This report speaks for itself.

Colin Montgomerie is still hoping for a wild-card selection to this year’s Ryder Cup, even though he’s skipping two tournaments this month and can no longer earn an automatic berth on the European team.

“My desire to play in the Ryder Cup is greater than ever — as I have shown in the past and in my schedule which has been geared toward qualifying,” Montgomerie said Friday on his Web site.

However, after a dismal performance at the PGA Championship, he decided to opt out of this week’s SAS Masters in Stockholm and a tournament in the Netherlands next week. That puts automatic qualifying out of reach, and Montgomerie must now hope European captain Nick Faldo selects him as a wild card for what would be his ninth Ryder Cup.

That doesn’t seem very consistent. He is so committed to making the team that he’s going to let a second round 84 at the PGA Championship deter him from playing tournament golf for two consecutive weeks. Now that’s the kind of guy I want on my team!

Montgomerie said he would use these two weeks to “put in some serious practice time” ahead of the Johnnie Walker Championship that starts Aug. 28 at Gleneagles in Scotland — his last chance to impress Faldo.

“I want now to work on my game to compete as well as I can in Scotland at the Johnnie Walker Championship and to have my game to a standard that would allow me, hopefully, to perform at a level to help the team (if I am part of it),” he wrote on his Web site.

Monty, you have no shot. I’d put on the kilt and relive your honeymoon.

Does everyone agree with the conclusion that the best Tour in the world is the PGA Tour? It’s the US PGA Tour for the Euro readers, of course. Grant Boone brings up the subject in his Grant Me This column on PGA.com, which is quirky enough each week to keep me reading.

Reavie’s win revisits the recent debate over which is the second-best Tour in the world. Some of the Nationwide Tour’s American alumni are on record declaring their alma mater to be number two in the queue. When the question was posed in the press conference following Europe’s second straight Ryder Cup rout in 2006 and third win in a row overall, Englishman Luke Donald needed clarification as to what the reporter meant when he asked which tour was second best:

“You mean after Europe?”

Ha! Now that’s funny no matter where you’re from. At least I think he was kidding. Europe’s dominance in the Ryder Cup proves one thing for sure: They’re better than us at the Ryder Cup. But there should be no debate over tour supremacy. Here it is, once and for all:

1. PGA Tour
T2. Every Other Tour

Not only do the Euros know it, it’s one of the reasons they’re so motivated to keep slapping “Kick Me” signs on American kids’ backs every two years. The Ryder Cup in reality has been evenly matched for nearly 20 years, but the U.S. has been the biennial favorite of the mainstream media, primarily because the Tour based here is superior.

Winning the Cup, preferably handily, is one small way the Empire (British and otherwise) can strike back at the courtesy cars and the billion-dollar TV contracts and air-conditioned hotel rooms and everything associated with the PGA Tour and America, for that matter, going back to the Tea Party.

Here’s an easy way to tell the PGA Tour is in a league of its own: Check how many of their guys have come over here versus the number of ours who’ve gone that way. Here’s another: Name one great international player of the last 50 years who didn’t win on U.S. soil. The PGA Tour has always played for the most money and had the best-run tour, thereby attracting the best players. And if you want to be considered among the game’s greatest, you have to beat the best.

Just as I read that last paragraph, I knew he would mention Monty. How could you not? So I skipped quoting that for you.

I think that Boone is on track with his Nationwide success stories. Over 225 wins on the PGA Tour have been by alums of the Hogan/Nike/Buy.com/N’Wide Tour over the ages. But that stat could be misleading. Does that win tally tell you something about the overwhelming Tour ready talent on the Nationwide circuit? Or does that tell you that the quality of play on the PGA Tour has slipped down a notch such that success for Nationwide alums is easier? I tend to believe the first school, but it’s worth throwing out there.

The European Tour is pretty strong these days. They, arguably, have a set of young players that could easily rival the United States’ under 30 set – Martin Kaymer, Ross Fisher, Pablo Martin, Rory McIllroy, etc. That was not particularly true just a few years ago.

