Tom Lehman is the next US Ryder Cup captain, as we told you here on The Sand Trap .com, and Tiger Woods ain’t happy about it. Tiger slammed the PGA of America for not choosing his good buddy Mark O’Meara, saying:
I thought he should have been captain, because of the heritage of where he’s from. He’s Irish, so it would have been a perfect fit for Mark O’Meara to be the Ryder Cup captain in Ireland, especially as he goes to the K Club every summer to fish.
O’Meara was in the running, and has better career stats than Lehman: 16 wins and two majors to 5 wins and one major. “He’s obviously very disappointed he didn’t get it,” Woods said. “He feels this was probably his only chance, because of his age. He’ll be 51 by the time the next one comes around and more than likely that one looks like it’ll be Azinger’s.”
Woods’ comments leave little doubt about the current state of his historically rocky relationship with the PGA of America.
Speculation abounds that O’Meara was snubbed because, in 1999 and along with Woods, Phil Mickelson, and David Duval, he pressured the PGA into donating a share of its Ryder Cup profits to charities of the player’s choice. “If that’s the case, Phil, David and myself won’t get [the captaincy] either, because we were all in it together,” Woods said. “We all said the same things, that they were making $27 million at the time and we should be able to get a piece of that and donate it to charity. If it wasn’t for what we did in ’99 (the PGA would still keep all the profits).”
Many feel O’Meara should have been given the 2006 captaincy if for no other reason than to awaken the tiger within Woods. Woods’ Ryder Cup record is a paltry 7-11-2. There remains a chance that O’Meara could be offered the assistant captaincy, but that decision lies solely with Tom Lehman.
Story: ESPN.
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