McGinley happy with wild cards

by Setanta Staff , 02 September 2010

Paul McGinley is fully behind Colin Montgomerie's decision to select Edoardo Molinari, Padraig Harrington and Luke Donald as his three wild card selections for next month's Ryder Cup.


There has been some criticism of Montgomerie's decision to include Harrington over Paul Casey and Justin Rose especially as it has been two years since the Dubliner lifted a title.

Although Rose has won twice on the PGA Tour this year his commitment to the European Tour is in question with the Englishman running out of opportunities to satisfy membership requirements and McGinley is confident Montgomerie has made the right call.

"I can understand Paul Casey and Justin Rose are disappointed, and more so Justin as he's had a great season," McGinley told reporters at the European Masters.

"But as I said last week at Gleneagles, Monty couldn't have hot the picks wrong because no matter who he picked it was always going to be a strong side.

"So I'm very comfortable with the picks as they were made for the right reasons. It's done and dusted now and let's move on to the next start of working out the pairings."

With just under four weeks to go before the Ryder Cup tees off at Celtic Manor attention has switched to how the pairings will shape up for the fourballs and foursomes on the first two days of the competition.

While some pairings - Rory McIlroy with Graeme McDowell and Francesco Molinari partnering his brother Edoardo - are obvious, Montgomerie will have to match the rest of his team and he has already sent his four vice captains to work.

"I got a text from Monty on Monday saying he wanted us to start thinking about the likely pairings, and it wasn't about any chicken sandwich," McGinley added in reference to Nick Faldo's gaff at the 2008 event in Valhalla.

"I also got a text from Padraig. I texted him on Sunday night saying congratulations and he got back to me saying he's delighted. He's in Boston this week and is all gung-ho for the Ryder Cup and rightly so.

"But then it was a bit unfortunate that he and Paul Casey just happen to be in the final group on Sunday, but what else could we do?"

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