Chubby Encouraging A Paul Lawrie Captaincy Run!?
/Martin Dempster files a deliciously entertaining Scotsman story on Paul Lawrie considering a 2018 Ryder Cup captaincy bid after playing a pro-am round last week with agent Chubby Chandler.
Entertaining because Chandler does not represent Lawrie, but does rep the last captain (Darren Clarke) and the wannabe 2020 captain (Lee Westwood). But I'm sure his interests here were completely in Paul's best interests!
Dempster quotes:
“We had played only two or three holes on Wednesday and he hung back on one tee and he said, ‘are you going to go for it?’,” revealed Lawrie. “I said ‘no’ and he said, ‘why is that?’ I said, ‘I’ve been a vice-captain only once. They are not going to give it to someone who only been a vice-captain once’. But he said, ‘nonsense’. I said to him that I’d read the other day that you needed the respect of all the players to be the captain. And he said, ‘you’ve got that in abundance’. So he was almost sort of saying that I should go for it.
Exactly Paul, and you didn't run over one spectator at Hazeltine, and got the Sergio-Mickelson match score correct all day on the radio!
“Chubby then made a really good point when he said that you’ve only to get three votes. It’s not as though you’ve got to convince 50 or 60 people. You’ve got to convince only the three previous captains that you’re capable of being the captain. My mind was 100 per cent no, and then I thought, oh ‘maybe it’s kinda not so sure’. I’ve got a bit of thinking to do. I think I would enjoy it. All the bits you need to be good at, speaking, you can practice that. I’m just not 100 per cent sure that I’ve got the total respect of the top players, but maybe that’s just the way I see it.”
Good job Chubby! Thomas Bjorn sends his worst.