A MAGNANIMOUS Jose Maria Olazabal admitted the Great Britain and Ireland team thoroughly deserved their Seve Trophy victory.

The Continental Europe captain played down suggestions that his team were unlucky over the four-day tournament at The Wynyard Club, although there were one or two games which could have gone either way.

Instead the conqueror of Colin Montgomerie in their singles duel preferred to hail the exploits of his opponents.

Olazabal's side dominated the initial proceedings and on day one of the event held a 4-1 lead.

Montgomerie's team, stung by a largely inept first day display, then rallied themselves on the second day to claw it back to 6-4 before finally taking a one-game lead into the final day's play.

"I don't think it has anything to do with luck," said Olazabal, a 2& 1 winner over Montgomerie.

"I think the Great Britain and Ireland team played really well. They made a lot of putts. I talked to some of my boys for instance and I even talked to Maarten (Lafeber).

He said that he has never putted like that in his life before.

"I said yesterday that I like how the matches came out.

"I thought they were competitive players in each match. I think it could have gone either way but at the end of the day it's been Great Britain and Ireland's day."

Olazabal refused to look for any excuses in the 16 - 11 defeat but insisted Continental Europe would bounce back and make the next Seve Trophy tournament a much closer fought affair.

"Next time I'm pretty sure that these boys, whenever they get in the team, are going to work their socks off and try to beat their opponents," said Olazabal.

"I'm proud of them, I have to say. They really tried hard.

"Hopefully we'll be in the same situation next time so we can take a sweet revenge."

It was hard to split the two sides going into the final day of the Seve Trophy with the match evenly balanced.

Unfortunately for the Spaniard his side went down to the stronger GB&I singles performance.

Far from being despondent, Olazabal took great pride in knowing the future looks bright for the next Ryder Cup squad.

He said: "It proves European golf is strong at the moment. We have proved it, not just this week but pretty much every week.

"You look at (Padraig) Harrington winning twice in America, and in the Ryder Cup we've won the last two.

"We have a lot of players coming through who are proving that they can play very well anywhere in the world and they can beat any player at any given time.

"So I think European golf is very healthy to be honest."