The U.S. Has Continuity in Ryder and Presidents Cup Captains, But Not Much of a Pipeline
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Zach Johnson last week named Fred Couples to his staff of vice captains for the Ryder Cup in Rome, a move that hardly comes as a surprise. Despite being 63, Couples—who played on five U.S. Ryder Cup teams—has been part of the scene on and off going back to the 1980s.
He was an assistant for Davis Love III at the 2022 Presidents Cup (as well as at the 2012 Ryder Cup), an assistant for Steve Stricker at the 2021 Ryder Cup, and assistant for Tiger Woods at the 2019 Presidents Cup. He’s a three-time winning Presidents Cup captain in 2009, 2011 and 2013.
So all of that makes sense.
What doesn’t make sense is how any of the current situation is grooming potential captains for the future.
Who is going to be the U.S. Ryder Cup captain in 2025 at Bethpage Black?
Couples joins Stricker, Love and Jim Furyk as vice captains—and all have already served as U.S. Ryder Cup captains.
When the often-mocked Ryder Cup "task force" was formed in 2014 in the wake of another loss to Europe—the third in a row and sixth out of the last seven—one of its goals was to prepare future captains through assistant duties and have continuity between events, including the Presidents Cup.
The continuity part has not been a problem. This will be the sixth time Couples serves as an assistant through both events. Love has now been a Ryder Cup captain twice and a Presidents Cup captain once in addition to being an assistant in 2016 and again in 2021. Stricker has done both. Furyk is the 2024 Presidents Cup captain, having captained the 2018 Ryder Cup team.
Unless they want to make Couples the 2025 Ryder Cup captain— and it’s not necessarily a bad idea given all the help he would have—there is nobody who is part of this year's group in line to take over.
With Phil Mickelson—who for years was penciled into the role at Bethpage—seemingly out of the picture due to his participation in LIV Golf, the only obvious candidate is Tiger Woods, who has been a part of the process behind the scenes in each of the previous years in addition to his Presidents Cup captaincy in 2019.
Woods was an assistant to Love for the 2016 Ryder Cup, an assistant to Stricker at the 2017 Presidents Cup, a player on the 2018 U.S. Ryder Cup team and then captain at the Presidents Cup a year later. He’s an easy choice.
But what if Woods does not want to do it then? He’d obviously be a great choice for Ireland in 2027 as well.
Webb Simpson was an assistant last year to Love, but that was a move made more due to his knowledge of the tournament site, Quail Hollow. Matt Kuchar and David Duval assisted Furyk in 2018 in France. If any of those three were to be a candidate for 2025, you’d think they should probably be on board as an assistant this year and next year.
One out-of-the-box idea: Name Woods the captain for each of the next two Ryder Cups. It’s unlikely to happen, but Woods does not need to be on Tour all the time to be effective. He’d get plenty of help from whoever he names as assistants to do the behind-the-scenes grunt work, is amazingly plugged into the game even from afar and would get total buy-in from all involved on the American side.
He could function almost like a CEO who delegates a lot of authority but is there to make the important decisions.
Short of that, the American side seemingly has some decisions to make about its team leadership going forward.