Darren Clarke Is Prepared To Lose Friends Over Ryder Picks

Oliver Brown of the Daily Mail goes into plenty of detail with Darren Clarke well out from the Ryder Cup, including the captain's obsessive compulisve storage of clothes depending on sizes due to his fluctuating weights (based on the photos taken two weeks ago, he's skewing back toward the Monty weight division again).

Anyway, it's not until late September and the stage for drama is already being set as stalwarts Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter look unlikely to make the team on points.

Considering that the captain has three primary jobs--finding rainsuits that don't leak, informing players when they are being benched, and not running over spectators in the captain's buggy--Brown believes that Clarke should have job #2 covered:

It is unlikely the 2011 Open champion will be scribbling potential pairings on scraps of paper during practice and trying to pass them off as a sandwich order, as Sir Nick Faldo did at Valhalla in 2008. Clarke will have a Plan A, a Plan B and a Plan C. He will organise. He will be involved. He will man-manage. He will know the characters of each of his players inside-out.

After a bunch of stuff about how he and Paul McGinley have patched things up (I know you were worried), Clarke admits he may lose some pals over his captain's picks in the name of winning.

Clarke knows he will face tough choices. Others have already wondered aloud whether he might be tempted to offer preferential treatment to old pals like Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter if they fail to qualify automatically for Hazeltine and need to rely on being among Clarke’s three wildcard picks. Clarke snorts with contempt about that idea.

‘An old pals’ act?’ he says. ‘How could I possibly do that? The Ryder Cup is much, much more important than an old pals’ act. That does not happen. Under no circumstances would I let myself... that’s not going to happen. No chance.

'I would have no problem with saying to Lee I was picking a rookie instead of him for a wildcard. Lee would be my best mate but I would have no problem. Why? Because it’s for the team. It’s not individuals. You have got to manage individuals’ egos but the team is there together."