Olesen hopes to cause Ryder Cup chain reaction

With his move up the leaderboard Friday at the Nordea Masters, Thorbjorn Olesen continued his hard charge to make the European Ryder Cup team on points and take some pressure off team captain and fellow Dane Thomas Bjorn.

With a 4-under-par 66, Olesen is in contention in Sweden, five shots off the lead.

With a finish of second or better this week, Olesen can climb among the top four on the European Ryder Cup points list, bumping Tommy Fleetwood with less than three weeks left in qualifying. Olesen is currently sixth on the European points list.

“I’m trying not to think about it at all,” Olesen said after the first round. “That’s obviously difficult, but I’m really trying to put my head down and concentrate on my game.”

Olesen, 28, doesn’t want to put Bjorn in an awkward position when it’s time to make the four captain’s picks.

Full-field scores from the Nordea Masters

“Thomas and I are great friends,” Olesen said. “I don’t think that makes it better for me. It might make it worse. I would love to get in that team [on points]. That’s my goal.”

That’s the way Bjorn prefers it, too.

“I’ve made it very clear that he needs to do something very special to make this team and preferably make it on merit, because I can’t be in a situation where I feel like I’m doing anybody a favor,” Bjorn said before last week’s PGA Championship. “To be honest, I’ve taken a slight step away from him at the moment, just to let him concentrate on his own golf.”

Olesen is on a nice run. He won the Italian Open and tied for second at the BMW International Open in June, tied for sixth at the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open in July and tied for third at the WGC Bridgestone two weeks ago.

“I would love to be in Paris, to play for Europe,” Olesen said. “I can only go out every day and try to play good golf and show that I’m good enough for the team. That’s all I can do.

“I haven’t talked to Thomas about the Ryder Cup the last four or five months.”

If Olesen moves among the top four on the European points list this weekend, it has a chain reaction, with Fleetwood then moving over to take one of four qualifying spots on the European world points list. That would bump Ian Poulter outside the top four of that list. The Nordea Masters is among the final three European Tour events that players can qualify on points.