Six players from Britain and Ireland and two from Continental Europe are not at St-Nom la Breteche for what used to be called the Seve Trophy in honour of Seve Ballesteros. Paul Casey and Martin Kaymer are injured and Padraig Harrington and Luke Donald are playing in the Tour Championship in Atlanta, but Poulter joined Lee Westwood, Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia in turning down their places on teams led by Paul McGinley and Thomas Bjorn.
“I just feel that when you are selected for your country more of an effort might well have been made,” admitted Montgomerie. “Ian Poulter, not having qualified for the Tour Championship and having been picked for the last Ryder Cup team [Westwood, Rose and Garcia all qualified], I felt a little more effort might have been made to come.
“I haven’t spoken to Ian at all. Please don’t make any big issue of this. I would like to focus on the players that are here and not the players that aren’t. It does give a chance for those who wouldn’t otherwise have played to impress not just the captains and their team-mates, but me also. You could have over half the team here and it will be interesting to see who performs within a team environment.”
Poulter agreed with that sentiment but also explained why he, himself, would not be one of them. “The Vivendi trophy will be awesome to highlight potential Ryder Cup players – Fisher, McIlroy, Kjeldsen, Quiros, Dougherty, Wood, etc,” he commented on his Twitter feed.
“I really want to be fresh and strong for all the Ryder Cup qualifying events that I’m going to play in – Ryder Cup means everything to me. It would have been great to play the Seve Trophy, but the schedule becomes very difficult to play every event. It’s important not to burn out.”
Westwood was the only one of the absentees to contact McGinlay, explaining that he wanted a week off to rest and recharge his batteries for the final few events in the “Race to Dubai” money list.
“I didn’t agree with him and I don’t agree with him, but I respect that he’s his own man and he can make his own decisions,” McGinlay said. “I’ve always been a great team player and whenever I’ve got picked for a team I play. Others guys see it another way but I respect that they have a different opinion.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article