With Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald both announcing their six captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup over the last couple of weeks, golf fans now know the 24 players who will head to Bethpage later this month.
As is always the case, there was plenty of debate surrounding the 12 names who were handed a ticket to the Ryder Cup by their respective captains.
Most of the talk concerned the American side, with Keegan Bradley opting to focus on the captaincy. Bradley has been praised for not picking himself. Meanwhile, Maverick McNealy was the highest ranked player to miss out.
Luke Donald‘s six picks attracted a lot less attention, with the Englishman choosing all of the players many expected to see complete the lineup.
Unfortunately, it seems that Donald’s choices did come as a surprise to one person.
LIV Golf star criticised after his reaction to missing out on a Ryder Cup pick
With one year to go, it really did not appear to be out of the question for Sergio Garcia to make his return to the European team. He finished third on LIV Golf in 2024. Meanwhile, Donald confirmed Garcia had taken up membership with the DP World Tour again in the hope of making it to New York.
Further positive signs came as he won LIV Golf Hong Kong earlier this year. However, he seemed to struggle from there.
Garcia failed to register a top 30 finish in the majors and finished ninth in the LIV standings. Nevertheless, he withdrew from the Irish Open this week after missing out on a pick.
And with that, Ryan Lavner has told the Golf Channel Podcast that he cannot quite believe that Garcia still felt that he was in line to receive a pick after such an underwhelming year.
“One player I couldn’t help but chuckle with was Sergio Garcia, who, I think, if the Ryder Cup was in mid-April, sure, I think Sergio Garcia could have been a wildcard selection for that team. He was playing some pretty good golf on LIV, he won a tournament on the Asian Tour, he looked pretty good for a 45-year-old. However, he has not done much of anything over the past five months,” he said.
“And this week, he withdrew from the Irish Open, telling reporters that he was so disappointed by the call that he received from Luke Donald, and that he was looking forward to being a part of that team. And once he was called and told that he was not going to be a part of Luke Donald’s team, he thought it was unfair to himself and everyone else for him to be so distracted inside the ropes that he was doing the right thing and withdrawing from the tournament and spending more time with his friends and his family.
“This is like an all-time case of being delusional. Here’s a player that’s currently outside the top 100 in the Data Golf rankings, who is losing to the likes of Richard Bland week-in and week-out on LIV Golf, who somehow thought he was going to be a part of this Ryder Cup team.”
The role Sergio Garcia should have been considered for ahead of the Ryder Cup at Bethpage
There were arguments which could be made in Garcia’s favour. He is Europe’s all-time leading points scorer in the event. Meanwhile, he was one of the only positives for the visitors at Whistling Straits in 2021.
And Donald would ideally like his group of players to be well aware of what the atmosphere is going to be like. Garcia – who featured at Brookline in 1999 – would not have been intimidated by the cauldron in New York.
However, Rex Hoggard agreed with Lavner’s view, feeling that Garcia’s best shot at being a part of the setup involved becoming a member of Donald’s backroom team.
“You stole my word, delusional was what I was going to go with, as a player. Now I can make an argument as a vice-captain that if we’re going to start mending bridges, if we want to start looking ahead, if we want to start figuring out how to bring the two sides together – and let’s face it, the Europeans have done a better job of doing that than we have here in the United States – then maybe he should have been in the team room. Maybe he should have been part of that conversation. I think certainly he could have brought something to the team in that capacity,” he said.
“But no, you’re right. He’s not even played well on LIV Golf. We make this argument all the time that what does it really mean that Joaquin Niemann had this historic season on LIV Golf? What does it really mean that Jon Rahm is so consistent? I’d argue that those two still prove it on the international level. They still prove it when they get the opportunity to go play in majors and DP World Tour events. I don’t think Sergio Garcia has proven it to anyone. Absolutely not as a player.”
You can understand his disappointment. Garcia admitted earlier in the year that he would not pick himself. And his performances did not exactly improve from there.
He has given so much to the Ryder Cup over the years, and he may simply be facing up to the fact that there is a large question mark over whether he will feature in the event again.
But where Garcia has lost some sympathy is his decision to withdraw from the Irish Open late in the day, as if he did not see his Ryder Cup omission coming.
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