European Team / Bill Elliott / 20 August 2008 /

There'll be a Rose amongst the tulips in Zandvoort this week as Justin tries to seal his first Ryder Cup berth. Bill Elliott reports on the race for places in team Faldo, a race that's really hotting up. Oh, and he got a hole in one.

First the good news this week - I'm writing this just a couple of hours after my first hole in one in nearly 40 years of playing the game. Am I pleased? Yes, of course, although the knowledge that 23 friends are now awaiting my wallet in the bar of the Carton House hotel in Ireland is slightly diluting my enthusiasm for this momentous event.

Anyway, apart from my success (a seven iron at the 155 yard seventh hole on the Montgomery course here and thanks for asking) all the talk in Ireland at present is about the Ryder Cup. Well, the Ryder Cup and the fact that some boxer has just clinched the Republic's first medal at the Beijing Olympics. Oh, and the other fact that former Ryder Cup hero Des Smyth's son has just won several million Euros on the lottery.

There are now just two counting events for the wannabe European players to either move into the top ten for automatic selection, or barricade their positions. To use a technical expression it is now officially 'squeaky bum time'. This is why Justin Rose is in Holland this week. The 2008 Euro No.1 is trying to shore up his top ten position as he aims to make his first Ryder team.

There is, of course, a rather wonderful irony in this, for it was the KLM Open that saw Rose make his pro debut in 1998. Still a rather gauche teenager tiptoeing his way through the Acne Years, Justin had turned pro immediately after finishing fourth in that year's Open. He arrived in Holland to a fanfare of trumpets and a posse of television cameras, won the pro-am and then missed what turned out to be 21 consecutive halfway cuts. As pro debuts go this one went about as wrong as it possibly could.

Yet the experience turned out to be one of the more signifcant factors in Rose's emergence as a world class golfer over the last couple of years. It taught him that (a) nothing should be taken for granted and (b) just when you think things are as bad as they possibly could be they often tend to turn a lot worse. When his father, the extremely nice Ken Rose, died from cancer a few years later Rose struggled as he grieved the loss of not just his dad but his coach, his confidante and his advisor.

These are the elements that have created the player we now see. Mature beyond his years - he is now 28 - and tougher than his pleasant 'Englishboy' looks might suggest, Rose is determined to retrieve a disappointing season by making Nick Faldo's team. He is, of course, not the only one. Nick Dougherty, two years younger, is also in Holland and looking to place some real pressure on the men above him in the Cup rankings.

Dougherty, too, is in the process of toughening up. His mother died unexpectedly this year, shortly after watching him make his Masters debut, and the likeable young man has struggled since. Until last week, that is, when he finished runner-up in Sweden to move into fourteenth spot on the team list and just 152,000 Euros adrift of the suddenly vulnerable looking Soren Hansen.

Dougherty is a product of the Nick Faldo Series and a player who has the skipper's private mobile number. The two of them speak regularly apparently, Faldo still an admirer of the player he first met as a 14 years old and whose potential the English maestro noted immediately.

This does not mean Dougherty will receive any favours from Faldo this time round, but it does suggest that if he can give his mentor just cause to pick him at the end of this month then the European leader is likely to do just that. Meanwhile, Faldo will be quietly urging on Rose. The captain is anxious to see as many younger players in this team as is possible.

There are several reasons for this but the most salient one is the rather sad fact that there is quite a lot of baggage remaining between Faldo and the older European players who can remember only too clearly the single-minded, rather cold and obsessive man who dominated so much of European golf when they were trying to make their way. Interesting, don't you think?

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