Nicolas Colsaerts and Rafael Cabrera Bello can do no more and face a sleepless night as they await José María Olazábal’s decision on who will be his wild cards for the European Team.
Both players came up just short of qualifying automatically in the final event of the year-long qualifying race at the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles and have an anxious wait for Olazábal to announce his picks at 12:00 BST tomorrow.
With Ian Poulter widely tipped to be handed one of the two picks, the second looks to be a battle between Colsaerts and Cabrera-Bello, although Olazábal could well have other ideas. Now all they can do is wait.
Colsaerts admitted he faces a difficult night ahead. “It's going to be difficult to sleep fine, I've got, what, 14 hours to bite my fingers.”
The 29 year old, bidding to become the first Belgian to play in The Ryder Cup, has changed his plans to fly home tomorrow morning to wait at Gleneagles to find out the news, whatever way the decision goes.
“I think that I've done everything could I to put myself in this position, and unfortunately I have just come up just short,” said an exhausted Colsaerts after finishing joint 19th. “But then nobody really made quite a statement as I made in the last couple of weeks by traveling that much, and getting myself over here the last minute and showing that I still had game, even though I wasn't really fresh mentally or physically.”
Cabrera-Bello started the day by tweeting he was hoping for a “miracle round” and when he birdied the first two holes that looked on the cards. But he never really pushed on from there and his two under par 70 left him tied for tenth.
“I knew if I won, I would have had a much better chance of getting in obviously, because all captains are aware of who wins the last few events,” said Cabrera Bello. “I couldn't do that unfortunately. I played very solid throughout the week; I just didn't have that little bit of extra luck needed to be at the real top.”
As to where he now felt he stood in the Ryder Cup wild card reckoning, he simply: “I don't know. I think that there are other players, as well, who have played really good this year and I'm sure they are going to be getting consideration, as well. I would be really, really happy if I got a phone call tomorrow morning, but I don't know if that's going to happen or not.”
Olazábal will announce his two wild cards at 12:00 BST on Monday, which will be shown live on rydercup.com
