Dodd happy to be in the news at Wales Open

Stephen Dodd is not ready yet to say he is gunning for a Ryder Cup cap on home soil next year, but just to be news again on the European Tour is a huge step in the right direction.

The 42-year-old, at Celtic Manor this week for the Wales Open, has spoken of how he quit the circuit late last year and wondered about his future.

“It’s a tough game when things aren’t going well – just the toughest place in the world to be,” said Dodd, a former European Open champion and World Cup winner.

“It’s just hard to keep battling and trying every week when you’ve got no game to try with.

“If there was some light at the end of the tunnel it would have been a little bit easier, but there wasn’t and that’s why I decided to stop.”

Asked if there was a point in a tournament where he came to the conclusion he did not want to be there Dodd replied: “Pretty much every one I played.”

In the last two weeks, though, the Cardiff golfer has earned well over £200,000 by finishing fourth in the BMW PGA Championship and fifth in the European Open - the second of those after driving home from Kent thinking he had missed the halfway cut.

He said: “It’s gradually improved since I came back in Abu Dhabi in January (his first tournament for three months).

“I didn’t know what to expect there, but I had the desire and dedication and determination to get my game back to where it was a few years ago.”

He returned to former coach Terry Hanson last year and went back to basics.

“Stopping was the best thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “I was in a fortunate position where I had the exemption (to the end of 2011) which allowed me to do that and we tried to fix pretty much all of my game.

“It’s not where I want it yet, but it’s on the way to recovery.”

As for the Ryder Cup in October next year, Dodd added: “I haven’t thought that far ahead – the points don’t start for another three or four months.

“Obviously it would be a great honour and I would love to do it, but at the moment it’s not in the forefront of my mind.”

It is, though, for captains Colin Montgomerie and Corey Pavin and they are both in this week’s field.

Disappointingly for Montgomerie, very few of Europe’s current stars are with him.

The only two in the world’s top 50 present are Ross Fisher and Miguel Angel Jimenez and the Spaniard is the only member of last year’s cup side playing.

Montgomerie said yesterday he will do all he can to get a better turn-out next year, while Pavin will be urging his top names to fit in the visit while they are over for The Open.