Curtis delight at Ryder showing

The US team is shaping up nicely. The captain of the European Ryder Cup team however has a major selection headache.

The US PGA championship was the last event for American players to earn points towards Ryder Cup selection. Ben Curtis, the joint runner-up, proved the key beneficiary, to the delight of Paul Azinger, captain of the United States team. Azinger, seeking American success in the game's principal matchplay event for the first time since 1999, has changed his country's qualification rules to give him four wild card picks rather than the traditional two. The captain enthused: "I love Ben Curtis a lot, and I love the fact he's made the team."
Curtis, who climbs to eighth on the American points list (effectively seventh in the absence of the leader Tiger Woods), took great solace from clinching his place at Valhalla. "It is almost a victory in itself," he said. Playing alongside Curtis in the 37th Ryder Cup will be the likes of Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard. The European qualifying campaign runs until the end of August and captain Nick Faldo received little encouragement from events over the last four days, with stalwart Colin Montgomerie seriously out of form.
The 10 automatic places in the European team go to their top five players on the world points list and five more from the top of the European list. If current positions remain unchanged over the next three weeks, Ian Poulter, runner-up in the Open, will be favourite for a wildcard pick, with Paul Casey, Ross Fisher, Darren Clarke and the emerging young German Martin Kaymer, winner of the tour event in Abu Dhabi in January, among those in contention for the other spot.
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