A SPANISH high will be to the fore on club class Simon Dyson’s agenda today.

The York-born golf ace, who is inching closer week by week to selection for the European Ryder Cup team to face the Americans at Celtic Manor in less than five months’ time, is back in a solid groove of form for the Madrid Masters.

The 32-year-old finished joint 34th in last week’s star-studded BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth – the European Tour’s flagship event of the season.

His tied place not only bagged him 31,000 euros to push his earnings through the £100,000 barrier for 2010, even more crucially it elevated him two places in the points tally for the European Ryder Cup team.

Dyson now occupies sixth spot in the European rankings and if the current world number 68 can get close to a top-ten finish in Madrid, he would draw even closer to a coveted place in the Ryder Cup ranks in what is already proving to be a momentous year for the Malton & Norton Golf Club ace.

He has already achieved a life-time ambition by playing in his debut Masters major at Augusta, the first grand slam event of the year, and he is primed to compete in the US Open at Pebble Beach next month with an appearance too in mid-July in The Open at St Andrews, where last year he won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship to propel him into the world’s leading 50 players.

He is one of the earlier starters from the tenth hole today and he will be partnered by Northern Ireland’s former Ryder Cup player Paul McGinlay, and one of his friends on the tour, Nick Dougherty.

North Yorkshire is further represented in the Madrid Masters at the Real Socieda Hipica Espanola country club, where the total prize fund comprises 1,500,000 Euros.

Knaresborough-born John Parry competes in his most prestigious tournament since turning pro three years ago.

The 21-year-old Harrogate GC player is partnered by Sweden’s Fredrik Ohlsson and Mark Haastrup of Denmark.