Thomas Bjørn 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 – and Scandinavian – captain of the European team. Other contenders had reportedly included Spain’s Miguel Ángel Jiménez and Scot Paul Lawrie.
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, José María Olazábal 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.
He was chosen as the 2018 captain by a five-man selection panel comprising the three most recent European Ryder Cup Captains – Clarke, Paul McGinley and Olazábal – as well as the chief executive of the European Tour, Keith Pelley, and European Tour tournament committee member Henrik Stenson.
“It’s a huge honour for me to be named European captain,” he said. “This 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’s 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’m very much looking forward to taking on this task.”
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. “The five-man selection committee only had to find a suitable date upon which to make Bjorn’s announcement. With Lee Westwood having pinpointed 2020 for a captaincy tilt, Ian Poulter anxious to prolong his playing career and Miguel Ángel Jiménez 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.
“There are wholly relevant factors at play in the background here. The Tour has long been anxious that the Ryder Cup captaincy isn’t the domain only of golfers from the UK and Ireland. The arrival of the biennial event in France provided the perfect opportunity to hand the most prominent role to a continental figure.”
Bjørn is only the fourth European captain from outside the UK and Ireland, following Ballesteros, Langer and Olazábal. Interestingly, back in October former captain Mark James told ESPN, “If Miguel Ángel Jiménez wants to be the next European Ryder Cup captain, he’s the man the selection panel should go for. There’s no question that he would make a brilliant leader, and I think he’d be better in Paris in 2018 than in Wisconsin two years later because he is a little extroverted, and it’s easier to be that way at home.”
