New Europe captain rings in changes for Ryder Cup qualification



LONDON // Europe's controversial qualification process for the Ryder Cup has been overturned on the advice of captain Jose Maria Olazabal, the European Tour said on Tuesday.

The top five from the European Tour's order of merit will now qualify automatically with the next five highest players on the world rankings next to win automatic selection for golf's biggest team event against the United States.

This is a reversal of the previous system. The captain will pick the remaining two players as wild cards rather than three under the old system.

Last year, Paul Casey missed out on Europe's 12 in Celtic Manor despite being ranked world No 7 at the time.

"I am very pleased that the (Tour) tournament committee has agreed to my request. The only reason that I asked for a change in the criteria is because I believe that it will give me the strongest team possible to defend The Ryder Cup," said Olazabal in a Tour statement.

"I looked over the last few qualification processes, going back to 2004, and was satisfied that my proposal would give me the strongest team on paper.

"We are going to have a very strong team but I just felt that this would give the team the best chance to keep The Ryder Cup and that is what we all want."

In 2010, Europe's then captain Colin Montgomerie left out not only Casey but also Justin Rose, who had won twice on the PGA Tour, to help accommodate three wild card picks, Luke Donald, Padraig Harrington and Edoardo Molinari.

Montgomerie said afterwards that he thought the selection process should be changed giving the captain more of his own choices. "That was a terrible day for me, it really was," Montgomerie said of the selection day when he named his wildcards.

"It should have been an exciting day. But it wasn't. It was a very poor day, having to leave out players and the way it was done. I had to tell people on the golf course in America - world players - that they couldn't play."

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One in four Americans don't plan to retire

Nearly a quarter of Americans say they never plan to retire, according to a poll that suggests a disconnection between individuals' retirement plans and the realities of ageing in the workforce.

Experts say illness, injury, layoffs and caregiving responsibilities often force older workers to leave their jobs sooner than they'd like.

According to the poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research, 23 per cent of workers, including nearly two in 10 of those over 50, don't expect to stop working. Roughly another quarter of Americans say they will continue working beyond their 65th birthday.

According to government data, about one in five people 65 and older was working or actively looking for a job in June. The study surveyed 1,423 adults in February this year.

For many, money has a lot to do with the decision to keep working.

"The average retirement age that we see in the data has gone up a little bit, but it hasn't gone up that much," says Anqi Chen, assistant director of savings research at the Centre for Retirement Research at Boston College. "So people have to live in retirement much longer, and they may not have enough assets to support themselves in retirement."

When asked how financially comfortable they feel about retirement, 14 per cent of Americans under the age of 50 and 29 per cent over 50 say they feel extremely or very prepared, according to the poll. About another four in 10 older adults say they do feel somewhat prepared, while just about one-third feel unprepared. 

"One of the things about thinking about never retiring is that you didn't save a whole lot of money," says Ronni Bennett, 78, who was pushed out of her job as a New York City-based website editor at 63.

She searched for work in the immediate aftermath of her layoff, a process she describes as akin to "banging my head against a wall." Finding Manhattan too expensive without a steady stream of income, she eventually moved to Portland, Maine. A few years later, she moved again, to Lake Oswego, Oregon. "Sometimes I fantasise that if I win the lottery, I'd go back to New York," says Ms Bennett.