Skipper Davis Love III added Rickie Fowler, JB Holmes and Matt Kuchar to the eight Americans automatically qualified for the Ryder Cup duel against Europe at Hazeltine in a fortnight.
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As part of that new process, the 12th and final pick won’t be made until five days before the start of the matches, giving Love and his lieutenants an opportunity to take a player who gets hot at the end of the PGA Tour season – a contingency plan that could have benefitted the U.S.in 2014, when Billy Horschel won the final two FedEx Cup events after the US team was already chosen.
Fowler narrowly missed out on a place at the 30-man Tour Championship after finishing tied for 59th at the BMW Championship on Sunday – it left him 31st in the standings.
Love, who notably overlooked world number seven Bubba Watson, will announce his final selection on September 25, after the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship finishes in Atlanta, to round out his 12-man team. Regardless, if the 12 were already decided and Watson didn’t make that cut, then it only mattered if the nine-time PGA Tour victor managed to play his way onto the team on points.
An anonymous, if somewhat puerile, poll conducted previous year suggested that a quarter of PGA Tour players wouldn’t help Watson out in a hypothetical bar brawl and thus indicated that he isn’t overwhelmingly popular in the locker room.
However, on Monday the world No. 9 was given one of three wildcards by US Ryder Cup captain Davis Love for the clash with Europe at Hazeltine.
While getting his reaction to being one of Davis Love’s captain’s picks, the golf world found out one thing Kuchar is not so good at. the Internet.
The drama towards the end of the BMW Championship, much of which involved Holmes and Fowler, didn’t factor into their picks, although they did watch the tournament to the end.
“We are excited we have 11 players and we can move on”. ‘I’m not here to warm up for the Ryder Cup but, having said that, winning would be the flawless preparation’.
Fowler, a member of the U.S. Ryder Cup Task Force created almost two years ago in the wake of yet another loss to Europe, missed qualifying for the Tour Championship by less than one point. This is a tough decision; there were many great choices.
However, Love put him out of his misery late last night with a phone call to leave Watson, who tied 20th yesterday, the one anxiously waiting with one more pick to come after the Tour Championship.
Kuchar, 38, who is renowned for his consistency from tee to green and an uncanny ability to grind out top-10 finishes, has featured in the last three Ryder Cups. 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.
Most of the focus will be on Fowler, who’s winless in two Ryder Cups – indeed, no one in history has played more and never won – but is everyone’s little buddy. He has six top-10s this season.
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“Rickie Fowler is so excited to be on the team again”, Love told a media conference.
