Martin Dempster: Captain Couples could miss out

IF, AS seems likely, Paul McGinley is appointed as the European captain for the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, the Irishman probably wouldn’t fancy seeing Fred Couples as his opposite number.

Couples has now led the Americans to successive Presidents Cup triumphs and there’s no doubt the players would love to see him at the helm for the ‘real deal’ in Perthshire.

“Freddie’s Freddie,” said Jim Furyk, the star of the show for the Americans at Royal Melbourne, where he won five out of five. “He’s one of those people, blessed in a way because all the girls love him and all the guys think he’s cool. You look at him, and he has this vibe of, ‘It’s all going to be okay,’ and because that’s the way he looks, you believe everything’s going to be okay.”

Hunter Mahan, another member of the winning team over Greg Norman’s International side, added: “There’s more tension, more stress for that week [of the Ryder Cup] compared with the Presidents Cup. But, for us to play our best, we need to be relaxed and not stressed and I don’t know who’s better than Freddie to keep it all relaxed..”

You’d think Couples would a stick-on for Gleneagles – but maybe not. Due to the politics between the PGA of America, which runs the Ryder Cup on the other side of the Atlantic, and the PGA Tour, which inaugurated the Presidents Cup to rival it in 1994, the role Couples has filled so well could rule him out of the other post.

That seems stupid, especially at a time when Europe are using the Seve Trophy to groom potential captains such as McGinley and Thomas Bjorn for the Ryder Cup.