Stricker fills out US team with four more Ryder Cup rookies Rahm wins PGA of America best player award
HAVE, Wisconsin, Sept 8, (AP): Equipped with the most captain’s picks in Ryder Cup history, Steve Stricker added four more rookies to his American team that included a mixture of obvious choices and perhaps a surprise, but no Patrick Reed.
Stricker filled out his 12-man team with Tony
Finau, Xander Schauffele, Jordan Spieth and Harris English. They were the next four in the Ryder Cup standings. The other two picks went to Daniel Berger and Scottie Scheffler.
Reed has a history of thriving in team events with his personality and short game. He has a 7-3-2 record in the previous three Ryder Cups and is undefeated in singles. But he has had a poor summer, and Reed couldn’t play the final two qualifying events while hospitalized with pneumonia that made him fear for his life.
He returned to play the Tour Championship and tied for 17th in the actual score from the 30-man field.
Europe’s qualifying ends after this week’s BMW PGA Championship in England, and then Padraig Harrington announces three captain’s picks. The Ryder Cup is Sept. 24-26 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. Europe not only is defending champion, it has won nine of the last 12 times dating to 1995.
The six automatic qualifiers were Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka and Patrick Cantlay.
Scheffler becomes the first American to be picked for his first Ryder Cup without having won on the PGA Tour since Rickie Fowler in 2010 at Wales.
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Scheffler has been a steady presence, was runner-up at the Dell Match Play in March and is No. 21 in the world.
He finished 14th in the Ryder Cup standings.
Most striking is the experience. Among the six who qualified, two-time major champion Morikawa and FedEx Cup champion Cantlay have never played in the Ryder Cup. The four picks who will make the Ryder Cup debuts are Schauffele, English, Berger and Scheffler.
The six rookies is the most for the Americans since there were six on the 2008 team that won at Valhalla.
Cantlay and Schauffele were a tough team at the Presidents Cup in 2019. Berger played in the Presidents Cup in 2017.
NEW YORK, Sept. 8, (AP): Turns out that birdie Jon Rahm made on the final hole of the Tour Championship earned him a trophy.
Rahm won the points-based player of the year award from the PGA of America, and it was that birdie putt on the 18th hole at East Lake that made the difference.
Rahm finished with 75 points, with Bryson DeChambeau coming in second at 70 points.
Rahm received 30 points for his U.S. Open title this summer, along with 20 points for leading the PGA Tour money list and 20 points for winning the Vardon Trophy for the lowest adjusted scoring average.
And while he was runner-up to Patrick Cantlay in the Tour Championship, the PGA of America recognizes the actual score at East Lake. Cantlay started with a two-shot lead at 10-under par because he was the No. 1 seed. Rahm started four shots behind as the No. 4 seed.
For the week, Rahm and Kevin Na finished at 14-under 266. That means they split the 10 points awarded for a regular PGA Tour win.
DeChambeau had 30 points for his U.S. Open last September, 10 points for winning at Bay Hill, 14 points for being fourth in scoring average and 16 points for being third on the money list.
On the par-5 18th at the Tour Championship, Rahm hit a 5-iron that just ran through the back of the green. He needed to chip in to have any chance of forcing a playoff against Cantlay, who hit 6-iron to 12 feet. Rahm’s chip narrowly missed, leaving a short birdie putt.
That allowed him to tie Na at 14-under, giving him the five points that put him atop the points standing for the PGA of America award.
The PGA Tour award for player of the year is a vote of the membership. The ballot went out Tuesday and included Rahm, Cantlay, DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa and Harris English.
Justin Thomas won the PGA of America award last year, while Dustin Johnson was voted PGA Tour player of the year.
Rahm’s adjusted scoring average was 69.3. Johnson was second at 69.62.
Meanwhile, the British Open is making a rapid return to Royal Portrush.
The R&A said Wednesday the world’s oldest major championship will be back at the Northern Irish venue in 2025, just six years after attendance records were broken on the Dunluce Links when it staged the British Open for the first time since 1951.
Some 237,750 spectators attended the four days of the 2019 Open - a record in the championship’s 161-year history - as Irish player Shane Lowry won by six shots. A record 61,000 spectators attended practice days, too.
R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers said there is a “tremendous capacity to make it bigger and better.”
“The extraordinary scenes we had that week were different - they felt different - and we increasingly came to the conclusion that there is something
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special about an Open here,” Slumbers said, “and that if we delayed coming back, we may lose some of that magic.
“Coming back sooner became a real conversation for us to reinforce that.”
Slumbers said in a video call that Royal Portrush was now firmly part of a 10-course British Open rotation. There had been a contract drawn up with Northern Ireland’s government for Portrush to stage the event three times by 2040, starting with the 2019 championship.