Who are these guys – They say they played in the Ryder Cup – Really?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
We are all looking forward to the Ryder Cup next week, and as I’m writing this, I have not heard who Davis Love III has chosen for his final Captain’s Pick. I hope it is Ryan Moore after watching his courageous performance in the Tour Championship. I think he will be a huge asset to the team and will have a steadying and calming influence on whoever he is paired with.
But some Captain’s picks have been a little questionable, and we even had a player who was 68th in the world rankings was selected. Go figure! Here is a list of strange captain picks through the years by Alex Myers of Golf Digest. Thanks for sharing!
You probably don’t remember these guys playing for Team USA at the Ryder Cup.
1. Jeff Overton (2010)
The only U.S. team member of the modern era without a PGA Tour win, Overton did have four runner-up finishes when he qualified for the 2010 squad. He left his mark on the event with his fiery “Boom, Baby!” reaction after holing a shot on the eighth hole at Celtic Manor in a Friday four-ball. Overton played fairly well, going 2-2 in his matches, but the U.S. fell to Europe by a point.
NEWPORT, WALES – OCTOBER 03: during the Fourball & Foursome Matches during the 2010 Ryder Cup at the Celtic Manor Resort on October 3, 2010 in Newport, Wales. (Photo by David Cannon/Getty Images)
2. Boo Weekley (2008)
OK, so you might remember him doing the “Happy Gilmour” bull ride dance down the fairway” during the 2008 Ryder Cup at Valhalla. Weekley qualified for the team only because of Tiger Woods being injured, but he went 2-0-1 in helping the U.S. score an unlikely win.
3. J.B. Holmes (2008)
If Weekley only made the 2008 squad because of an injury, Holmes, 18th in the Ryder Cup standings at the time, was only at Valhalla because Paul Azinger let the players make three of the captain’s picks. In what Azinger dubbed the “redneck” pod, Kenny Perry, Jim Furyk and Weekley chose Holmes. Due to his Kentucky ties, Holmes seemed like a good fit, and he was, matching Weekley with a 2-0-1 record during the Americans’ resounding victory. Davis Love was hoping for a similar outcome when he made Holmes a pick on this year’s squad. Holmes is certainly not obscure anymore, but he’s probably still the most surprising two-time Team USA member.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
For a Team Captain, picking players who have not made the team on merit is a daunting task. It’s one of those situations where if the pick plays well, you look like a genius, and if they don’t, you look like an idiot! There have been some picks just like that throughout the years of team play. People tend to frown on choices where the player is a good friend of the captain, but when Tom Watson picked friend Raymond Floyd, Ray played great and made Tom look good. Poor Lanny Watkins got all sorts of criticism when Curtis Strange lost all his matches after Lanny picked his buddy in 1995! Thanks to Alex Myers of Golf Digest for putting this interesting list together. We all love the Ryder, Presidents, and Solheim Cup matches, and some of these pictures brought back great memories, even in the years the USA lost!
The Good The Bad and The Ugly in Captain’s Picks!
Davis Love III’s selections (so far) have been pretty conventional, but that hasn’t always been the case with captain’s picks through the years.
Raymond Floyd (1993 Ryder Cup)
Tom Watson tabbed Floyd, 51, as the oldest captain’s pick in Ryder Cup history. The wily vet justified the selection by going 3-1 and helping lead the U.S. to a one-point win at The Belfry.
Cannon/Getty Images)
Curtis Strange (1995 Ryder Cup)
Fellow former Wake Forest golfer Lanny Wadkins picked Strange for the team despite Strange not having won a PGA Tour event in more than six years. The move backfired as Strange went 0-3 at Oak Hill and the U.S. lost by a point, which better explains his pose in this photo.
Paul Azinger (2000 Presidents Cup)
Despite being 24th in the Presidents Cup standings, Azinger was picked by Ken Venturi. “He’s a leader, he’s a team man, he’s a wonderful match player,” Venturi said. “I feel this could be his swan song, and I’ll get more than 100 percent from him.” Azinger went 1-2, but the U.S. won easily. Of course, he proved that leadership at the 2008 Ryder Cup as the U.S. captain.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
There is an expectation from former players who have played well in Ryder Cup competition, that they will eventually be chosen as a Ryder Cup Captain. But is this the right choice? These are a lot of players who have not played Ryder Cup who are very good leaders, who might be able to do a better job. The captains have always been professional golfers and the only captain who has never played in the Ryder Cup is J.H. Taylor, the 1933 British captain. What do you think? Do you know of a player who has not played in a Ryder Cup who could do the job? Remarks below please!
Palmer is a magnetic force and a man of the people. As you would expect from one who galvanized “Arnie’s Army,” Palmer was a leader to be reckoned with, guiding the Americans to a perfect record in the Ryder Cup (1963, 1975) and Presidents Cup (1996). Palmer was the last playing captain in the Ryder Cup in ’63, and did his share, going 3-0-1 during the event.
