Thomas Bjorn: I’d pay to watch Rory McIlroy

Rory McIlroy’s last-round defeat to Tiger Woods at the Tour Championship on Sunday may have got European fans worried on the eve of the 42nd Ryder Cup but team captain Thomas Bjorn has no such fears about the one player he says he will pay to watch.

McIlroy’s head-to-head with fellow former world number one Woods in the last round at East Lake was the dream pairing for television viewers around the world but it turned into something of a nightmare for the Irishman, who not only failed to make inroads into the American’s three-shot lead but dropped from contention over the final 18 holes in Atlanta.

It was an echo of previous fourth-round showdowns this season that have not gone McIlroy’s way, most notably at the Masters in April when his challenge to Patrick Reed’s three-shot lead petered out at an early stage.

Sunday’s disappointment leaves the 29-year-old without a win since March when he won the Bay Hill Invitational in Orlando, Florida, yet Bjorn, who yesterday sent world number six McIlroy out with Spain’s world number eight Jon Rahm for the first official team practice rounds at Le Golf National near Paris, believes the four-time major winner has the game and the leadership qualities to make a significant contribution for Europe against the United States this weekend.

“The good thing about Rory is (though) he’s maybe not won the last few weeks or months, he’s still there or thereabouts every time he plays, and that shows what quality he has and what he brings on the golf course,” Bjorn said. “You go out there and watch him play, and it’s just wonderful to watch. He’s such a phenomenal ball-striker. He does so many great things on the golf course.

“I always say, he’s the one guy I’ll pay money to watch play because he’s always quality. The steps he’s taken off the golf course are brilliant. He brings so much in that team room. He’s great to have conversations with. He’s got great ideas. He understands everybody in the team room very well. He really gets under the skin on a lot of those youngsters and they take to him.

“You’ve got people that are great players and then you have people that have everything, and he’s one of those that if you’re a young player, yeah, you look at him and you look at him in maybe a little bit of a different way, where this is the guy I want to learn from and this is the guy I want to be, the way he plays golf. There’s not a golfer in the world that wouldn’t want to be like that.

“He’s a lot of things. You all know what he’s like and what good a guy he is, and he’s just somebody you want to be like. You put those people like that into a team room, then they raise the mood of everybody else, and he’s very good at that.

“He’s obviously a big part of this team, but he’s also very understanding that it is a team and it’s about all 12, and that’s what we go with.” Aside from McIlroy and Rahm, Bjorn’s pairings yesterday matched Ryder Cup experience with the fives rookies on Team Europe with Paul Casey partnering Thorbjorn Olesen, Sergio Garcia with Alex Noren, Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood, Ian Poulter and Tyrrell Hatton. There was also a familiar partnership resurrected as FedEx Cup champion Justin Rose partnered Henrik Stenson.

Bjorn insisted there was nothing to read into his pairings and that yesterday’s practice was more about reintroducing Le Golf National’s Albatross course to a team that had all played the host course of the European Tour’s Open de France.

“Not too much (to read into), I don’t think, to be honest. Today is very much about getting everybody out there. They are enjoying themselves out there, and you get some of the new guys out with somebody with a bit of experience so they can talk the way around, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they are pairing up together.

“More having a good chat on the golf course, and four of them were in the media this morning and did their rotation, and that’s kind of where that came from. They went off last because they did their media rotation, and then you fit everything in around it.

“I don’t feel like I’ve given anything away in what’s happening on the golf course today, but in any Ryder Cup, things come out of the blue and things develop during the week. You get yourself there 80, 85 per cent, and then things kind of, during the week there’s certain things that can change, but I’m pretty set in my mind where I want to go with this from the beginning, and obviously over the two days with pairings, things can change a lot, but I’m pretty set in my mind.”

Bjorn was not alone in that strategy yesterday with Furyk pairing his three debutants, captain’s pick Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas and Tony Finau, another wild card, alongside Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth and Brooks Koepka respectively.

His other practice pairings saw Phil Mickelson play with Patrick Reed, Rickie Fowler with Dustin Johnson and Webb Simpson with Bubba Watson.