Colin Montgomerie, the captain of the European Ryder Cup team, made his three picks for the team that wil take on the U.S. in Wales in a month - and two of them, Padraig Harrington and Luke Donald, played with us at the Transitions Championship in March.

 

Both are great gentlemen, personable and fun to be around.

 

Luke had played with us before, but it was Padraig's first time on the Copperhead.  He told us he had viewed the course on TV and was so impressed he had to play it.

 

He finished 6th in March and Luke was a shot behind in eighth so we are hoping they will both be back with us in March. 

 

Padraig also spent some extra time with our title sponsor, Transitions Optical, at one of their functions and he was wonderful.  Personable, funny, bright - the whole package.

 

As an American, it will still be hard to root against guys like Padraig and Luke - as well as Ian Poulter and Ross Fisher who also played with us last year.

 

On the other hand, our American team has five players - champion Jim Furyk, Bubba Watson, Steve Stricker, Dustin Johnson and Jeff Overton - who were with us in March. 

 

Captain Corey Pavin's four captain's picks are still to come and it would not surprise me if Zach Johnson and Sean O'Hair who are Copperhead regulars are among them.

 

We will be watching lots of familiar faces from Wales in about a month.

I spent a couple days this week at The Barclays tournament in New Jersey.

 

It is the first event of the PGA TOUR playoffs and all the big names are there. 

 

Which led me to think, hey, these are the big names and most of them were in our field last March.

 

I remember coming on these recruiting trips several years ago, trying to convince some of the top players to give the Copperhead a try.  Now, I’m hearing them say, “Hey, I’d like the same room as I had in March.”

 

That’s because thanks to our new spring dates, thanks to the hard work of our sponsor Transitions Optical, thanks to our great course and resort and thanks to the work of so many of our volunteers and Copperheads, only four of 29 “regular” PGA TOUR events had a field that was considered stronger than ours.

 

Our champion Jim Furyk received 58 points towards the Official World Golf Rankings, a number that is based on a formula determined by the quality of our field.  We’ve been in the 40s the last two years, but with players like Padraig Harrington and Ian Poulter playing in 2010 along with people like Furyk, Steve Stricker, Kenny Perry and Retief Goosen (among many others), we had a very strong and deep field.

 

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Another thought I had this week is that the players who did well in our tournament in March also did well all year.  Our top five finishers – Furyk, K.J. Choi, Bubba Watson, Nick Watney and Goosen – all finished in the top 35 in the FedEx Cup Points standings prior to the start of the playoffs and all currently rank in the top 50 in the Official World Golf Rankings.