Last week, captain Nick Price and Fred Couples announced their picks for the Internationals and the USA Presidents Cup teams.

While I thought there was absolutely no element of surprise in Couples’ decision to make Webb Simpson and rookie Jordan Spieth his 11th and 12th men, I was extremely disappointed that Price chose to ignore Thongchai Jaidee’s name as one of his two wildcards.

Price preferred Australian Marc Leishman and South African Brendon de Jonge. I can understand that both of them are regulars on the PGA Tour, where the competition is more intense than the European or the Asian Tour, where Jaidee mostly plies his trade. Also, at this level, there is not much difference in playing abilities of top players, except perhaps some being more experienced than others when it comes to handling pressure.

But the irrefutable fact is that both Leishman and De Jonge were not only below Jaidee in the world rankings, but also in the Presidents Cup standings at the time of the announcement. Also, if Price went by current form, the Thai has a record that is comparable to Leishman.

While Jaidee clearly deserved a place on merit, I think his selection would also have been a great boost for Asian golf. That would have served the cause of the Presidents Cup — of popularising the game across the globe — in a much better way.

Moving on, the PGA Tour FedEx Cup battle resumes this week with the BMW Championship. The field is already down to 70 men and only the top-30 on the standings proceed to the Tour Championship in Atlanta, which also means that only those 30 players will have any chance of getting their hands on the $10 million bonus cheque.

This is the first time that a PGA Tour event is being played at Conway Farms, which happens to be the home course of Luke Donald. So, while the Englishman will enjoy a distinct advantage because of his local knowledge, I won’t count out Henrik Stenson, Justin Rose, Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott because of their recent form.

On the European Tour, we are in the Netherlands this week for the KLM Open, which is being played at the Kennemer GC in Zandvoort. Last week’s European Masters in Crans Montana was very disappointing for me as I made a double bogey on the final hole on Friday to miss the cut by one shot. The truth is that I deserved much better for the way I played, so hopefully things will click for me this week.

— Jeev Milkha Singh is a four-time champion on the European Tour