Three quarters of Davis Love III’s 12-man U.S. Ryder Cup team is set. The automatic eight are in place.
Now the hard part comes for the U.S. captain, who will make three captain’s picks after the BMW Championship and one final pick after the Tour Championship before the team heads to Hazeltine National in Minnesota to take on the Europeans the last week of September.
“We have a lot of tough decisions ahead of us,” Love said Monday, the day after Patrick Reed won the Barclays to end the period when players can earn Ryder Cup points.
Reed, Dustin Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Phil Mickelson, Jimmy Walker, Brooks Koepka, Brandt Snedeker and Zach Johnson are in.
Now: Who’s next?
One thing Love made very clear is that he will be looking for the hottest players available when it’s time to make his picks, which puts a premium on this week’s Deutsche Bank in Boston and the BMW Championship during the second week of September.
The assumption is Love will choose his four from a pool of players who just missed the top eight that includes Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler, J.B. Holmes, Matt Kuchar and veteran Jim Furyk. But Love is looking for the hot hand, so it sounds like the race for the captain’s picks is wide open.
“Guys that get hot the next two weeks are who we are looking at,” Love said. “There’s a lot of things to measure. I think one of the best questions somebody asked me when we were trying to make a decision on picks in 2012: ‘Is it easier for that guy to stay hot, or for that other guy to get hot?’
“We’re getting all these questions now: Is this guy on your radar? Is that guy on your radar? Well, anybody in the Top 100 [who is eligible for this week’s Deutsche Bank] has to be on our radar, because a guy could get hot the next two weeks and move himself to the Tour Championship and be in the running for the FedEx Cup and I get to pick him on Sunday night.
“A guy could move up 60, 70 spots this week by winning and all of a sudden he’s [what] we call the ‘Billy Horschel rule’ for Sunday night after the Tour Championship.”
Two years ago, Horschel got hot in the FedEx Cup playoffs and won it all, but Tom Watson had already made his captain’s picks and the hottest player in the game was left off the team.
“Handling that last [pick], this is new territory for us,” Love said. “It’s going to be an interesting week for sure. Yeah, a lot of pressure on two guys, three guys, going into the Tour Championship. Not only are they playing for the FedEx Cup and for a lot of money [$10 million], last tournament of the year, but they have got this Ryder Cup thing hanging over them. So it’s going to be fun.”