Ben Hogan
The Hawk guided the U.S. ship three times, leading the Americans to the Promised Land on each occasion. He was a playing captain in 1947 and won his lone match. Famously, in 1967, he introduced the American squad as “the 12 best golfers in the world” at the Champions Club in Houston, Texas. Although he wasn’t necessarily right — Jack Nicklaus was unable to participate — his team backed up his proclamation, winning by a record 23½ to 8½ margin.
Bobby Jones
Jones was a playing captain at the 1928 and 1930 Walker Cup, both runaway victories (11-1 in ’28, 10-2 in ’30) for the United States. It was his exploits here,according to David Fay, that elevated Jones to icon status.
Rich Beem helps Poulter try to qualify for the Ryder Cup Team!
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I’m not sure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing!
On the one hand, Ian Poulter is a feisty Ryder Cup competitor who seems to raise his game on Ryder Cup week and would be a formidable opponent for the European team. On the other hand, Poulter has been in poor form recently, and if he does not make the team but makes it as a captain’s pick, he would be the weakest link on the team. A good thing for the US, looking for an elusive victory!
Less than a year out from the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine, the United States nearly avoided having to worry about the eye-bulging stares of Ian Poulter.
Not unlike the scheduling snafu that precipitated Martin Kaymer’s loss of PGA Tour status for the 2015-16 season, Poulter found out on Monday, Oct. 19 that he had fallen outside of the Official World Golf Ranking’s top-50 for the first time since September 2006.
No big deal, right? Wrong.
Like many global stars of the game, Poulter holds membership on both the PGA and European Tours and is forced to set a schedule that requires he play in 15 PGA Tour-sanctioned events and 13 European Tour-sanctioned events. Spending the majority of his time stateside, Poulter played in 19 PGA Tour events and, prior to this week, 12 European Tour events. The requirements have their advantages and disadvantages as major championships and World Golf Championships are co-sanctioned events, thus limiting the number of starts players need to make on each Tour — four majors and four WGCs already mark off eight events on each circuit.
However, to qualify for each WGC including the HSBC Champions, which will be contested Nov. 4-8, one needs to fall into a certain category of winners, be a top finisher in an end-of-season series (FedEx Cup, Race to Dubai) or rank in the top-50 of the OWGR. With Poulter outside the top-50 and just 12 events to his credit on the European Tour, the Englishman was thrust into scramble mode, not only to maintain his European Tour card, but also to be eligible for the 2016 Ryder Cup.
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Brandel Chamblee on the Golf Channel talking Presidents Cup!
When Brandel Chamblee first came to the Golf Channel I enjoyed his fresh approach to the commentary and his insights as a former player.
But as he went along, his ego became bigger and bigger and now he thinks he is the expert in everything, including who will and will not be a Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup captain.
This by a man who has only won once on the PGA Tour! Best finish in the Masters T18 (the only time he was invited) US Open T44, British Open T62, and PGA Championship played 4 times, missed the cut 4 times! And yet according to an article by Luke Kerr-Dineen writing for USA Today Brandel is saying Tiger (and Phil) do not deserve to EVER be Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup Captains! Wow, what a HUGE put-down of two of golf’s best from someone who has no resume to speak of compared to the two players he is putting down.
Reports emerged during the Presidents Cup last week that Tiger Woods, who looks unlikely to make next year’s Ryder Cup team, expressed interest in becoming an assistant captain at Hazeltine National Golf Club.
According to Golf Digest: “[Woods] was talking about all the things he thought we needed to do, and he had a lot of ideas …”
Love said the next task for him is naming assistant captains. Woods is a candidate, among many, if he doesn’t qualify for the U.S. team. “But we’re not waiting around for that. We’ve already been doing a lot of planning,”
Love said. “And Tiger is just as interested as the rest of us to get going.”
So, Tiger wants to be an assistant captain next year if he doesn’t make the team? Probably a good idea. But not according to Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee.
Chamblee said that both Tiger and Phil Mickelson don’t “deserve” the roles because: “I don’t really think it’s appropriate to give players leadership roles in an event they didn’t show interest or passion for when they were competitors.”
It’s hardly surprising given that Chamblee generally rips Tiger whenever he can. On Tiger specifically, Chamblee said that the former World No. 1 doesn’t deserve to be a captain because he didn’t show “interest or passion” in the competition earlier in his career. If he had, Chamblee claims, Tiger would have finished with a record better than his current 13-17-3 career Ryder Cup record.
Would you take the job as Ryder or Presidents Cup Captain?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
Why in the world would anyone want this thankless job?
But, every two years, there are former PGA Tour players (who I always thought were pretty smart) lobbying for the worst job in all of sports. If your team loses, you were a terrible Captain who made poor tactical decisions, made the wrong pairings, or made the wrong Captain’s picks. If your team wins, they all played great, congratulations!
