Europe in the pink of health, feels Bjorn

Europe's Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn was quite pleased with the pink of health European golf is in at the start of the year but did have one eye on the Americans, as they head for a showdown this September.

The 42nd instalment of the prestigious Ryder Cup will be played out at the Le Golf National and while the Dane felt that recent results by European golfers were a good sign, the 46-year-old also added that there is still a long road to Paris. "I thought EurAsia Cup was important in so many ways in getting 12 guys together that all have a great potential of being in Paris in eight, nine months time now," Bjorn said at the Majlis Course, ahead of the Omega Dubai Desert Classic, on Tuesday.

"I thought that's something I'll look back at and see as a good sign of where we are with European golf. They could also be there, most likely it won't be those 12 but it will be a couple of others that will have a few words to say about that," he added.

Europe rallied to beat Asia 14-10 to defend the EurAsia Cup in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, earlier this month. Add to that, three other results - Spaniard Sergio Garcia winning the Singapore Open, Tommy Fleetwood defending his Abu Dhabi title and Jon Rahm triumphing at the CareerBuilder Challenge on the PGA Tour, gave Bjorn enough reasons to be thrilled.

"When you wake up on Monday morning and Sergio has won in Singapore and Tommy has won in Abu Dhabi and Jon has would be on the PGA Tour, you can't help but thinking that European golf is in very good hands right now. There are some great players. But then you look at what 12 you've got to be up against and American golf is also in great hands at the moment. That's what's ahead," he opined.

"But in general, I feel like the last couple weeks have been a really, really good experience from a captain's side but it's also been a great experience to see what the players are. I think there's a lot of happiness around. There tends to be a lot more happiness around in January, but that has to do with scheduling and playing a lot of golf. Now, where that will leave us in eight, nine months' time, you know as well as I do that the golfing world moves and it goes like a yo-yo; people go up-and-down, and where it leaves us at that time, we'll see."