Tiger Woods, Darren Clarke hope to face each other in 2016 Ryder Cup

Tiger Woods and Darren Clarke hope to see each other at Hazeltine in 2016.

Clarke, after his appointment on Wednesday, will for sure captain the European team when it meets the Americans in next year’s Ryder Cup and would really like to see his old pal Tiger lining up on the other side. Woods has expressed similar sentiments in the past, but his appearance on presumptive U.S. skipper Davis Love III’s squad is far from a certainty -- especially after he decided not to play in next week’s Honda Classic.

“Tiger is still one of the biggest draws in the game of golf,” Clarke told The Guardian after the European’s five-member selection panel chose him to secure the Cup for the seventh time in eight matches.

“He is a very special talent. I, for one, being not only a friend of his but having a huge amount of respect for his golf game, would love to see him getting back to playing the sort of golf that he can play,” Clarke said about the former world No. 1 who has no idea what the immediate future holds, let alone where he’ll be a year from September.

The injury-plagued Woods made his most recent public appearance on the ski slopes of Colorado last week, after announcing he was on a break of indeterminate length from the PGA Tour. Woods withdrew from the Farmers Insurance Open two weeks ago with what appeared to be back pain, though it’s his horrendous short game that’s truly ailing of late.

A few short months before his latest disappearance from competitive golf, Woods endorsed Clarke’s captaincy by saying he hoped to face the five-time Ryder Cup player at Hazeltine.

“If I make the 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup team, and that’s the goal,” Woods, a member of the PGA of America’s 11-man task force that will likely tap DLIII for a reprise of his 2012 stewardship, said in December, “then I think it would be fun to be in a U.S. team with Darren as the rival European team captain. I’ve played with him and against him and we’ve always had a blast.”

The feeling was clearly mutual.

“Tiger Woods on the team at Hazeltine? It would be a stronger team with him being on it,” Clarke said Wednesday about a player who owns a lackluster 13-17-3 overall record in seven Ryder Cup appearances. “You want to go and compete against the strongest team possible and a healthy Tiger Woods playing his best golf would certainly add to the whole event.”

With “healthy” the key word, and his agent saying on Thursday that Woods’ game was not up to tournament snuff, it’s anybody’s guess as to when, or if, Tiger will return to competition, so penciling him in for a date with the Euros will have to wait.