www.globalgolfpost.com
APRIL 30, 2012
Continental Countries Reluctant For Ryder Cup Bidding War
MONTE REI, PORTUGAL | The Continental countries are more or less
agreed. When it comes to the 2022
Ryder Cup, they do not want to be involved in the kind of expensive bidding
process that resulted in French National being awarded the match in 2018.
Members of the European Golf Association doing duty at last week’s Sir
Michael Bonallack Trophy at the Monte
Rei Golf & Country Club in Portugal
indicated that the countries involved
paid out a total of 15 million Euros in
preparing their bids.
France would obviously have con-
sidered their outgoings to have been
money well spent but, for the rest,
there was not too much consolation to
be had from a letter from the European
Tour, the gist of which was, “No thanks,
but your bid was very professional.”
The general feeling was that all
those millions of Euros would have
been altogether better spent on golf
development – and that the whole
business of who should stage the 2018
match could have been sorted out by
the countries themselves. The sugges-
tion was that a couple of committee
meetings would have sufficed.
replicate what is happening here. It
would solve a lot of problems.”
Sir Michael Bonallack marvelled
at the golf he was seeing in the match
which bears his name. The standard of
play was higher than he had known in
any of the previous installments.
“Years ago,” said this former CEO
of the R&A and winner of five Amateur
and English championships, “you used
to be surprised when you saw one good
swing. Today, you’re surprised if you
see a bad one.”
Sir Michael first became aware
of the game in Asia when one of his
uncles, a Calcutta-based stockbroker
by the name of James Espen, won
the Indian Amateur championship on
Christmas Day, 1948. “That really got
me interested,” he recalled.
Sir Michael Bonallack was amazed at the level of golf in the match that shares his name. “Years ago you used to be surprised when you saw one good swing,” he said. “Today, you’re surprised if you see a bad one.”
Today, golf is booming all over Asia and
Sir Michael is proud of the extent to which
the R&A has made use of Open Champi-
onship profits to help bring that about.
“We started off by paying for coaches to
go out to India and, going on from there,
every country in Asia nowadays has a
development programme in place.”
Apart from being impressed by the
golf at Monte Rei, Sir Michael approved
the fact that so many of the players on
both teams are doing as their American
counterparts in opting for a university
education.
Whenever he is asked for advice by
some up-and-coming golfer about the
best way ahead, his reply is always the
same. “If you have the chance to get
a decent education, go for it. Even if
you’re going to play as a professional,
you need to have that education be-
cause in this day and age you’ve got to
be able to sell yourself well.”
Sir Michael also mentioned the
social connotations of his match: “The
16 different nationalities represented
arrived as strangers and, when you see
them leaving as friends, you can’t help
wishing that other areas of life could
The way the match came about is
more than a little intriguing. In 1996,
Manuel Agrellos, the president of the
Portuguese Golf Federation, sounded
out the Americans to ask if they would
be interested in a Europe versus US
match along the lines of the Walker
Cup. The Americans declined.
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