Ross Fisher has played 1,658 holes chasing a Ryder Cup debut over the past year. But with a fortnight to go to the end of qualifying, he still wishes he could still play two of them again.

The European Open champion goes into his defence of the KLM Open in Holland tomorrow in 13th place on the points table and if he wins again at Kennemer he could leap to eighth.

Fisher would already be sure of a place, though, if he had just bogeyed the final hole of both the HSBC Champions event in Shanghai last November and The Open.

In the first of those the 27-year-old found the water on the 18th and ran up a double-bogey seven - forcing a play-off with Phil Mickelson which he subsequently lost. It cost him more than 275,000 Ryder Cup points.

At Royal Birkdale, he would have finished seventh if he parred the last but a quadruple-bogey eight sent him all the way down to 39th. A par was worth more than 100,000 points. He took just 20,830.

Padraig Harrington, Lee Westwood, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson, Robert Karlsson, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Graeme McDowell are all set fair for Valhalla next month, but the other five places are up for grabs.

Justin Rose, Oliver Wilson and Soren Hansen are the men Fisher has to catch.