The "consequences" of the decision made by Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter to join LIV Golf have been outlined by a fellow Ryder Cup icon.
The two Englishman have been publicly defiant since opting to defect to the Saudi-backed venture, despite being fined and sanctioned by the DP World Tour. And their hopes of being able to jump between the two rival organisations for tournaments were essentially ended this month when an arbitration panel ruled in favour of the status quo.
With a ban also currently in place from the PGA Tou r, chances to automatically qualify for golf's most famous team event are all but gone for those who joined LIV. But former captain Paul McGinley, who led Team Europe to victory in 2014 at Gleneagles - not to mention holing the winning putt at The Belfry in 2002 - has little sympathy with his former teammates.
And that's despite him lauding the legacy of Poulter in particular. "Next to Seve [Ballesteros], he’s probably been the most influential player from a European perspective in Ryder Cups," he said, via the Daily Mail. "It’s phenomenal what he’s done for us. And it’s sad that he’s probably not going to be a captain, or certainly not in the foreseeable future. Everybody had him down to be captain in New York.
"I’m not going to close the door to that, but it’s odds-against now. There’s consequences with big decisions. And these are big decisions. The Ryder Cup is partly owned by the European tour. These guys are involved in an entity that is now harming the European tour, financially. So, unfortunately, they’ve removed themselves from the Ryder Cup, as far as I’m concerned."
The 2023 tournament has already been thrown into chaos by the defection of Henrik Stenson, who was subsequently stripped of the captaincy. Respective captains Luke Donald and Zach Johnson now face a dilemma over their wildcard picks for Rome in September.
McGinley, 56, does have sympathy for rebel players. He admits it's an offer he too would have struggled to reject, but argues that he wouldn't have then sought the best of both worlds.
"You know, in all probability, I may well have gone to LIV at 46, 47 years of age," he added. "If I’m offered $20, $30 million to go and play in a rival league, I’d have done it.
"But I wouldn’t have done the LIV Tour then come back and played the European Tour as well. I think that’s greedy. You can’t be on both buses. As great as those players were from Ryder Cups, and as great as they have been for European Tour and, you know, they’re personal friends of mine, I have a disagreement with them."
