Ireland are likely to find themselves unseeded when the draw for this week's £1 million Alfred Dunhill Cup is made at St Andrews today, and thus will face a stiffer task in their attempt to qualify for the semi-finals.
Using the world rankings of the top two players in each side the eight seeds would be the United States, Australia, Zimbabwe, Spain, Scotland, South Africa, New Zealand and Sweden.
A week ago England would have edged out Sweden for the eighth spot and would therefore have been placed in the same group as the mighty American trio of Tiger Woods, Mark O'Meara and John Daly. But although Lee Westwood's victory in Belgium moved him up from ninth to eighth in the world, Peter Baker went down from 104th to 112th and David Carter stayed at 120th.
For the Swedes Patrik Sjoland is 54th, Per-Ulrik Johansson 65th and Mathias Gronberg 109th, so the combined ranking of Sjoland and Johansson is 119 and that of Westwood and Baker 120.
On that basis England will go into the hat along with the other nations taking part - Ireland (represented by Darren Clarke and World Cup winners Paul McGinley and Padraig Harrington), Argentina, debutants China, France, Germany, Japan and South Korea.
Scotland, with Colin Montgomerie, Andrew Coltart and Gary Orr flying the flag, are the likely fifth seeds and would be grouped with fourth seeds Spain.
The draw could therefore see Scotland, England and Ireland all in the same group - or England and Ireland doing battle with the Americans and Sweden.
The 16 sides are divided into four groups of four, with the winners of each going into the semi-finals. The event starts tomorrow, with the semi-finals and final being staged on Sunday.
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