Golf Question of the Week: Should Ryder Cup Qualifiers Skip Major Championships?

Kenny Perry is less than three years away from qualifying for the Champions Tour, yet continues to battle the young guns and play his way into the conversation on the PGA TOUR’s hottest players.

Perry currently sits 27th in the World Golf Rankings, 6th on the TOUR’s money list and 6th in the U.S. Ryder Cup qualifying rankings.

So why, after skipping the U.S. Open, is one of the game’s best players also planning on bypassing a chance to play yet another major – next month’s British Open? Quite simply, plainly and unapologetically from Perry’s standpoint, it comes down to his current place in the last of the three aforementioned rankings.

Perry has made no secret of the fact that he has tailored his 2008 TOUR schedule to give him the best chance possible of making the U.S. Ryder Cup squad. This approach includes skipping a 36-hole qualifier for the chance to compete at Torrey Pines (“I don’t do 36 holes ever … It just wears me out.”), and now bypassing an 18-hole qualifier for Royal Birkdale.

"How I based my schedule this year was on tournaments where I felt like I could acquire the most points by trying to make the team at Valhalla," Perry said in this mlive.com article. "All of you know I'm from Kentucky. I lost the '96 PGA Championship there in a playoff to Mark Brooks. I want to go back there and I want to represent my country. I want to do it in front of my home folks in the state of Kentucky."

Fair enough. And by most accounts, Kenny Perry is a good guy who has probably earned the benefit of the doubt. But the truth is, that won’t completely erase the dreaded “cherry picking” tag that athletes despise, as John Hawkins of Golf Channel alludes to in this video commentary.

For me, anyway, the comparison quickly turns to Ted Williams, who to this day remains the last Major League baseball player to hit over.400 for an entire season when he accomplished the feat 67 years ago. Sitting right on the .400 mark on the second-to-last day of the season, Williams had the option of skipping the final day’s doubleheader games in order to preserve his place in statistical history.

Williams would have none of it. He played both games, and went 6 for 8 to finish the 1941 season with a .406 average. Williams’ basic rationale for risking it? If you play the game, play the game.

Of course, as good a golfer as Kenny Perry is, he’ll never be considered in the “Ted Williams” class in his sport. Very, very few players are. And in Perry’s case, his 2008 season is possibly his last shot at a slice of golfing immortality.

Do we give him the benefit of the doubt?