McGinley gets back to business after Ryder Cup

After Paul McGinley’s near two-year commitment to Europe’s victorious Ryder Cup campaign he finds the expanding business side of Paul McGinley the golfer will see him contest just 15 events in 2015.

McGinley stepped back into the realm of a normal Tour member, and swapping his special commissioned Ryder Cup captain’s golf bag for a standard TaylorMade model, at last week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship where he finished a credible 42nd.

The result, earning McGinley €19,900, ended a dismal run of five missed cuts for the Dubliner who was contesting just his 11th event this year.

McGinley will have his ‘business’ hat on this morning on Portugal’s Algarve when he plants a ceremonial pine tree on the North Course he has designed at the Quinta do Lago course.

And it his business opportunities, that also include the very successful clubsforhire.com rental clubs initiative, that could lead to McGinley withdrawing from this week’s Portugal Masters ahead of travelling to Ghana next Monday to officially open the newly redesigned Achimota Golf Club course.

“It’s exciting as there is a great golfing legacy in Ghana as they have 14 courses, most of them designed in the 1920s and 1930s by the British, but they’ve been left to rack and ruin over the last few years,” said McGinley.

“I managed to sell the idea to Tullow Oil who wanted to reinvest in Ghana and with the help also of the R&A the new course will open next Monday.”

Prior to accepting the Ryder Cup captaincy McGinley averaged 25 events a season over 21 seasons from 1992 up to the end of 2013.

However, he played just 17 last year and will officially end his 23rd year on Tour teeing up in the October 30 starting BMW Masters on an invitation and a ‘thank you’ for the company’s involvement in the Ryder Cup.

And there is one business task McGinley again ruled out and that is writing any tell-all book on his captaining of the 2014 winning Ryder Cup team.

“There will be no book,” he declared.

“I had an agreement with the players to say whatever happens in the team room would stay in the team room, so I won’t be writing any book and I’m not going back on my word.”