The Ryder Cup will be held at the Celtic Manor in Newport next year

This week (3 September) marks the beginning of the qualification process for The European Team that will battle it out against the United States to win back The Ryder Cup in 2010. With a little over a year to go, speculation is already rife about who will make it into Captain Colin Montgomerie’s line up at The Celtic Manor Resort.

Last week Montgomerie fuelled excitement by hinting that he had already ‘pencilled in’ 12 players that he expects to make his team and, while there may not be too many local favourites among those names, the bookmakers are still offering Welsh fans some encouragement.

Ryder Cup Chief Exec for Wales Rob Holt talks to Real Sport's Mark Poyser

Paddy Power, for example, is offering odds of just 5/1 on a Welshman making the side, with Bradley Dredge at 12/1 (odds given before the Johnnie Walker Championship in Gleneagles last weekend), leading a pack that includes fellow World Cup winner Stephen Dodd, Jamie Donaldson and 24-year-old Rhys Davies. The likes of Padraig Harrington, Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey and Henrik Stenson may be odds-on favourites at the moment but, as Captain Montgomerie acknowledges, “a year is a long time in golf.”

Qualification for The European Team is based on prize money accumulated by players competing in tournaments on The European Tour’s Race to Dubai and the Official World Golf Ranking. Prize money is converted into Ryder Cup points, with the top four Europeans in the World Ranking joined by the next five players on The Race to Dubai. This leaves the remaining three places to be filled by Montgomerie’s Captain’s picks.

Former Wales Golf Brian Huggett chats to Real Sport's Mark Poyser

Qualification starts at this week’s Omega European Masters in Switzerland and runs through to the Johnnie Walker Championship in Gleneagles in 2010. As Montgomerie has suggested: “It’s a great opportunity for everybody to start from scratch”, so what about the chances of a Welshman playing in golf’s most prestigious team event in front of a home crowd?

Ian Woosnam and Phil Price are the most recent Welsh participants, both having tasted Ryder Cup success as players and Woosnam as Captain at The K Club in Ireland in 2006.

Former Ryder Cup player and Captain Brian Huggett is an ambassador for The European Ryder Cup Board and knows how much it means to the players to take part; “There is nothing quite like The Ryder Cup,” said Huggett. “The competition has grown hugely in stature and popularity in recent years and the eyes of the world will be on the players who step out at The Celtic Manor Resort next year. It would be fantastic to have a Welshman in the team but whoever makes The European Team to take on the Americans will have the crowd firmly behind them.

“The Twenty Ten is such a spectacular course that the atmosphere will be electric and the crowd will definitely put a spring in the step of The European Team. Anyone who has the chance should make sure they are there to witness one of the greatest sporting contests ever to be held in Wales.”

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