The tough choice for the European Ryder Cup Captain

Earlier this week it was announced that on Wednesday, 18th Paul McGinley & Co will choose the next Ryder Cup captain, who will lead the team in 2016 in Hazeltine. Darren Clarke and Miguel Ángel Jiménez are the 2 favourites about the position and most likely the one, who loses this battle will not have another chance to be honoured as Europe Ryder Cup captain.
Jiménez is 51 now and still plays regularly on the European tour, but nobody knows how long this will continue. In 2018 he's going to be 53 and we all know how important is it for  a captain to play every week on Tour to keep a close eye on the players and their performance.

Clarke is 46 now and looks like he will have at least 1 more chance to be part of the hunt for the Ryder cup captaincy, but in 2017 he will face many strong candidates as Thomas Bjørn, Pádraig Harrington, David Howell and probably Lee Westwood who will be 43 then. And for the 2020 Ryder Cup in Whistling Straits another huge group of candidates, including Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson, Paul Casey, Luke Donald, Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose, will "fight" for the role of Europe team captain.

Before every Ryder Cup in the past 10 year the European golf governing body had at least 3-4 strong candidates for the role and they managed to choose the right person. Darren Clarke was among one of the favourites to lead Europe in Gleneagles, but the job was given to Paul McGinley. Thomas Bjørn & Miguel Ángel Jiménez were the other favourites, but they both played very well on that time and had good changes to make the team as players (Bjorn did it), so actually they were not in contention. Paul McGinley and Sandy Lyle were the two players, who tried to take the job, which was given to José María Olazábal for the match in 2012.

One big European player - Sandy Lyle was not honoured to be European Ryder Cup player and more big names will have the same fate. Europe has provided many great players in the last 25 years and it's clear that they can't all be Ryder Cup, the question is who is the next?