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Thomas Bj\u00f8rn was the first Danish player to play in the Ryder Cup when he made his debut in the 1997 match at Valderrama won by the Severiano Ballesteros-led Europeans. Now nearly two decades later he has been named as the first Danish \u2013 and Scandinavian \u2013 captain of the European team. Other contenders had reportedly included Spain\u2019s Miguel \u00c1ngel Jim\u00e9nez and Scot Paul Lawrie. <\/p>\n
The 45-year-old Dane has won 15 European Tour titles, competed on three winning teams (in addition to 1997, in 2002 and 2014) and served as vice captain four times: under Bernhard Langer in 2004, Colin Montgomerie in 2010, Jos\u00e9 Mar\u00eda Olaz\u00e1bal in 2012 and Darren Clarke at Hazeltine National earlier this year. He has also been chairman of the European Tour tournament committee since 2007, a role he will now relinquish following his appointment as Ryder Cup captain. <\/p>\n
He was chosen as the 2018 captain by a five-man selection panel comprising the three most recent European Ryder Cup Captains \u2013 Clarke, Paul McGinley and Olaz\u00e1bal \u2013 as well as the chief executive of the European Tour, Keith Pelley, and European Tour tournament committee member Henrik Stenson.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a huge honor for me to be named European captain,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is one of the greatest days in my career. I studied a lot of captains as a player and as a vice captain and always wondered what that feeling would be like to be the one leading out a team of 12 great players. Now it\u2019s my turn to do just that and it is an exciting moment for me. I have lived and breathed the European Tour for so long, and now I will do the same with The Ryder Cup for the next two years. I\u2019m very much looking forward to taking on this task.\u201d <\/p>\n
According to a report in the Guardian newspaper, Bjorn had no legitimate challenger after Padraig Harrington indicated he wanted to play in 2018 rather than captain the team. \u201cThe five-man selection committee only had to find a suitable date upon which to make Bjorn\u2019s announcement. With Lee Westwood having pinpointed 2020 for a captaincy tilt, Ian Poulter anxious to prolong his playing career and Miguel Angel Jimenez never retaining the necessary support within the European Tour, Bjorn was the obvious choice. Paul Lawrie, despite making brief noises to the contrary, was never worthy of consideration. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are wholly relevant factors at play in the background here. The Tour has long been anxious that the Ryder Cup captaincy isn\u2019t the domain only of golfers from the UK and Ireland. \u00a0 The arrival of the biennial event in France provided the perfect opportunity to hand the most prominent role to a continental figure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bj\u00f8rn is only the fourth European captain from outside the UK and Ireland, following Ballesteros, Langer and Olaz\u00e1bal. Interestingly, back in October former captain Mark James told ESPN, \u201cIf Miguel Angel Jimenez wants to be the next European Ryder Cup captain, he\u2019s the man the selection panel should go for. There\u2019s no question that he would make a brilliant leader, and I think he\u2019d be better in Paris in 2018 than in Wisconsin two years later because he is a little extroverted, and it\u2019s easier to be that way at home.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thomas Bj\u00f8rn was the first Danish player to play in the Ryder Cup when he made his debut in the 1997 match at Valderrama won by the Severiano Ballesteros-led Europeans. Now nearly two decades later he has been named as the first Danish \u2013 and Scandinavian \u2013 captain of the European team. Other contenders had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":17234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21609\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/andaluciagolf.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}