Another Jag reaches Ryder

He sealed the 10th and final automatic spot on the European Ryder Cup team, but Oliver Wilson is a very different presence in the team match play event than Amerrican Vaughn Taylor was two years ago in Ireland. 

Taylor had never played a match-play event before the Ryder Cup, but Wilson is already a veteran of the format. He played in a Walker Cup as an amateur and in the Seve Trophy last year. Both times he was on the winning team.

But match play goes much deeper for the native of England.

"We grow up on match play," Wilson said a few weeks ago at the PGA Championship.

That's part of the reason the Europeans take the Ryder Cup so seriously. They feel the format is their strength and that they should dominate the stroke-counting, money-chasing Americans.

While Wilson may be a rookie in one of golf's most nerve-wracking events, the pressure won't be on him at Valhalla in three weeks.

European captain Nick Faldo will be in the hot-seat with the European press after picking friend and countryman Ian Poulter as one of his two captains picks instead of veteran Irishman Darren Clarke. (Faldo also picked Casey, but he's a more proven match-play commodity and inspired little grousing.)

Clarke has been one of Europe's best players in the dominating stretch over the Americans, and he was the emotional catalyst for the 2006 rout in ireland short on the heels of his wife's death from cancer. Clarke scored three wins and is stalwart Lee Westwood's favorite partner.

That Clarke won last week in Holland and has two victories this season seemed to put him on the top of the captain's short list. But Faldo still went with Poulter, whose only worthy moment of the season was a runner-up finish at the British Open (four shots back). He's been on a cuts-missed streak in the U.S. before Sunday's selection, and he was in the tabloid doghouse for not attempting to play his way into an automatic spot, thus giving the captain more options to choose from.

Some speculated that Poulter was assured a spot by Faldo, but that seemed a little on the paranoid side even if Poulter has a thin 1-1 career record in the Ryder Cup (2004).

But if Poulter thought he felt pressure last week (and complained loudly about it), imagine the microscope he will be under in Kentucky. If he fails to perform great, he and Faldo will be ripped apart for the pick. That kind of scrutiny and criticism has ruined or sullied other players (see Chris Riley and Curtis Strange) in the past. We'll see how Poulter handles it.

Even with the ongoing European soad opera (did I mention that Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington hate each other), it is impossible not to look at the rosters and choose Europe as the favorite to win its fourth consecutive Ryder Cup.

That would at least keep Wilson from repeating the dubious Augusta State distinction of providing players that lose the deciding matches (Taylor's singles loss to Henrik Stenson sealed the outcome minutes before Clarke won what many emotionally recall as the decisive moment).