The Gentleman Magazine Issue 10 | August 2018 | Page 53

Images: © Rolex / Chris Turvey
THOMAS BJØRN TAKES A SHOT AT THE 2014 RYDER CUP
A few days before striking his first ball in competitive team
golf something happened that allowed Thomas Bjørn to
fully appreciate the scale, depth and meaning of The Ryder
Cup. Just hours before the start of play, the late Severiano
Ballesteros, the European Team Captain for the 1997 edition
of the biennial trans-Atlantic golf tournament, handed Bjørn a
commemorative Rolex watch.
Looking back, of all the special memories he enjoyed as he
became the first ever Dane to play in the competition, it was
the limited-edition timepiece, with his name engraved on
the back, that came to mean the most. Given solely to those
selected to play by the team captain, for him it was a defining
moment, a sign he had arrived at the very pinnacle of golf.
“That moment, when Ballesteros presented me with a Rolex
watch, symbolizes what makes The Ryder Cup so special,”
Bjørn recalls. “The captain usually gives them to the players
on the Tuesday night of the tournament week. It’s a unique
moment for the entire team, very symbolic considering the
scale and nature of the event and what Rolex has done for the
game of golf.”
THE GREAT DANE
Bjørn joins an elite group of Rolex Testimonees who have been
selected to captain Europe in The Ryder Cup over the 50-year
relationship between Rolex and golf. These include German
Bernhard Langer (2008), Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie
(2010), Spain’s José María Olazábal (2012) and Paul McGinley,
from Ireland, in 2014. Like his predecessors, in 2018, it will be
the Dane’s turn to present the watches.
The ceremony will mark Bjørn’s crossing from player to
captaincy. The Great Dane – as he is known throughout the
golf world – will take on the responsibility of leading Team
Europe to success, of inspiring synergies among teammates
and bringing out the best in each player. “There’s nothing better
as a professional golfer than walking down the 16th, 17th and
18th holes in a Major championship if you have a chance to
win – The Ryder Cup brings that same feeling and pressure
from the very first morning; it’s a really unique atmosphere,”
he says. “In terms of how all-consuming the captaincy is, it’s on
my mind 24/7.”
Even with his vast playing experience, the nature of captaincy
in team golf will be a new experience for Bjørn. As fellow
Testimonee Annika Sörenstam, who led the European Team in
the 2017 Solheim Cup, puts it: “My experience at the Solheim
Cup, eight times as a player and then as a vice captain, can’t
compare to the year I captained the team in 2017,” she says. “It
requires seizing the whole picture and making decisions with
that bird’s eye view in clear sight.”
As one would expect from the contemplative Bjørn, who
as a player won 21 tournaments and was runner-up three
times in Majors, he has thought long and hard about what it
means to be the European Ryder Cup captain. Still months
before the competition will get underway in September at Le
Golf National Club south of Paris, he has already defined his
approach and the style of leadership he will bring.
“It’s not my role to tell them how to play, but rather to support
and manage them, not by getting in their way, but by helping
them make the right decisions.”
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