Volvo Loss Hurts - GMAC

Graeme McDowell and Paul Lawrie have three months of the Ryder Cup race to make sure that they don't regret their defeats to Nicolas Colsaerts.

McDowell is still without a win since December 2010 after losing to the Belgian in the final of the Volvo World Match Play in Spain.

And that came after Lawrie had been knocked out by Colsaerts despite winning the first four holes of their semi-final.

All three are now in qualifying positions for Europe's team - Lawrie is fourth, McDowell eighth and Colsaerts in the 10th and last spot - but it could have been so different.

"I'm disappointed obviously," said 2010 Ryder Cup hero McDowell, who got back on level terms three times only to fall behind again.

"But I'm taking nothing away from Nicolas, he played fantastic golf.

"He's got a great wind game (there were gusts of over 30mph) and he's a fantastic talent - I got beat by the better man."

Colsaerts is the longest hitter in European golf at the moment, taking over from Spain's Alvaro Quiros with an average of 316 yards.

That is also a yard longer than Masters champion Bubba Watson, who heads the PGA Tour statistics, and it is 34 yards longer than McDowell, who ranks 155th in Europe.

"He really killed me off the tee box and flighted his irons fantastic," the Northern Irishman added after his last-green defeat.

"I would have preferred to get beat with birdies as opposed to pars, but that's just the way the course was set up this week.

"But he had to deal with the same elements I did and that's life."

Lawrie looked furious with himself for not making the most of a start which put on course for a final which, if he had won, would have lifted him to second in the cup race.

For a man who has not played in the match since 1999 - the year he won The Open - it is understandably a big deal.

It means so much to the 43-year-old, who was playing his 500th European Tour event, that he has not entered next month's US Open because he does not think it will aid his cup bid.

Colsaerts will be in San Francisco and he will be at Wentworth this week trying to add the Tour's flagship BMW PGA Championship.

There, though, he will also be up against world top three Rory McIlroy, Luke Donald and Lee Westwood, who after playing last year all turned down the Match Play.

Colsaerts still needed a play-off to survive his group - like last year's winner Ian Poulter he did not win either of his games - but two days later the first prize of £559,865 was his.

It is the 34 world ranking points, however, that take him into a cup qualifying position.

"It's just fantastic - it means everything," the 29-year-old from Brussels said at the end of a week which puts him into the world's top 50 for the first time.

"Two days ago I was in my room taking a nap thinking I was going to fly home.

"To have my name next to major winners and all of these on the trophy, it's a dream come true."

On the Ryder Cup he added: "It's always been a dream of mine as a kid to play, but there's a long way to go, so I don't want to make any plans or anything."