The Tour boasts membership from some of the game’s all time great players – Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Paddy Harrington (just earned that title two weeks ago), and others. It is the home of great events like the BMW PGA Championship (and embarrassing events like the Russian Open).

I’m not ready to declare the war for second best Tour settled yet. A lot of things go in the favor of the Nationwide Tour, but there are still others that seem to propel Europe ahead.

And then you have the discussion of where the LPGA Tour fits in this…

The British press will look inward after they realize they won’t have Tiger to critique and it is awfully hard to rile up Kenny Perry. They’ll look to a couple of storylines for the championship that focus on the natives:

• Can Paddy Harrington defend successfully? (Probably not.)
• Will Monty rise above recent mediocrity and finally win an Open? (Probably not.)
• Justin Rose’s return to Birkdale, 10 years after making a splash.
• Rory McIlroy and what he has been up to in the past year.

Two of those stories are already being covered – particularly the bottom two.

In the Independent, there is a progress report on Rory McIlroy – not in the Open yet, but trying.

Just in case you forgot Rory, here’s a quick recap:

[He was] the youngest player in the 156-strong field being the only player not to take a bogey in the first round. With that 68, McIlroy took to the big stage as naturally as the audience took to McIlroy.

And, he has done pretty well for himself this year on the Euro Tour:

McIlroy was to show how much he revelled in the spotlight over the next four days of the European Open. Paired with Colin Montgomerie on the Saturday, McIlroy outscored the eight-time Order of Merit winner and then, in atrocious conditions on the final day, held it together to record his second top-10 finish of the season. The cheque was a little over £40,000 and together with the £120,000 he had already compiled, it meant he has all but guaranteed his Tour card for next year.

Still, despite all of his success, he appears to be pretty mature for his young age.

McIlroy had Holywood [his hometown] to keep him based somewhere near reality. “It’s just a small town where everyone knows everyone and that’s been really good for me,” he said. “Like after the Open they had a dinner for me at the golf club and everything, but otherwise it was just people passing in the street and saying, ‘Well done’. That was it. It didn’t go overboard.”

And, he apparently is in with the trend of the Euro-Emirate relationship because he represents Jumeirah Group, the Dubai-based luxury hotel group.

Then there is a nice piece on Justin Rose by Jason Sobel at ESPN.com. It recaps the 10 years since the last Open at Birkdale and the roller coaster that has been Justin Rose’s career. It’s a good read.

I was reading over at PGATour.com in a notes column without byline and it wonders if Tiger will actively recruit to get players to come to the National next year. Personally, I think he’ll have no problem. But consider this:

Players typically rank quality of the golf course and the spot on the calendar as their top reasons for playing, so the lack of so many top-20 players — injuries aside — at his tournament last week was surprising. Congressional is as good as any track in golf. The setup was close to perfect, with the rough deep enough to present problems, yet not so thick that players couldn’t try to reach the green.

One problem might have been perception. Europe had 14 players among the top 50 in the world last week, none at Congressional. Most were at the European Open, with the British Open two weeks away. And this being a Ryder Cup year, some need to get in their minimum 11 tournaments for membership purposes.

I like Congo, even with Rees Jones botching it for the Open 11 years ago. Consider, though, that the European Tour is a lot more liberal in changing their schedule than the PGA Tour. Events can move weeks or a month at a time on the Euro Tour schedule because there is generally a lack of tradition about dates of an event. People like me don’t go nuts when the French Open changes dates, but I did go nuts when the PGA Tour eradicated the Texas Swing. (It’s supposedly coming back, which will be awesome.)

George O’Grady seems to have been trying to schedule pertinent Euro Tour events against modestly high level PGA Tour events. Could he have done the same thing on purpose again in an attempt to lure Euros to play in the Euro Open and make Woods’ event look less in a Ryder Cup year? Probably not, but it is fun to speculate.

