The European Tour has assembled one of the strongest fields of the season for this week’s Quinn Direct British Masters at the famed Belfry Golf Club in Sutton Coldfield, England.
It marks a three-week run of events on the tour that will be loaded with many past, present and future Ryder Cup stars.
Ryder Cup stalwart Colin Montgomerie will be play alongside 10 other players ranked inside the top-50 in the world rankings, including defending champion Thomas Bjorn and reigning U.S. Open champ Michael Campbell.
Also headlining in the British Isles are Padraig Harrington, Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke and Angel Cabrera. They’ll be joined by up-and-comers Paul Casey, David Howell and Henrik Stenson - who happens to be the highest ranked player in the field - and Nick Dougherty.
Stenson, Monty, Howell, Dougherty and Casey are all currently positioned to be automatic picks for the Ryder Cup team. That list also includes Paul McGinley and Paul Broadhurst, who will be teeing it up this week as well.
Monty won this event back in 1998 and had his best finish of the year several weeks ago at the BMW Asian Open in China, where he came in third place behind Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano and Henrik Stenson.
Stenson, who is ranked 13th in the world and sits behind Howell on the Order of Merit list, is quietly emerging as a future star in Europe. He has a pair of runner-up finishes this season to go along with his third career Euro title, which came at the Qatar Masters in January.
And speaking of the Ryder Cup, European captain Ian Woosnam is also in the field and will be getting a first hand look at some of his team. Woosnam is quite familiar with the event, as he is twice a winner (1983 and 1994) and was also Sam Torrance’s vice-captain at the 2002 Ryder Cup victory at The Belfry.
The purse for the British Masters is $3,344,101 with $557,256 going to the winner.
The Golf Channel will air all four rounds live beginning Thursday at 10 a.m. ET.
Next week, the tour heads to the Carton House Golf Club for the Irish Open.
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