Poulter has Beem to thank for Euro card
Print Edition
Rich Beem agreed to give his spot in the Hong Kong Open to a player who would otherwise have lost his European Tour membership and been ineligible to play in the Ryder Cup next year. Under those circumstances, he said he would have made that sacrifice for any player.
Even if that player was Ian Poulter.
“I’m not looking to gain anything from this,” Beem said. “I looked at it in the simplest terms. There’s a guy who loses his tour membership if I don’t step away. Is it anymore awkward because it’s Ian Poulter? I don’t know and I don’t care. It was the right thing to do.”
Poulter has to play a minimum 13 events on the European Tour to keep his membership and be eligible for the Ryder Cup, where he has compiled a 12-4-2 record and was largely responsible for two of the last three European wins.
The Englishman was counting on playing the HSBC Champions in Shanghai in two weeks. But with Andy Sullivan and Emiliano Grillo winning tournaments last week, they moved into the top 50 and bumped Poulter to No. 51, and he was out of the World Golf Championship event in China.
He did not enter the Hong Kong Open, and all the sponsor exemptions were taken.
That’s when the European Tour went to Beem and asked him if he were interested in giving his exemption to Poulter. “At the end of the day, I was their obvious choice,” Beem said. “I wasn’t going to say ‘no’ and be a jerk. It was a situation where the right thing needed to happen. And this was the right thing.”
Beem said the Hong Kong Golf Club is among his favorite in the world.
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