As Tiger Woods strolled to his 12th victory in a major golf championship yesterday (second now only to Jack Nicklaus’ 18 major wins), the big news out of Medinah was the confirmation of the ten players who earned a spot on this year’s American Ryder Cup team, which will compete against the European team on September 22-24 at the K Club in Straffan, Ireland, about 25 miles west of Dublin:
1. Tiger Woods
2. Phil Mickelson
3. Jim Furyk
4. Chad Campbell
5. David Toms
6. Chris DiMarco
7. Vaughn Taylor
8. J.J. Henry
9. Zach Johnson
10. Brett Wetterich
American Ryder Cup captain Tom Lehman will announce his two captain’s choices this morning. Davis Love and Stewart Cink appear to be the likely choices, although a resurgent Corey Pavin appears to have a real chance. Meanwhile, Lawrence Donegan of the Guardian reports that European team captain Ian Woosnam has asked Ireland’s Darren Clarke, whose wife died of cancer last week, to accept one of the European captain’s choices and then makes the following observation about Lehman’s options and the American team:
If Woosnam faces difficult decisions ahead, however, they are nothing to the selection worries of his American counterpart. Tom Lehman, who will announce his team later today, has been hidebound by a selection process that has given too much weight to victories in weaker PGA Tour events, with the upshot that many on the fringes of his team are rookies or players whose records suggest that they may be capable winning a tournament in Albuquerque but might crumble under the pressure of the Ryder Cup.
By the way, of the four American rookies who made the team (Taylor, Johnson, Henry and Wetterich), only Henry made the cut in the PGA and he played the final three rounds in 4 over to finish at even par 288 for the week, tied for 41st. The European team — which has won the last the last two Ryder Cup competitions — will be finalized on Sept. 3. Five European players have qualified so far — David Howell, Colin Montgomerie, Jose Maria Olazabal, Henrik Stenson and Luke Donald, who clinched his position with a tie for third in the PGA.
Meanwhile, Woods was every bit as dominant and in control in winning the PGA as he was last month in winning the British Open, and Donegan’s European perspective on Woods’ performance is one of the best. Although Woods played brilliantly on the front nine, Woods put this one away from my perspective on the 11th hole when, after hitting a poor tee-shot into heavy fairway rough, Woods hammered his approach shot out of the mess to eight feet and then holed the birdie putt. Inasmuch as virtually every other competitor would have been scrambling for a par under the same circumstances, Woods’ birdie signaled decisively to the field that the only competition yesterday was for second place and Ryder Cup points.