THIS month's Seve Trophy has been stripped of a number of its leading lights after five players confirmed they would not be competing in the tournament.

Darren Clarke, Lee Westwood and Luke Donald have told Colin Montgomerie they will not be available to play for the Great Britain & Ireland side at The Wynyard course in a fortnight's time, while Sergio Garcia and Bernhard Langer have pulled out of the Continental Europe side led by Jose Maria Olazabal.

The withdrawals are a major blow to both skippers, as well as to the thousands of North-East golf fans expected to flock to the competition.

"We're self-employed," said Montgomerie, who is hoping to lead his side to their third Seve Trophy victory. "I've lost three players but that's fine. Lee would be a strength to our team obviously, but he said he would be tired coming back from Singapore. It's one of these things."

Olazabal, who replaced the injured Seve Ballesteros as head of the European side in July, was equally diplomatic.

"I would have loved to have had Sergio and Bernhard but there is nothing you can do," said the Spaniard. "You have to do the best you can with the team you have and that's it."

The four-day contest, which will be held on September 22-25, sees the leading players from Great Britain & Ireland take on their counterparts from Continental Europe in a format modelled on the Ryder Cup.

Each ten-man team is made up of a captain (Montgomerie and Olazabal), the leading four players in the world rankings, the leading four players on the European tour and a wild card pick.

Eight players have now been confirmed as participants following the release of the latest world rankings yesterday.

Padraig Harrington, David Howell, Paul McGinley and Graeme McDowell will be lining up for Great Britain & Ireland, while Thomas Bjorn, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Niclas Fasth and Henrik Stenson will be competing for Continetal Europe.

The eight European tour qualifiers will be confirmed after the completion of this week's Linde German Masters in Cologne.

As things stand, Ian Poulter, Stephen Dodd, Bradley Dredge and Nick Dougherty occupy the qualifying slots for the home side, while Peter Hanson, Jean-Francois Remesy, Maarten Lafeber and Emanuele Canonica look like making up Olazabal's team.

Ashington's Kenneth Ferrie and Hartlepool's Graeme Storm both have an outside chance of forcing their way into Montgomerie's side, or he could pick one of them as his wild card selection next week, although that looks certain to be England's Paul Casey.

"My pick has been world ranking-based to prevent any controversy at all and that's currently Paul Casey, which is good," added Montgomerie. "I have six Ryder Cup players out of my ten if Paul's there so that's fantastic."

In keeping with tradition, the captains will play each other in the opening singles match on the final day, and Montgomerie is relishing the prospect.

"The last time we played was 21 years ago in the British amateur at Formby and he beat me," joked the Scot. "Not that I'm bearing a grudge at all."