Gleneagles has earned Ryder Cup return

The Ryder Cup could return to Scotland in the next 12-16 years. Picture: Jane Barlow

“Please, no,” could easily have been the initial response from this particular correspondent, having just dragged myself out of a darkened room after being in full-on Ryder Cup mode for the past two years.

Instead, the admission by Mike Cantley, VisitScotland’s chairman, had an instant re-energising effect, and I am sure I won’t be alone in that respect as the possibility of the event coming back to the home of golf in the next 12-16 years starts to sink in.

Can it really happen as soon as that?

It will probably depend on how many governments around Europe are prepared to support bids in their respective countries, with the French, of course, having done that already to land the 2018 meeting.

But, yes, it can come to Scotland again a lot sooner than 41 years – the gap between the 1973 Muirfield match and the one in September – due to the fact that the Gleneagles event was such an overwhelming success.

Not once in the wake of the 2006 match in Ireland or the 2010 event in Wales have I ever heard talk of either of those countries showing enthusiasm to get it back in a hurry.

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With all due respect to both The K Club and Celtic Manor, I’ve also not heard anyone say they’d be rushing back there for a Ryder Cup.

Yet, no sooner has the dust settled on Paul McGinley leading Europe to a comfortable victory in Perthshire than Scotland seems eager to throw its hat in the ring again, with support for it coming back to the game’s cradle already having been expressed.

So impressed was he by the Gleneagles event that Andy North, one of Tom Watson’s assistant captains and a well-travelled man, to boot, said he reckoned it should become the permanent venue for the match on this side of the Atlantic.

There was a time, of course, when such a scenario existed, as The Belfry hosted the home fixture three times in a row. The face of European golf has changed considerably over the past 20 years, though.

The European Tour now has a duty to take the Ryder Cup into continental Europe, where it has been staged just once before – at Valderrama in 1997.

After France, you’d have to imagine that Germany, having been such a strong tournament base for the Tour over the years and, of course, producing two world-class players in Bernhard Langer and Martin Kaymer, must surely be the outstanding candidate among the seven countries bidding for the 2022 match.

Sweden has to come into the equation somewhere down the line, as well as Italy, while Richard Hills, Ryder Cup Europe’s director, will discover during a trip to this week’s Turkish Airlines Open that Turkey is a country with a serious ambitions – and the cash to back it up, too – to host the event.

It also wouldn’t be a surprise to see the biennial bout staged one day in the United Arab Emirates, where the European Tour now stages some of its biggest events, including, of course, the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai.

Take all those factors into consideration and it’s far from certain that Scotland will be back in the Ryder Cup spotlight again as soon as 2026. At the same time, though, Hills and his fellow Board officials know that Scotland delivered this year and can do so again.

Yes, we got lucky with the weather. You could stage the event ten more times and probably wouldn’t be blessed with the same overhead conditions again.

Was there really a better sight in sport this year than the sun showing its face above the Ochil Hills as the first-day fourballs got under way?

From an organisational point of view and how the venue was presented, however, it had all been planned to perfection.

According to Scottish motor racing legend Sir Jackie Stewart, in fact, it was “the best spectator experience for the paying customer,” and that’s from a man who has attended more Formula One events over the years than he’d care to remember.

On the back of praise like that, Scotland should be bidding to host the Ryder Cup again. Let’s get the Solheim Cup first, for a third time, in 2019 – St Andrews, Carnoustie or Turnberry would be perfect for that as they will all have staged the Women’s British Open after next summer.

Then, pull out all the stops to give Gleneagles the chance it deserves to host sport’s third-biggest event once more.

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