Tom Watson, the American Ryder Cup captain, yesterday suggested the wild card element of the team selection process should be scrapped.
Speaking at Gleneagles, the host venue to next year's transatlantic clash between Europe and the USA, Watson expressed a desire to see all 12 players qualify automatically. The 64-year-old's suggestion certainly caught his opposite number, Paul McGinley, by surprise but the Kansas veteran stuck by his views.
Watson, who was the last US Ryder Cup captain to triumph on European soil in 1993, reduced his number of wild card picks for the 2014 match from four to three while McGinley opted to increase his to three. The eight-time major winner believes a system where only automatic spots were on offer would heighten the desire to make the grade.
"If you really look at it, the purist form of the Ryder Cup would be no picks," he said. "It would be 12 players who qualify. That's the way I qualified when I was a player. Maybe that's the way it should go back to. I reduced my picks from four to three, and was thinking actually two, because I wanted the players who are playing to have getting on the Ryder Cup team as a goal.
"If they get there, then they have earned something very, very special. It's such a thing to shoot for, to try and make it. It would relieve pressure on me to call up the guys who have not made it. That's not a pleasant call to make."
The European qualification system takes into account both a European Tour points list and a world points list for those competing mainly in the US.
"It's a different dynamic on the European side," said McGinley. "When we have so many players playing on the PGA Tour. Let's defer that one, thank you."
Meanwhile, Watson said that he will have a clearing of the air talk with Tiger Woods, the player he publicly criticised three years ago in the wake of the scandal that engulfed the world No.1. "We had dinner at the US Open but I haven't sat with Tiger privately for any length of time," said Watson. "I'll have to do that."
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