Bernd Wiesberger and Victor Perez will tee it up in this week's Cazoo Classic at London Golf Club, both harbouring hopes of staking a late claim to secure a place on Pádraig Harrington's European Ryder Cup team.
Both players are well and truly in the mix as the race for qualification concludes at the end of next month's BMW PGA Championship, before Team Europe journeys to Whistling Straits in Wisconsin two weeks later in an attempt to retain the famous trophy they lifted in Paris three years ago.
Austrian Wiesberger currently lies in seventh position on the European Points List, helped by an eighth European Tour victory earlier this year at Made in HimmerLand presented by FREJA, while Frenchman Perez sits just outside the cut-off mark on the World Points List behind Irishman Shane Lowry.
Wiesberger has enjoyed a three-week break since making the cut at The Open and returns to Kent feeling fresh and ready for the challenge.
“I have not played a massive amount of golf in my time off to be honest, that’s why I’m feeling nice and fresh and enjoying hitting a few balls,” he said. “I’m not the youngest anymore so I need to conserve my energy and I feel good.
“The course looks like, I feel like it’s really a golf course that suits my game and that’s always good, to come to a place that does that. I feel fresh, eager to get going again and I’m looking forward to the week.
“There’s really only one target for me over the next four events I’m playing, four of the next five. After that fourth week there is a big cut-off so that’s the big target and just try and enjoy these four weeks and free up for them, give everything in those events and try get the best outcome possible. We’ll see if we reach that goal.
“My game is right there, I haven’t felt as good with the game for a long time. It’s small margins, we all know that out here, it’s just one or two shots that go one way or the other. Sometimes when you’re out there competing and it’s not going exactly the way we want because we all try to be as good as we can – and sometimes you tense up a little too much to make it work – if you can just detach yourself from that a bit and just enjoy yourself out there, be free out on the golf course , don’t worry about the outcome and let it happen and it will click.
“Normally if it does for me, it does happen over a spell of a couple of weeks in a row so this is a really good week for me to let it click again and free up and that’s what we’re here to try do.”
Perez, meanwhile, played last week's WGC-FedEx St Jude Invitational in Memphis and is now targeting a return to the kind of form which earned him a fourth place finish in March's WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play.
“Obviously I didn’t have the best of weeks last week,” he said. “I felt like some parts of the game worked for me and some parts of the games were poor and it’s just a case of putting it all together. There were some good stretches which has been the case for a long time in the last five or six months where it’s been good for a little bit, bad for little bit and not consistent enough.
“So it’s just a matter of putting it all together. The course looks great and I’m excited for the week. It’s part of the game where you look and think a 67 should be a 72 and it works both ways so you just have to be grateful for the times it works and be patient for the times when it doesn’t work.
“Sometimes you shoot 71 and you feel like you’re so close to a 68 and getting the rounds going and equally sometimes you shoot 67 and you get away withy a lot, so it’s a matter of perspective really.
“It’s a big puzzle and it’s just a matter of figuring it out, the right balance of it all. Sometimes it works and you don’t know why and you keep riding that wave. Then something gets a little off and it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together where you’re comfortable enough to just play. It’s always so easy when it works and equally it can be very difficult.
“It can happen so quickly, you get off to a great week. You get a win and then all of a sudden you’re straight back into the conversation so with the double points and the way it’s turning out to be, it’s going to come all the way down to the final week at Wentworth – being a Rolex Series event with double points.
“I think at the end of the day it’s just all about playing well, giving yourself chances and hitting good shots.”
