Lee Westwood, Bernd Wiesberger hang on to European Ryder Cup team spots

Lee Westwood earned a berth on his 11th Ryder Cup team while Bernd Wiesberger made his first team.

Bernd Wiesberger will make his Ryder Cup debut while 48-year-old Lee Westwood has earned his 11th appearance. Others such as Ian Poulter, Sergio Garcia, Shane Lowry and Justin Rose will have to rely on being in the good graces of European Captain Padraig Harrington.

With the completion of the BMW PGA Championship, the final qualifying event, nine players automatically qualified for Captain Padraig Harrington’s team and he’ll round out the group with three picks to be made at 2:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.

Wiesberger, a 35-year-old Austrian with seven career victories on the European Tour, finished T-20 at the BMW PGA Championship, which was enough to hang on to the final of four qualifying spots via the European point list.

European points list

  • Jon Rahm
  • Tommy Fleetwood
  • Tyrrell Hatton
  • Bernd Wiesberger

Westwood, 48, closed with 77 and finished T-71 at the BMW PGA, but Lowry made a costly double bogey at 15 that dropped him to a final-round 71 and T-17 finish. That wasn’t enough to improve his position.

World Points

  • Rory McIlroy
  • Matthew Fitzpatrick
  • Paul Casey
  • Viktor Hovland
  • Lee Westwood

The process, which began at the BMW PGA Championship in September 2019, was suspended after the conclusion of 2020 Commercial Bank Qatar Masters in March 2020 as a result of the global pandemic. Upon the Tour’s resumption in July 2020, and due to the fractured nature of the season, Ryder Cup point for the European Team were frozen for the remainder of the year.

To recognize the in-form European players around the world, the adjusted qualification process featured a new weighting as the season progressed as requested by Harrington and approved by the Tour’s tournament committee. All points earned between Jan. 1 and May 9 were multiplied by 1.5; all points thereafter were multiplied by two.

[listicle id=778118926]