Golf: Woosnam hopes for Ryder spot

Ian Woosnam has still not given up hope of playing his way back into Europe’s Ryder Cup team this year.

Thu, 17 May, 2001 - 07:46

Ian Woosnam has still not given up hope of playing his way back into Europe’s Ryder Cup team this year.

Given the job of captain Sam Torrance’s right-hand man at The Belfry in September, the 43-year-old Welsh star currently stands 54th in the points race.

But such is the huge amount of money on offer at the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open which stars in Heidelberg today - £1.6m in all that if he were to win on Sunday he could go into sixth place.

Winning, of course, means beating world number one Tiger Woods amongst others and Woosnam’s last tournament victory was almost exactly four years ago.

It was the Hyundai Motor Masters in South Korea and he beat Sandy Lyle in a play-off.

After two rounds of the Benson & Hedges International Open last week Woosnam was in contention on four-under.

But closing rounds of 74 and 77 sent him all the way down to joint 57th and it was back to the drawing board.

Woosnam has an added reason for wanting to discover form soon.

For the first time in 18 years he faces the prospect of having to qualify for the Open championship.

There are still four ways for him to be exempt, but two are rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

The world’s top 50 qualify on May 31 and he is currently 91st, while on the same day at the end of next week’s Volvo PGA Championship at Wentworth, in other words - five places are up from grabs to non-exempt players from this season’s Order of Merit.

Woosnam is currently 57th, but victory on Sunday could take him as high as second.

Failing that, the two avenues left open are the seven places from a mini-Order of Merit running from Wentworth to the Scottish Open at Loch Lomond on July 12-15 and the eight places at the Loch Lomond tournament itself.

The two players he was paired with today and tomorrow do not have to worry about their Open spots, but while Jose Maria Olazabal searches for a second victory in three weeks Seve Ballesteros continues his search for even a glimpse of his old magic.

It was like the good old days with the most successful partnership in Ryder Cup history together again on the tee.

But Ballesteros has made only one halfway cut this season and is now outside the top 1,100 on the world rankings.

Ballesteros was number one in 1988 and 1989, while Woosnam reached the top in 1991 and stayed there throughout his reign as Masters champion.

Woods is the current leader of the pack, of course, and the first man to hold all four majors at the same time was bound to attract the biggest following today.

That would have been the case whoever he was paired with. The fact that it is Colin Montgomerie and Darren Clarke only adds to the attraction.

Card of the St Leon Rot course, Heidelberg, Germany, venue for the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open TPC of Europe on May 17-20:

Hole Yards Par

1 540 5

2 345 4

3 467 4

4 181 3

5 558 5

6 443 4

7 430 4

8 202 3

9 398 4