HSBC bailed as the sponsor of the long time event first staged in 1964 and always held at Wentworth. With no sponsor, though, the tournament was not set to happen this year. Simultaneously, with the advent of the Dubai World Championship to close the Euro Tour season beginning next year, Volvo – sponsor of the current season ending Volvo Masters – was out of a tournament. And that, my friend, is how you get a new sponsor.

Unfortunately – or fortunately if you hate what Ernie Els brought to Wentworth – there will be a new venue. There will also be a new, World Cup format.

A field of 16 will be split into four groups of four over the first two days over 18 holes with group winners progressing to the 36-hole semifinals on the Saturday.

And, it was announced that there may very well still be an event in the World Match Play slot:

Monday’s Daily Telegraph reported that in the absence of this year’s traditional event, scheduled for Oct. 9-12, it was expected a scaled down one could still be held at Wentworth.

But IMG’s spokesman Michele Mair said on Monday: “IMG is working on a high-profile event, details of which will be announced shortly.”

Martin Kaymer walked into the final round of the BMW International with a six shot lead. With how he played his final round, though, he let that lead evaporate to Anders Hansen. He was left to birdie the par 5 18th to force a playoff. He reached in two and nearly sank an eagle putt to claim the title outright. Instead, he made birdie and forced sudden death with Hansen.

In the playoff, Hansen went from bunker to bunker. Kaymer dissected the hole to put the ball to 7 feet in two and two putted for the win. It is Kaymer’s second victory of the season. He won Abu Dhabi in January with a six shot final round lead. He won that by four.

To Hansen’s credit, though, he was coming off on an injury:

Hansen, who had knee surgery under a month ago and was originally told he could be out for four to six weeks, had been eight behind at the start of the day, but closed with two 67s.

Even more to Kaymer’s credit, he avoided any golf this week to tend to his mother who is very ill.

A couple of great performances from guys motivated by different reasons.

I have written about the Race to Dubai on my own and linked to stories in this blog. Often, I have talked about and linked to stories concerning the idea of trying to compete with the PGA Tour and bring Euros to the home continent to play golf. Of course, the irony of that is that Arab money is what is at stake to help create that carrot of enticement. Still, this story in the Daily Express in the UK focuses on the new potential that the Race to Dubai may require more participation on the European continent than today’s qualifications for the Volvo PGA Championship.

[Justin] Rose’s notable achievement in winning the Order of Merit in 2007 was tinged with embarrassment because he played just 12 European Tour events, only one more than the minimum needed to qualify for Valderrama. As that included four Majors and the three World Golf Championship events, sightings of him in Europe were a rarity.

The European No1 played just six events on the Continent last year and this year he has cut back even further. His present schedule for 2008 includes only four. Tournament committee member Colin Montgomerie said: “It was great for Justin to win the Order of Merit but we have to encourage our top players to play more in Europe. You can win the Order of Merit without hardly playing in Europe, which doesn’t seem quite right.”

The committee’s latest suggestion is to keep the minimum to qualify for the Dubai spectacular at 11 events next year but make certain European-based tournaments mandatory within that figure. Co-sanctioned events in Asia would no longer count towards it.

There has been a trend among European players to head home to play more often in Europe in recent years. Even some non-native Euros, like Ernie Els (home in London), have tried to get in Euro Tour sanctioned and co-sanctioned events more often outside of the majors and the WGCs. This has been happening for about three or four years even without the bribe of the Race to Dubai – and that’s what it is, a bribe, just like the FedEx Cup.

Still, making participation a requirement in certain events played in Europe to get to Dubai seems to run counter-intuitively to the point of the whole concept. The Euro Tour wants to be, in effect, a global tour. But, it may not want to count co-sanctioned events in Asia toward that tally. It would be an approach to promoting professional golf in a Euro-centric fashion that harnesses upon money from Asia and the Arab nations, and a golf schedule whose majority of marquee events are not even played in Europe.

I still think the concept is a great idea – it’s going to be huge. It is hard to deny, though, that the approach is just a little ironic.

I’m going to start posting more videos – those that I produce and those that I find.

Here’s the Richard Finch dip into the river at Adare Manor. Nevermind the sound dubbed over it.