Team matters most for Ryder Cup skipper McGinley

Edinburgh (AFP) - Paul McGinley's first love in sports was Gaelic football and were it not for a broken kneecap he sustained playing that when he was 18, he would almost certainly never have become Europe's Ryder Cup captain.

The injury, allied to his own small stature, ruled out a career in the tough team sport so beloved of the Irish and instead he turned to golf which until then had been more a pastime for the Dubliner.

A two-year golf scholarship in San Diego, where he once watched his hero Tom Watson play in a tournament and was given one of his golf gloves as a memento, followed and McGinley's career as a pro started in 1991.

Since then he has enjoyed modest success with four European Tour wins, most notably at the season-ending Volvo Masters in 2005, plus a fleeting appearance in the world top 20.

But the 47-year-old is better-known for his exploits in the team version of the sport -- winning the World Cup for Ireland alongside Padraig Harrington in 1997, the Ryder Cup for Europe in 2002, 2004 and 2006 as well as success in the Seve Trophy (as a player and captain) and the Royal Trophy in 2007 and 2007.

McGinley believes it was his schoolboy years playing Gaelic football that helped turn him into a Ryder Cup hero when he sunk the winning putt at The Belfry in 2002 and helped him get the 2014 Ryder Cup captaincy he so craved.

"The captaincy is something I am comfortable with," he said in a recent interview.

"I like the role. I like the challenge of behaving and doing the right things. I like the challenge of behaving and saying and doing the right things.

"Standing on a tee box and hitting a ball 300 yards down the middle has never come easy to me; standing over a five-foot putt and trying to hole it has never come easy to me; standing in front of the media ... comes easier to me.

"I'm just trying to be myself. I'm trying to be honest. I'm not relling a lie. That's the one thing I don't want to do."

McGinley's rise to become the first Irish captain of Europe's Ryder Cup side was not something that came out of the blue when the decision was taken in Abu Dhabi in January 2013.

He was vice-captain to Colin Montgomerie in Wales in 2010 and to Jose Maria Olazabal two years ago in Medinah and he also knew that his Seve Trophy exploits would not go unnoticed.

But still there were some raised eyebrows that such a low-key and relatively unsung player had been chosen to go up up against living legend Watson who the Americans asked to return to the role 31 years after he performed it successfully at The Belfry.

Once Darren Clarke had made himself unavailable, supporters of Montgomerie, a Ryder Cup legend himself, multiple European Tour champion and a proud Scot to boot, made a case for his re-selection.

But with players such as fellow Irishmen Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell taking his side, McGinley was home and dry.

McDowell for one believes that McGinley ticks all the right boxes for the job on hand.

"Paul is going to be a fantastic captain and I?ve said that from day one," said McDowell, who will make his fourth straight Ryder Cup appearance for Europe at Gleneagles.

?He's a great lad. He?s a scholar of that methodology of management, captaincy, leadership. He will do all the right things, he will press all the right buttons.

?To me, he is going to personify the right answer in the debate ? Should the emphasis be on golfing credentials or leadership qualities when it comes to being a Ryder Cup captain? What?s more important??Leadership qualities are the most important thing. Look at Alex Ferguson, someone like that. Leadership, man management."

Gleneagles will tell whether the choice of McGinley was an inspired one for Europe or whether a bigger name would have been better.