How Did Stenson's Wildest Dream Become A Nightmare For The European Ryder Cup Team?

Henrik Stenson described becoming Europe's Ryder Cup captain as "beyond my wildest dreams" but just four months later he has given up his dream of captaining his continent and instead joined LIV Golf - if reports are true.

“When I started out as a professional golfer, it was beyond my wildest dreams that, one day, I would follow in the footsteps of legends of the game such as Seve and be the European Ryder Cup Captain. But today proves that, sometimes, dreams do come true," the Swede said in March.

So how was he prepared to give up his "wildest dreams" and create a nightmare situation for the European Ryder Cup team and the DP World Tour?

The short answer to that is money. Stenson is 46-years-old and without a full-field victory in almost five years. It's clear to say that his days of earning the big bucks were well and truly over. The 2016 Open champion is 171st in the world now and a shadow of the player he was six-to-ten years ago when he was winning Majors, the FedEx Cup, Race to Dubais and tournaments on both sides of the Atlantic.

His deal with LIV Golf is reported to be worth $50m, dwarfing his career earnings on the PGA Tour of $31m plus an extra $10m bonus for his 2013 FedEx Cup triumph. He was reported to have been offered $30m by LIV initially, and he rightly gained a huge amount of respect for turning down that money to captain his continent.

Ultimately, four months later his fee appears to have risen by $20m and that's something that clearly was impossibly to turn down. He may also not have expected LIV to be the success that it has been so quickly. Back in February it looked like Robert Garrigus was going to be one of the top names on the circuit. Four months later and it's now where the likes of Dustin Johnson, DeChambeau, Koepka, Mickelson, Reed, Poulter, Garcia, Westwood, Casey, Ancer and more are plying their trades.

Stenson may now be known as the disgraced Ryder Cup skipper who chose money over glory and he will have negatively affected his legacy and lost fans over the decision he has made. And he'll have known that.

This decision will have been the toughest of his entire career, and probably the toughest of his life, and it has sadly put the DP World Tour in a terrible position as it's publicly embarrassed the European circuit. They nearly went for Luke Donald originally as it looked like Stenson was off to LIV.

The DP World Tour will be licking its wounds now as it decides who to go for as Stenson's replacement for the captaincy and they'll hope that this saga quickly blows over and the team can move on ahead of Rome next year.

September 2023 will come soon and the Ryder Cup will still be a great spectacle featuring some of the sport's biggest names, it will just be missing some European legends and notable Americans.