No thanks, Just stay at home, watch it on TV and criticize whoever was stupid enough to take this job!
Cameron Morfit of GOLF.com certainly thinks the same way. Check out his take on the subject.
Pity poor Jay Haas, who will lead the Americans into battle at the Presidents Cup on Oct. 8–11 in South Korea. Maybe nobody told him the awful truth, that being the captain of a U.S. Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup team is the worst job in sports this side of mixed martial arts mop man.
David Graham, a genuinely good guy who was just inducted into the Hall of Fame, had is captaincy of his International team taken away before a shot was even hit at the 1996 Presidents Cup, the result of a team mutiny that left everyone looking and feeling awful. At Oakland Hills in 2004 we made fun of Hal Sutton’s cowboy hat and ripped his disastrous decision to pair Tiger and Phil (0-2-0) as Bernhard Langer’s European team cruised.
Nick Faldo took arrows in 2008, when a ragtag group of Americans (no Tiger!) led by Paul Azinger stormed to victory at Valhalla. And at the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, Scotland, another player-insurrection (and odd decision-making) tarnished Tom Watson’s legacy.
Those are just a few of the lowlights.
Now we get Haas’s hotly talked about captain’s pick of Phil Mickelson as one of two wild cards to round out the 12-man roster when the Americans journey to Jack Nicklaus G.C. Korea in Incheon City. (Jay’s son Bill was the other pick — you’d better believe Jay gave a little extra thought to that one.)
Bill Haas made sense; at 11th on the points list he was next in line to make the team on merit after the 10 automatic qualifiers. But Mickelson? The critics howled. The guy who was 30th on the points list? Who hasn’t won a tournament in more than two years, is 45, is 182nd in greens in regulation, and did little more than make the cut at the Barclays and the Deutsche Bank Championship? Wouldn’t it have made sense to take a guy who represents the future (Billy Horschel, Brooks Koepka) and not the past?
Here’s the thing, though: Poor Haas couldn’t not pick Mickelson. For one thing, Haas says his players and vice captains lobbied for Lefty. But even if they hadn’t, how long do you think these guys have known each other? Two decades? How long do you think Haas has known Koepka? Two months? Call it the better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know bias, or the friendship conundrum. Whatever you call it, it’s just one reason why captains are set up to fail, in this case erring on the side of age and experience (or decrepitude, depending on how the pick performs).
Photo: Chung Sung Jun/ Getty Images
Jay Haas will captain the U.S. Presidents Cup team in Korea next month.
Love will return as U.S. captain in 2016 – Is this the Right Move?
Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional. I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website. The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time! Please post your comments below. Keep it clean and tasteful. We are here to learn from one another!
I was certainly expecting Freddie Couples to be the next Ryder Cup Captain, and so was the rest of America!
The announcement of David Love III’s selection has come as a bit of a surprise to me, but I’m certainly not against it. Davis is an astute individual, and I have the highest regard for him. However, he did lose the Ryder Cup in his last attempt, and I think the job needs to be given to someone who has shown success! And Freddie certainly has that. I certainly look forward to the next chapter in the ongoing Ryder Cup saga.
Here is Mike Walker’s of golf.com’s take on the David Love III appointment.
Davis Love III is the next Ryder Cup Captain! Congratulations Davis.
Davis Love III will be the captain of the 2016 Ryder Cup team, according to a report by the Golf Channel’s Tim Rosaforte.
Love, 50, was captain of the American team at Medinah in 2012, which lost in heartbreaking fashion after a historic European comeback in the final day of the event.
Rosaforte reported that the decision was made after multiple meetings of the PGA of America’s much-derided Ryder Cup task force that included Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, both members of the 2012 team. The task force was assembled after the Europeans routed the Tom Watson-led American team in Scotland, a loss that prompted Mickelson to complain that Watson did not include any team members in decisions.
Mickelson also questioned why the PGA of America had not continued to follow the program devised by U.S. captain Paul Azinger in 2008, the only American Ryder Cup victory this century.
The choice of Love is something of a surprise. Azinger and Fred Couples were the names in the discusion as the next Ryder Cup captain, and both Mickelson and Woods publicly gave Couples their support. However, Couples has said he is “not a PGA guy,” and Rosaforte also wrote that Couples was not popular with past Ryder Cup captains.
As captain in 2012, Love was embraced by his players, but he was not popular for letting Mickelson and Keegan Bradley sit out the Saturday afternoon team matches at Medinah at Mickelson’s request after winning their first three matches. The Europeans won the last two matches on Saturday and used them as a springboard to their storied comeback on Sunday.
Love will face off against reported European team captain Darren Clarke at the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National Golf Club near Minneapolis. According to Rosaforte, the PGA of America will make an official announcement of Love’s selection on Tuesday. The European Tour is will name Clarke captain on Wednesday.
Is Davis Love III the right choice for the next U.S. Ryder Cup captain? Join the debate in the comments section below.
