One thing about Paul McGinley, he isn’t inclined to sit on the fence.
So, with the Ryder Cup in France less than a year away, and with Europe's Ryder Cup qualifying campaign under way to find the eight automatic qualifiers before captain Thomas Bjorn completes his 12-man team with four 'wild card' picks, McGinley doesn't fudge about when the topic of Paul Dunne comes his way.
Dunne, you see, has flown out of the traps like a finely toned greyhound. There’s a long journey yet to travel, but as of now the 24-year-old Greystones player – who this week makes his WGC debut in the HSBC Champions tournament in Shanghai – is third on the European points table and fourth off the world points list in that race to make Europe’s team for Le Golf National, outside Paris.
From what he has seen and observed from Dunne’s time on tour, in what is just his second season, McGinley said: “He seems to be very well adjusted mentally, he has a real sense of calm around him and it is important that he stays being Paul Dunne and just lets himself improve along those lines.
“It is important not to be thinking, ‘Oh my God, I want to make the Ryder Cup’ and ‘Oh my God, I want to do this’ and lose track about what he is doing. So retaining his focus is going to be key to what he is doing.”
McGinley – a three-time Ryder Cup player, all on winning teams, and of course a hugely successful captain at Gleneagles in 2014 – claimed to be very impressed with what Dunne has achieved so far in what remains a fledgling career path.
As McGinley put it: “Professional golf is like snakes and ladders because you go up and you go down and he has been climbing the ladders very quickly and you could arguably say that his first two years as a professional have been more successful than Rory McIlroy’s.
“So he really has hit the ground running, and if he stays focused on what he is doing, and forgets about Ryder Cup and world rankings, he is on the way to being a right good player.”
Dunne is currently third in the European points table with 745,336 points (with only Tyrrell Hatton and Ross Fisher ahead of him) and fourth on the World points list (behind Hatton, Justin Rose and John Rahm) but McGinley did warn that Bjorn’s decision to reduce the number of automatic qualifiers off the European list from five to four could affect Dunne’s quest to make the team.
“It is very difficult now with the qualification system for the European team with four being picked from the Order of Merit, four from the world rankings and then four picks. So the odds will be against him.
“As a rookie would Thomas pick him? A lot would depend on where his form was. After the good start that he has had, if he doesn’t make the team from now his form probably won’t be good enough because he has made so many points already. So he has to focus on being one of those first four players in (off) the Order of Merit and he is certainly very capable of it.”
No cuts
Having made such a strong start to the qualifying campaign, Dunne has a run of four big-money events with no cuts to finish the European Tour season. He is competing in Shanghai this week, the Turkish Airlines Open next week, then the Nedbank Challenge and finally the DP World championship.
McGinley – who was speaking at a reception in Dublin hosted by the French ambassador, Stephane Crouzat – also claimed Rory McIlroy, who has slipped to seventh in the world rankings, would face a difficult challenge to be a multi-Major winner again and would have to find a way to avoid injuries.
“We all know how talented he is,” said McGinley of McIlroy.
“He is coming out of a period of three months now where he is not going to be competing. He is going to reassess what he is doing. It will be interesting to see. I can’t answer that question. He certainly has the ability. Fitness-wise, his back has been a problem, his ribs, his ankle a few years ago. He has got to find a way of minimising these injuries. That’s first and foremost.
"Secondly, of course he has the talent to do it; [but] the arena has changed. Three, four years ago when he was wining those Major championships, he had a sixth gear. Now, there's a number of guys who play in that sixth gear. You talk about Brooks Koepka, you talk about Dustin Johnson, they play the game that Rory used to be the only one able to play. Now there's five or six who play a similar game, so the edge that he has had has been matched by a number of those players.
“So this is going to be a real testing time for Rory in the next four to five years, and it’s going to be fascinating to watch it all evolve. Is he good enough? Absolutely. Is he going to do it? I can’t answer that. I don’t know if Rory can, but it will be fascinating to watch him and see how he goes about it.”
