Sheffield’s Matt Fitzpatrick delighted to achieve Ryder Cup qualification goal

The 27-year-old qualified via the world points list with his 20th-place finish at the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth, which was enough to secure his place for the 43rd Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits from Friday week.

The European team contains nine automatic qualifiers and three captain's picks, which were announced by captain Padraig Harrington following the BMW PGA Championship.

“Absolutely delighted to be going to whistling straits in a couple of weeks,” Fitzpatrick posted on Instagram, revealing that his goal at the start of 2019 was to make the team for the biennial competition, which was delayed by one year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The former Tapton Schoo pupil endured an unhappy debut at Hazeltine in 2016, sitting out the opening day and then losing his foursomes match with Henrik Stenson on Saturday before being sent out last in the singles and suffering a 4&3 defeat to Zach Johnson.

More recently, he won the DP World Tour Championship for the second time in December 2020 and lost out in a play-off for the Scottish Open in July.

Fitzpatrick and Harrington will be joined in the European team by Lee Westwood, Bernd Wiesberger, Jon Rahm, Tyrrell Hatton, Paul Casey, Rory McIlroy, Matt Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood and Viktor Hovland as well as Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter and Shane Lowry, who were chosen as wildcards.

Harrington admitted it was “incredibly difficult” to leave Justin Rose out of his side.