PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. – Corey Pavin, a member of three United States Ryder Cup Teams and the winner of the 1995 U.S. Open, has been selected by The Professional Golfers’ Association of America to captain the 2010 U.S. Ryder Cup Team. Pavin will guide a 12-member team in the 38th Ryder Cup, Sept. 28 to Oct. 3, 2010, at The Celtic Manor in Newport, Wales.
Pavin, 49, competed on the 1991, ’93 and ’95 Ryder Cup Teams, and was an inspirational performer during that period, posting an 8-5-0 overall record. The winner of 15 PGA Tour events and 27 worldwide professional championships, Pavin captured the 1995 U.S. Open Championship with a memorable final round and an 18th-hole clutch approach shot to complete a three-stroke rally and a one-stroke victory over Greg Norman.
Pavin becomes the 26th U.S. Ryder Cup Captain to guide a team in one of the world’s most compelling sports events. He will lead a U.S. Team that won the Ryder Cup for the first time since 1999 last September at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. Pavin will attempt to become the first U.S. Captain since Tom Watson in 1993 to lead a winning Ryder Cup Team outside the United States.
“Corey Pavin has built a reputation as one of the finest competitors and most focused players in the game,” said PGA of America President Jim Remy. “Corey’s record in the Ryder Cup, as displayed in three previous appearances, is a study in passionate play and a love for competition. It is because of Corey’s experience in those pressure-filled moments that he has become the next leader to guide an American team in defense of the Ryder Cup.”
Pavin’s non-competitive Ryder Cup experience includes having served as an assistant to Captain Tom Lehman in 2006 at the 36th Ryder Cup at The K Club in Ireland.
Pavin is a native of Oxnard, Calif., and is a resident of Dallas, Texas. He attended UCLA, where he was a two-time first-team All-America selection (1979, ’82) winning 11 collegiate events that included the 1982 Pac-10 Championship. He was the 1982 College Player of the Year.
In 1991, Pavin helped the U.S. reclaim the Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island, S.C., and was that season’s PGA of America Player of the Year. Pavin joins a succession of golf’s greatest players in the role of Ryder Cup Captain. Walter Hagen, the first Captain in 1927, was followed by such legendary performers as Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Lee Trevino.
The Celtic Manor, site of the first Ryder Cup that will be staged in Wales, rebuilt its Wentworth Hills Championship Course and renamed it the Twenty Ten Course. The course opened for play in July 2007, and is the first course built specifically for the Ryder Cup. The par-71 course measures 7,493 yards from the back tees with nine new holes that have been developed along the floor of the Usk Valley.
With water hazards on half of its holes, the course has six signature holes and presents many more memorable tests and risk-and-reward dilemmas. One of the features of the spectacular new course is its variety, with many of the earlier holes having a links-like feel with some long rough and greenside swales, before the middle section of the course reveals the full extent of the lake-lined challenge. A challenging string of closing holes is capped by the 613-yard, downhill par-5 18th.
Since 2000, the Celtic Manor has been the site of one of the most popular European Tour events, the Celtic Manor Wales Open.
The Ryder Cup began in 1927 when enterprising English seed merchant Samuel Ryder commissioned the casting of a gold chalice that bears his name. The U.S. Team defeated Great Britain, 9½ to 2½, in the inaugural matches in Worcester, Mass.
Since then, except for a span (1939-45) during World War II and following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks upon America, the Ryder Cup has been held biennially with the U.S. and Europe alternating as host. Since 1979, when all of Europe was brought into the Ryder Cup, each team has won seven events, with one tie.
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