Rory's Ryder Cup Squad Car Up For Auction

The police squad car, driven by Deputy Chief Pat Rollins, which rescued Rory McIlroy in time to get him to his Ryder Cup Singles match, is going up for auction. Great idea or opportunism? Clearly both as proceeds are going to a local charity.

In an age when anything touched by, or associated with, somebody famous is suddenly ‘valuable’ to fans/collectors of the world, I’m a bit of a cynic, but the squad car has more kudos than most. It did, after all, single-handedly help Europe win the Ryder Cup in Medinah.

Memorabilia such as a golf ball (Louis Oosthuizen’s Albatross at the Master’s), or golf gear (Bubba Watson auctioning off his official Ryder Cup gear for charity), or golf clubs (remember Padraig auctioning off clubs in Dundrum a few years back?) all make perfect sense… and will find themselves on clubhouse walls, alongside niblicks and mashies, and Gutta Percha (Gutty) balls from over a century ago… but where do you put a police squad car with over 80K miles on the clock?

So… who is going to bid on the car and what will the winning bidder do with it?

Let’s look at the 5 leading contenders:

1. Davis Love III, or the next US Ryder Cup captain, who will use it for team target practice come 2014… a cut-out face of Rory laughing at them from the back window.

2. Medinah Country Club could use it to dispense drinks by the 1st tee, with everyone having to sit in Rory’s seat to be served. Or use it as the security ‘hut’ at the golf club entrance. Or cut off the top and use it as a flowerbed behind the 17th green.

3. Donald Trump, who will send it to his Trump Scotland course, where it will sit on the dunes above one of the greens as another example of the course’s “Natural” features… with the radio channel open and a recording of Trump lambasting the wind turbines on the horizon.

4. The local Driving Range, doing pretty much what Davis Love III has in mind above. Probably positioned at the 300 yard mark, with special prizes for anyone who can hit it.

5. The next European Ryder Cup Captain, because wouldn’t that be a psychological slap in the face when the Americans turn up at Gleneagles and get driven to the practice range in ‘that’ car.

The value of the car is somewhere around $17,000, and it is expected to fetch about twice that, so it will only be stretching the pockets of bidder number 4 above.

So, with the car taken care of, what will some budding entrepreneur think of next? What about the sheets Rory slept on, the soap he used in the bathroom or the swimming pool water he walked on? And what about all the other cars he’s been driven around in? In the meantime, if Europe won because of Rory's mad dash for Medinah, the least the Lombard Police Department can do is auction off Deputy Chief Pat Rollins as well.