Three performances stand out on in career of Paul McGinley; representing Ireland on the winning team of the Golf World Cup in 1997, holing the winning put at the Belfry to secure victory for the European Team in the 2002 Ryder Cup and winning the Volvo Masters at Valderrama in 2005. These were big performances in big events but can he replicate it? Based on his current run of form the omens don’t look good and Woosnam must be worried.
At the weekend just gone McGinley again failed to make the cut at the Singapore Masters by a full five strokes. In the previous competition at the BMW International Open McGinley also failed to make the cut when a a big performance was needed from him to make absolutely sure of his own Ryder Cup place. As it transpired Broadhurst and Edfors couldn’t produce a performance to jump him on the European qualifying points list and Montgomerie also helped him by jumping over Olazabal on the World Points list. This left McGinley in overall ninth place on the qualifying list. It was a place won early on the qualifying competitions however as shown by the table of his most recent results below:
Tournament Name – Position
BMW International Open – 109T
WGC – Bridgestone Invitational – 66T
The KLM Open – 22T
The Deutsche Bank Players Championship of Europe – 18T
135th Open Championship – 72T
The Barclays Scottish Open – 47T
More worryingly it is a lack of confidence which seems to have settled deep into McGinley’s psyche based on his recent comments when he said, “My putting is not good. I’m also driving the balls badly. I’m just not hitting the shots I should be.” It doesn’t leave a lot on the positive column. Hopefully he’ll manage to settle himself on his week off in Ireland this week and personally I have a sneaking suspicion that McGinley could still put on a big performance against the odds in front of his home crowd.
Technorati tags ryder cup, golf, paul mcginley
