Ricky Fowler hits his tee shot on the eighth hole during Thursdays first round of the BMW Championship at Crooked Stick GC.
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Love named Kuchar as one of three wild-card picks Monday, along with Rickie Fowler and J.B. Holmes, according to Steve DiMeglio of USA Today.
It’s become a Ryder Cup rite of passage to second-guess whatever choices American captains make Maybe that’s justified, given the United States is an abysmal 2-8 since 1995.
Rickie Fowler, J.B Holmes and Matt Kuchar.
Holmes said he was thinking too much about making the Ryder Cup, one of the reasons he missed five of seven cuts from the U.S. Open until the start of the playoffs.
“We are excited we have 11 players and we can move on”. I know this is the 11 we want today, and we have another tough decision coming up in two weeks, but we are really excited about where we are today, and we’re excited to hear from these guys.
“We’re going to learn from our mistakes in the past and build on it”, the captain added.
US captain Davis Love III named three of his four captain’s picks in a news conference on Monday. Where he goes for the fourth and final spot may be a little more intriguing.
Love will make his final captain’s pick after the Tour Championship. The Ryder Cup begins September 30. Holmes and Matt Kuchar have previous Ryder Cup experience and were among the highest-ranked players not already on the team.
The U.S. has lost eight of the last 10 Ryder Cups and three in a row to the Europeans.
And Holmes has only played in one Ryder Cup before, but at least it was a winning one, in 2008 at Valhalla in Kentucky. Fowler was part of the Ryder Cup Task Force aimed at turning around the Americans’ fortunes in the event, but he is 0-3-5 in two previous Ryder Cups, both on European soil.
Kuchar was thought of as a favorite for one of the picks given his ability to play with any partner in a team event where chemistry is crucial.
Kuchar will make a fourth consecutive Ryder Cup appearance, with the Olympic bronze medalist missing out on automatic qualification despite an impressive season on the PGA Tour.
No, it will be either Bubba or Jim Furyk, the old warhorse who, like Bubba, has a terrible Ryder Cup record but is considered a gamer and a grinder and is well-respected in the American team room.
The three join the eight players who automatically qualified for the team by the end of The Barclays last month. He has got us really a good, solid game plan that is easy to buy into and get behind.
They are Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson, Patrick Reed, Jimmy Walker, Brooks Koepka, Brandt Snedeker and Zach Johnson.
The USA skipper dodged a direct answer about how Bubba Watson, the world No 7, reacted to being omitted from yesterday’s three wildcard selections.
Furyk was also passed over despite finishing tied for fifth and shooting 58 at the Travelers Championship.
“We’re a sports team and we have to draft the right player for the right position”, Love said. Tiger over the last two or three weeks has made us really think hard about not only pairings but other things that we need to look for in our players.
“There was not a consensus early”, Love said of Monday’s picks.
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After the last capitulation to the Euros, at Gleneagles in Scotland two years ago, the USA launched a task force – and, yes, Fowler’s on it – to pick over the bones of all those losses and find a way to win.
