It’s been awhile. Let’s just get to it.
@NoLayingUp who makes the 12 man squad for Ryder cup 2016
— Chad Tully (@ChadTully) October 19, 2015
I was hoping someone would ask this so I could justify speculating on this. How soon is too soon to start talking about the Ryder Cup? Since the first foursomes session at Gleneagles, I was counting down to Hazeltine, as I truly believe this is the year that the tide turns for the U.S., and stays that way for a long time. And I’ve been dying to get overly confident and cocky about it, so for that, thank you Chad. First, let’s look at the qualifying criteria on the USA side:
– 2015 Major Championships (1 Point per $1,000 earned)
– 2015 WGC Events and The Players Championship (1 Point per $2,000 earned)
– 2016 Regular PGA TOUR Events (1 point per $1,000 earned, beginning Jan. 1, 2016, through and including the Barclays on Sunday, Aug. 28, 2016)
-2016 Major Championships (2 points per $1,000 earned)
– The Top Eight: Eight of the 12 members of the U.S. Team will be named on points earned following the conclusion of The Barclays, which is scheduled to conclude Sunday Aug. 28, 2016.
– Captain’s Picks: U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Davis Love III will select three of his four Captain’s Picks after the conclusion of the BMW Championship, which is scheduled to conclude on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2016. His fourth pick will take place Sunday evening after the TOUR Championship, Sept. 25, 2016. This new timetable also is pushed back two weeks.
These standings mean next to nothing at this point, but here’s where we stand so far.
This is going to be a hybrid of who I expect to be on the team, and who I want to be on the team, and it’s going to look more like a wish list than it is a prediction. The reason I like a lot of these guys in general has a lot to do with how I project the future for them, so while it looks like a list of players that have restraining orders against me, it actually represents guys that I think will either do enough to qualify on their own, or enough to impress DL3 to forget the Furyk era. No Kuch, no Sneds, no Mahan, and no Keegan. The theme here is going to be fresh blood.
Of the top 8 listed above, there’s no one there that I for sure want to boot out. As big of a problem as I had with the Phil pick for the Presidents Cup, I was wrong. He played great, and was clearly a leader on that team. He could start playing right handed in 2016 and Davis Love still wouldn’t leave him off the team. J.B. Holmes is the only guy in that top 8 that I’m guessing will not be there at the opening ceremony (either through qualifying, or captain’s picks), so that leaves five openings:
Patrick Reed – I think he wins again in 2015-2016, and his match play career just can’t be ignored. He was the most animated player in an event in which his team was getting blown out on foreign soil…. can you imagine the unleashed version of Reed we’re going to get at Hazeltine? He’s going to bypass the team jet to ride into Minnesota on a bald eagle, wearing a special issue revolutionary war uniform.
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Justin Thomas – He was a brutal lip out away from being in a playoff at the opening event of the year. Of course, this doesn’t count in the points race yet, but the breakout is absolutely, 100% coming this year in the same way that the Koepka missile launched in 2015. He will win at least once. The first one will either be the Career Builder Classic or the Waste Management (petition to start renaming tour events please). If he plays well, yet still doesn’t make it on points, the Spieth relationship that we have grown sick of hearing about will pay off in a captain’s pick.
Billy Horschel – As discussed on my podcast with Mr. Horschel himself last week, when Billy get’s hot, he gets really, really hot. After a somewhat disappointing 2015 campaign, we’re due for a signature Horschel run that will leap him into the picture. His ball striking would make him an excellent foursomes player, and similar to Reed, he’s going to ignite some passion from the U.S. side.
Kevin Na – Combine Na’s quirkiness with his pace and his stellar play and being on a Ryder Cup team isn’t as crazy as it sounds. I expect Na to win this year (I’m running out of trophies to give away).
Tony Finau – I’m legally bound to immediately say “bomber” after mentioning Tony Finau’s name, and also mention that Tron Carter has coined him “The Nuclear Football.” I’m expecting big things out of him this year, including a win this week at the Shriners Hospital.
I would take that team against anything that Europe is able to put together. Their top four of Rory-Rose-Stenson-Sergio remains formidable, but once you get past that, the lack of emerging young talents out of Europe is kind of exposed (*ducks*). I know, I know, I know that this is extremely premature, but if you’re looking at the top 12 European players in the OWGR at the moment (ignore the actual European qualifying system at this point as they are way more subject to change than the US standings), the names Shane Lowry, Danny Willett, Berndt Wiesberger, David Lingmerth, Andy Sullivan, and Soren Kjeldsen aren’t exactly striking a lot of fear in me if I’m taking the squad listed above into battle.
@NoLayingUp Spieth, Rory, Day and Fowler to combine for more wins than the rest of the tour this season?
— Liam Daly (@LiamDaly90) October 19, 2015
Easily taking the field here. What that group did in 2015 was absurd, but there are like 158 events in the PGA Tour season, and these guys don’t play in a lot of those. So let’s make the qualifying factor here be to only include the events where at least two of them are in the field. It’s much closer, but I’m still taking the field. It feels like the first three guys on that list are going to win every event next year, but like we’ve all been saying for years now, the depth of the tour is bordering on getting out of control, with so many guys capable of winning every week. Expecting the next year to be just like the last year can be very faulty thinking. It would be unfair to expect Spieth to imitate, much less duplicate his 2015 season. Rory had a breakout season in 2012 by winning four times, and followed it with zero wins in 2013. He bounced back with three wins in 2014 (consisting of two majors and a WGC), and responded with a “disappointing” two wins season as he watched Spieth and Day lap him. I’d rather bet on at least one of them having a “disappointing” 2016 than bet on them to replicate it.
@NoLayingUp How would you fix the Official World Golf Rankings?
— Ben McNamara (@1867_ben) October 19, 2015
For someone who complains about the OWGR as much as I do, I really should have more of an opinion on how to fix them. I will point you in the direction of the always excellent Jake Nichols, who summarizes the issues with the current system with this post. Here is a basic synopsis:
“Broadie and Rendleman (2012) went into a lot of detail about the bias inherent in the OWGR. A encourage you to at least peruse that paper. They basically rated all golfers from 2002-2010 using actual on-course performance and then compared those ratings to the OWGR. Their findings indicate that PGA Tour golfers are ranked significantly lower than golfers from the other major tours when controlling for on-course performance. Basically, the fields in non-PGA Tour events are systematically overrated, making a win in the Malaysian Open or Nordea Masters look more comparable to a win in a