowry at Oak Hill on Tuesday but refused to be drawn on publicly offering a solution to his lack of form as the 24-year-old prepares to launch his PGA title defence today.

“Everybody has got a comment on Rory. Everybody has thrown in their tuppence worth and to me that’s not helping him, so I’m not going to add to that,” McGinley said.

“I don’t want to have a big spiel on what I think about Rory and this and that is what he should do. I’ll stand back. Anything I say to him, I’ll say to him privately. But there’s not much for me to say.

“I played with him yesterday. He’s playing nicely. He’s not buzzing in confidence the way he was this time last year but, as I’ve said before, that’s Rory. He’s going to be that way but, you know what, he turns it on like a switch. We’ve seen that in the past. That’s what makes him so exciting and such an interesting guy. That’s why everyone wants to have an opinion. That’s the way he is and that’s the way he’d going to be. He accepts that and moves on.”