When it comes to golfing speculation, rumour, whispers here and nod-and-and-wink activity there, the build up to a Ryder Cup takes some beating.

Whether it’s naming the captain, unveiling the vice-captains, announcing the wild cards or revealing the V-neck sweaters for the foursomes, the general chit-chat and revelations could’ve given Hedda Hopper’s gossip column a run for its money.

Yesterday at Wentworth, Thomas Bjorn, the European captain for September’s transatlantic tussle with the USA in Paris, unveiled another four members of his backroom team with Lee Westwood, Padraig Harrington, Luke Donald and Graeme McDowell being paraded as vice-captains.

That quartet join the Swede, Robert Karlsson, who was the first wing-man to be unveiled by Bjorn almost a year ago.

The names of Harrington, a vice-captain in the past two Ryder Cups, and Westwood, who has played in the last 10 biennial contests since making his debut in 1997, were expected. Donald and McDowell provided an element of surprise.

“They have got 26 Ryder Cup appearances among them, they’ve won 56 Ryder Cup points, they are major champions, they are former world No 1s, but, more than anything, they know what it takes to win Ryder Cups,” said Bjorn of those trusted men who will join him in the trenches. “They bring everything I believe in.”

For the Scots, meanwhile, there were hushed, cautious mutterings in the build up to yesterday’s announcement that Paul Lawrie could be in line for a call-up.

The former Open champion and two-time Ryder Cup player was part of Darren Clarke’s backroom team at Hazeltine in 2016 while he has always had a good relationship with Bjorn.

The Dane will tee-up as the guest in Lawrie’s own charity challenge match during the week of the Open. But you can put two and two together and get hee-haw in this game.

With so much heavy artillery building up in terms of potential European captains for future years, it’s looking increasingly likely that Scotland’s last male major winner, like Sandy Lyle before him, will see the captain’s post pass him by.

Harrington has already flung his hat into the ring for the captain’s job in 2020 although Westwood could be a direct rival for that position. Of course, all four men paraded yesterday could still qualify for this year’s team as a player but that would take a fairly significant upturn in fortunes.

At 117th on the world rankings, Westwood is the only one inside the top 200. With a huge amount of qualifying points up for grabs over the next couple of months, things can change quickly and Bjorn is well aware of the fluctuating fortunes of this fickle game.

“This is a conversation we’ve had in this group, and every player is capable of making the team,” said Bjorn. “If that happens, then that’s a very positive problem.

“If they are in that form and they do those things over the summer that they have been able to do in the past in their career, then you want them in the Ryder Cup team. We’ll deal with that problem when we get to it.”

Having been a Ryder Cup stalwart over the past couple of decades, Westwood’s last outing as a player at Hazeltine was a grisly, dispiriting affair. He lost all three of his matches as Europe sagged to a heavy defeat and the critics sharpened their knives to question captain Clarke’s loyalty to an old friend.

At 45, Westwood, the fourth highest European points scorer behind Colin Montgomerie, Bernhard Langer and Nick Faldo, is well aware that his time as a Ryder Cup player is just about at an end.

“I’m of an age now where my chances of making the team go down quite significantly,” he said. “This (vice-captain) is something that I’ve always been interested in. So when Thomas asked me to take that role I jumped at the chance.”

In this largely individual pursuit, the collective is very much the focus in the Ryder Cup and Bjorn left those involved with his own bit of advice.

“The one thing I prided myself on when I went in as a vice-captain was that I left my ego at the door,” he said. “As individual sportsmen, we all have some sort of ego.

“But that week, it’s about 12 players, and it’s not about the six of us. There’s nothing in it for us if we don’t have that trophy on Sunday night.”