Davis Love III has expressed full confidence in his captain’s picks for the United States’ Ryder Cup team, despite acknowledging the difficulty he and his backroom team faced in selecting three additional players for the event.
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The PGA of America changed its rules after the 2014 loss in Scotland and moved the timing of captain’s picks from early September and allowed Love freedom to name his final player the night before his team flies to Minnesota.
Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III went with the chalk for the first three of his four wildcard picks.
Love’s selections of Fowler, Kuchar and Holmes smacked of the safe, inside-the-box, good-old-boys-network play.
And finally a eulogy to Fowler: “We found no weaknesses in his game”, Love said.
Holmes hasn’t been in a Ryder Cup since the 2008 edition at Valhalla golf club in Louisville, Kentucky.
Kuchar and Holmes finished joint-fourth at the BMW Championship on Sunday, while Fowler was left sweating over his place after ending the week in 59th spot.
With the 12-man European team already set, USA captain Davis Love III will make his final pick after next week’s Tour Championship.
“I’ve been saying all along, we’re a sports team and we have to draft the right player for the right position”, Love said. “If Patrick Reed says, ‘I want you to pick this guy because I want to play with him and we won’t lose a match, ‘ then we’re going to take that into account”.
“We have a long two weeks ahead of us for the final pick”, said Love.
“I’ve done basically everything I can do as far as schedule and playing and obviously it would have been nice to play better to make the pick a lot easier on him, but whether he has his mind made up or is still thinking, that’s up to him, ” Fowler said.
None of the three has won on the PGA Tour this season.
Kuchar is ranked 17th in the world, he tied for fourth at the BMW Championship and won the bronze medal in the Olympics. He was 11 shots behind victor Dustin Johnson, who had already qualified for the Ryder Cup team. “If they don’t pick me they must not think I’m good”.
“I got to play in the Walker Cup twice, once overseas and once in the USA and it’s really cool getting to play on home soil”, said the 27-year-old. Davis Love is like a brother or an uncle to us. It was a tough decision.
This will obviously never happen because Woods has not played in a tournament in over a year, but it was still pretty weird and I guess humorous that Kuchar tossed it out there.
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Here is what I like about Watson: He hits it a mile, he’s a creative shotmaker – and he’d like nothing more than to help the US win back the Cup, which hasn’t happened since 2008.
