Pressure mounts for Cup places

There are just four days to go in the 12-month race for places in the European Ryder Cup team and Paul McGinley and Paul Broadhurst are in the heat of the battle going into the BMW International Open in Munich tomorrow.

McGinley, match-winning hero of the 2002 event and unbeaten in Detroit two years ago, is in the 10th and last automatic spot, a third cap so close he can almost touch it.

He had badly wanted to avoid this late, late stress this time. He had it in 2001 and two years ago, but he realised his dream on both occasions.

“In 2001 I was 90% there entering the last tournament, but it was still not a pleasurable experience,” recalls the Dubliner, who came 10th five years ago and qualified in seventh place.

Broadhurst, unbeaten when he made his only appearance 15 years ago, is 11th, trailing by more than €148,000 and needing nothing worse than a third-place finish just to have a chance of returning to the side.

But he has done it before.

In a professional career full of highs and lows, Broadhurst has been in four play-offs and lost them all. Yet the one he was in at the 1991 German Open was one of his greatest moments.

Going to Dusseldorf that August, he had to finish second to make it into Bernard Gallacher’s side. So when he scored a closing 65 and tied with Mark McNulty it was understandable if his focus was not quite 100% for the play-off that followed. He had achieved what he came to do.

Now, five years after losing his European Tour card and wondering what the future held – his son Sam, six at the time, told someone in a supermarket “my dad used to be a really good golfer” – the 41-year-old is one great tournament away from lining up at the K Club.

After a marvellous run of results, including sixth in the US PGA championship, two years ago McGinley’s place was still on the line returning to Germany.

He, David Howell and Ian Poulter were all under pressure from each other as well as Swede Fredrik Jacobson, who had to finish fifth to force his way into the reckoning.

With a round to go, Jacobson was in that position – and paired with McGinley.

Ahead of them, Howell did what was required and Poulter, after a quadruple-bogey eight on the 10th hole, then played the remaining eight in six under, finishing with an eagle three which has to rank as the most impressive single hole anybody has ever played to earn a Ryder Cup debut.

Standing on the same tee, McGinley and Jacobson’s fate had still not been decided, but when Jacobson missed out by a shot of finishing joint third, McGinley was home and dry.

Though he says he did not know it until it was all over, in the end he could have taken 50 on the hole and still qualified.

The difference between then and now is not just that some of the names of those in contention have changed, but also that McGinley is not in the hot form he was then.

After his Volvo Masters win last October, he was fourth in the table. But he has had only one top 10 finish since January and has slid down.

“I’m lucky still to be in the team at this point the way I’ve played,” McGinley admitted.

“Look at most guys and they have had three or four big weeks. I haven’t. There has not been a purple patch.”

He did require knee surgery in May and missed the money-spinning BMW Championship at Wentworth a year after finishing second there, but he says of the position he finds himself in: “I’ve only got myself to blame.

“It’s going to be a dogfight. But the positive thing is that I’ve come through two of them before.”

Swede Johan Edfors, John Bickerton and Dane Thomas Bjorn are the only other players who can force their way into the team in the final week.

Bickerton and Bjorn have to win and Edfors has to finish second at worst. And even that might not be good enough for them.