If you’re someone that values what you should, you’re always going to choose family over playing any golf tournament, no matter if it’s the Ryder Cup.
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Only European Tour golfers are eligible to play for the continent in the Ryder Cup and Casey, who has a one-year-old son and lives in the United States, will sacrifice a probable place at Hazeltine next year if he does not renew the membership he gave up in January.
But, although he confessed that it has been on his mind, McIlroy will not be following suit.
Despite having not met the required number of European Tour events to compete in the Final Series, new tour Chief Executive Keith Pelley granted McIlroy an exemption due to the circumstances surrounding his lack of playing time.
McIlroy’s ankle injury this summer meant that he has failed to play the minimum 13 tournaments stipulated to qualify to take part in the Race to Dubai. I didn’t even realise I went to that many places in one year.
McIlroy admitted he was surprised by a few of the statistics surrounding his travel, competition and training regimes, which were produced by the team at Santander Spendlytics, who have developed an iOS app which tells customers how much they spend on their debit and credit cards, and where they spend it. That’s the big thing. Send him a bit of a Christmas present? I can’t really think of that.
The PGA Tour does not reveal how much players are fined for such incidents, but McIlroy said: “The fine was reduced from 25,000 to 5,000 (dollars) because I said I was sorry on the TV interview afterwards”.
“I feel like I have a chance to win the Race to Dubai and it would look pretty silly in Dubai if I was leading and couldn’t play”.
“I love the Ryder Cup, I always want to play it, so that’s something that’ll keep me a European Tour member, along with a lot of the great plans they’ve got”.
“Okay, the European team would be slightly weaker with the way Paul’s playing, but if that’s the decision he wants to make I don’t think anyone would begrudge him that”.
“I just have to think about myself and take a bit of a selfish view of it, I’m afraid”, said McIlroy.
Nevertheless, figures released this week detailing McIlroy’s travel and golfing commitments offer an interesting insight into the world number three’s lifestyle.
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But McIlroy’s comments about how he would have “played more events if he could” are utterly disingenuous. The Scottish Open, Open Championship and the WGC Bridgestone.
