Odds stacked against him but Weir has belief in team

HAVING swapped Cowal for California, Russell Weir won’t be faced with the mad dash he used to make after playing in Tartan Tour events to catch the ferry from Gourock back to Dunoon

“I still travel on the ferry and wouldn’t mind a pound for every time I’ve made the crossing,” joked the 60-year-old, who has made a substantially longer journey this week to captain the Great Britain & Ireland team in the 25th PGA Cup.

Weir, a five-time Scottish Order of Merit winner between 1983 and 1993, played in the club professionals’ equivalent of the Ryder Cup eight times, a record for GB&I along with another Scot, David Huish.

He’s second only to Huish in points scored in the event, but the one glaring omission from his CV is a victory. The closest he came was in 1996, when the match ended in a 13-13 draw at Gleneagles after all five sessions were shared.

Based purely on numbers, the odds are stacked against GB&I in this particular contest. For starters, they have never won on American soil. Moreover, while the Belfry-based PGA has 7,500 members, the PGA of America is still up at 27,000 despite suffering a recent drop due to the economic situation.

However, Weir has arrived at CordeValle, a plush resort in the heart of one of California’s rich wine regions, feeling upbeat about his team’s chances in the biennial contest, which sees the Americans currently holding a 16-5 overall lead.

“I am very confident in the players we have here this week,” he said. “It’s the strongest GB&I team I’ve seen for the PGA Cup. There have been some good ones over the years as well.

“The Americans have quite a few debutants involved as well and I think it is going to be an interesting event. It is very important to get off to a good start. I think if the US get off to a good start and get their tails up then they could steamroller you.”

That happened two years ago, when the visitors won 17.5-8.5 at The Carrick on Loch Lomond. There are no GB&I survivors from that match, but Mark Sheftic, Sonny Skinner and Mike Small have retained their spots on the US team. The latter made the cut in this year’s USPGA Championship in Atlantic.

Only Craig Goodfellow, the current Glenmuir PGA Professional champion, and Simon Edwards, who qualified for last year’s Open, have played for GB&I before, though the eight debutants include Stuart Little, a 44-year-old who has made 350 European Tour appearances and has won twice on the Challenge Tour. Weir also made his debut on this side of the Atlantic – at Knollwood, Illinois, in 1986. His partner in the foursomes was Ladybank’s Martin Gray, who was one of the short hitters at the time. “It is still fresh in my mind,” he said. “Martin and I were laughing as we went up the first fairway as I had hit the drive and he hadn’t hit his second from as far up the fairway as that all week in practice.

“The one disappointment as a player is that I didn’t manage to win this event. To do so this week and wrestle the cup back across the water would mean more than anything to me.”

Weir, who is bidding to emulate Jim Farmer, the winning GB&I captain at The K Club in 2005, watched how Colin Montgomerie went about his business in leading Europe to victory in last year’s Ryder Cup. He was also glued to the television as Nigel Edwards inspired GB&I to their Walker Cup win over the Americans in Aberdeen last weekend.

“Monty left no stone unturned as Ryder Cup captain,” he said. “I watched every shot of that on TV, as I did on Saturday and Sunday at the Walker Cup. I got a letter from Monty wishing us well, which I was ecstatic about. I got it a couple of days before we came out and will show it to the players.

“The Americans don’t like losing, and they certainly won’t want to lose the PGA Cup after losing the Ryder Cup and now the Walker Cup. That was a great victory for GB&I. The Americans looked strong, but, as Nigel Edwards put it – perfectly I thought – you can’t win an event on paper.”

CordeValle, where the course was designed by Robert Trent Jones Jnr, is gearing up for a visit by Tiger Woods in three weeks’ time. After failing to qualify for the FedEx Cup, the former world No 1 added the Frys.com Open, a Falls Series event on the PGA Tour, to his schedule as a warm up for the Presidents Cup later in the year.

“Maybe he’ll turn up for a practice round this week,” observed Weir with a smile. “If the Americans try to get him on the team, we’d just have to recruit Lee Westwood.”