It is, of course, very early days but a look at the early European Ryder Cup standings highlights just how different the team could look at Adare Manor.
The top six players in the standings gain automatic qualification for Luke Donald’s team and he then has six captain’s picks.
So if the event were being played next week, how would the team look?
Very different, is the answer.
Ahead of the BMW PGA Championship, the top six were Joe Dean, Shane Lowry, Jacob Skov Olesen, Nacho Elvira, Niklas Norgaard and Harry Hall.
They were followed by Tom McKibbin, Eugenio Chacarra, Bernd Wiesberger, Angel Hidalgo, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen and Gregorio De Leo.
So, which of these players is actually likely to be in the team?
Lowry is surely a shoo-in and Norgaard and Hall may also have something to say about things. I also believe that McKibbin and Chacarra will be making their debuts, along with Spain’s David Puig.
(Image Credit: Rolex/Thomas Lovelock)
You can also throw Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm, Ludvig Aberg, Tyrrell Hatton, Kristoffer Reitan and, possibly, Justin Rose into the mix and you can already see that Donald has an embarrassment of riches, and could well face a huge selection headache.
And that is without making a case for the Hojgaard twins, Matt Wallace, Marco Penge, Aaron Rai, Robert MacIntyre, Alex Noren, Alex Fitzpatrick and Sepp Straka.
Even at this very early stage it is abundantly obvious that some very big names are going to be missing out on what is an eagerly-anticipated contest, with Donald aiming to lead Europe to a historic third successive success.
It is unlikely that LIV Golf is going to cause any issues for Donald because it seems a cast-iron certainty that all the big European names will be walking away and earning their living on the DP World Tour, with the chance to finally earn some proper world ranking and Ryder Cup points once again.
We will, no doubt revisit this again in the weeks and months ahead but I believe the European team is going to look something like this:
McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Fleetwood, Rahm, Chacarra, Lowry, Norgaard, Reitan, Aberg, Hovland, Alex Fitzpatrick and Puig.
That would mean no place for Hatton, Rai, MacIntyre, Noren, Hall and Straka.
Of course, much can change between now and next September and the truth is that I believe that no matter which 12 players make the team we will be looking at yet another comfortable European victory in a front of a passionate and extremely noisy Irish gallery.
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