Sergio Garcia has withdrawn from this week’s Irish Open after learning he would not be part of the European Ryder Cup team that was named by captain Luke Donald on Monday.

Although Donald had told Garcia that his chances were minimal after a substandard back end of the season, the Spanish golfer who is the all-time leader in Ryder Cup points had still held out hope.

"The call with Luke (Donald) was fine but not the call I wanted, obviously," Garcia told the website GolfMagic. “Now, the only thing I can do is support the team from home. It’s as simple as that. I’ll be watching and cheering on the European team.”

Garcia, 45, who won the LIV Golf Hong Kong event earlier this year, had hoped to return to the Ryder Cup event, where he’s played 10 times and earned 28.5 points, the most in the event’s history.

He had entered this week’s Irish Open at the K Club near Dublin but decided to withdraw Monday.

“I felt like I was so looking forward to being a part of that team,” he told the website. "And so I felt like mentally, you know, mentally it was kind of tough. I didn’t want to go there and not be fully engaged in the tournament and stuff, so I just decided to take a little bit of time off and spend it with the family and do a couple of things, some things outside of golf and just kind of reboot a little bit, recharge the batteries.”

Donald on Monday named Shane Lowry, Jon Rahm, Sepp Straka, Viktor Hovland, Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick as his wildcard picks.

They join Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood, Robert MacIntyre. Rasmus Hojgaard, Justin Rose and Tyrrell Hatton who made the team on points. They will be trying to win on the road for the first time since the European victory at Medinah in 2012.

Garcia, who won the Masters in 2017, probably needed a big performance in the majors.  But he missed the cut at the Masters, tied for 67th at the PGA Championship, failed to qualify for the U.S. Open and tied for 34th at the British Open. He also missed the cut at his lone DP World Tour event, the BMW International Open.

For the season, Garcia finished ninth in LIV’s individual standings after being third last year.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Sergio Garcia, Disappointed in Ryder Cup Rejection, Withdraws From Irish Open.