LIV rebels deserve to have their past contributions recognised, even if wounds from golf’s civil war still linger
There are, you’ll eventually twig, three people who are very conspicuously missing from the gallery. You’ll have to walk a lot longer again before you find any photos of Sergio García, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, the three men who have come to be most closely associated with the European team in this century. In fact, if you’re looking for one you can walk right across the course’s 350 acres and carry on going off it back into the city again.
But then four of this dozen weren’t even born the last time a European team turned out with at least one of these three, at Oak Hill back in 1995, and most of the rest were still learning to walk. At least two of Westwood, Poulter or García have been part of every Ryder Cup this century.
The gap is even more conspicuous given that the Europeans make so much of their history. They even have Ballesteros’s polo shirt hanging up in their locker room. The idea is that the significance of playing for their team is something that has to be passed on from one generation to the next, especially now, in years after the thrashing they took at Whistling Straits. They are, as Rory McIlroy keeps repeating, a team in transition, which is why they’ve brought four young rookies here.
García’s involvement stretches as far as a couple of phone calls with Jon Rahm, the last of them on Tuesday. He says he has been speaking to Poulter, too. Rahm, McIlroy and Justin Rose are the senior members of the team now; Rose and McIlroy account for more than half of the team’s 84 matches between them, and the three of them have taken on the roles that García and Poulter would usually do.
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