Haas, Cink picked for Ryder Cup

Jay Haas passed up easy money on the 50-and-older Champions Tour for a chance to play for free in the Ryder Cup.

On Monday, he felt like a million bucks.

Haas, who turned 50 last December but continued to compete against guys half his age, became the second-oldest player in the Ryder Cup when he joined Stewart Cink as the two captain’s picks for a U.S. team that will try to regain the cup from Europe in the Sept. 17-19 matches at Oakland Hills.

“Now everyone knows the team,” captain Hal Sutton said. “And everyone knows the mission.”

Haas returns to the Ryder Cup for the first time since he lost the decisive singles match to Philip Walton that allowed Europe to win in 1995 at Oak Hill.

This wasn’t about redemption. Haas only wanted to prove he made the right decision by staying away from the Champions Tour with hopes of making one last Ryder Cup team.

“You can’t hide the fact I’m 50 years old,” Haas said. “As I said this year, I was trying to put myself in the mix of players trying to accomplish this goal.”

Raymond Floyd was 51 when he was picked as a wild-card in 1993 by captain Tom Watson.

Haas, who last won on the PGA Tour at the ‘93 Texas Open, was 10th in the standings and in position earn an automatic spot on the team until he closed with a 77 on Sunday at Whistling Straits and dropped two spots to No. 12.

“Hal had some small talk and said, ‘I’d sure love to have you on the team.’ I was kind of waiting for ‘But you screwed up today,’ ” Haas said. “I’m pretty emotional about it. It’s something I pointed to for the last couple of years. To have realized that is pretty exciting.”

Cink will play on the Ryder Cup team for the second straight time. He didn’t earn any points at the PGA Championship, although he fared better than other candidates and wound up 14th in the standings.

“I don’t remember ever being this flattered in my life,” Cink said.

Ratings up slightly

A three-way playoff helped the PGA Championship’s final-round TV ratings increase 4 percent from last year.

Vijay Singh’s victory in a three-way playoff Sunday at Whistling Straits earned a 4.9 overnight rating with a 10 share for CBS. That’s up from the 4.7/10 the network got last year.

Alvarez leads U.S. Amateur

Oscar Alvarez of Colombia took advantage of a dried-out course following a morning of heavy rains and shot a 3-under-par 67 for the first-round lead at the U.S. Amateur in Mamaroneck, N.Y.

Alvarez, a junior at BYU, had five birdies and two bogeys on the 6,775-yard East course at Winged Foot Golf Club, and was the only player to break par.