Zach Johnson Will Have His Hands Full Picking the U.S. Ryder Cup Team
HOYLAKE, England — When Zach Johnson was announced as the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup team captain in February 2022, he was looking at a team that had just dismantled a weak European team at Whistling Straits, 19-9.
The team was young with an average age of 29 and every player earned a point, with Dustin Johnson the leading winner with a 5-0 record.
That was Wisconsin. Zach Johnson will be the captain in Rome, where the U.S. team will attempt to break a 30-year streak of Ryder Cup away losses dating to 1993, when the Americans eked out a 15-13 victory at The Belfry.
Since January, Johnson has watched patiently as the 2023 team is shaping up to nothing like the 2021 team.
After this week's British Open at Royal Liverpool, the top six on the Ryder Cup points list is projected to be Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Brian Harman, Brooks Koepka, Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay.
Clark is the U.S. Open winner, Harman the British Open winner and Koepka, who jumped to LIV Golf last year, who was thought to be persona non grata until he won the PGA Championship and then peace broke out between the PGA Tour and LIV.
While Koepka could fall out of the top six before the Aug. 20 cutoff after the BMW Championship, the consensus is that he would likely earn a captain's pick from Johnson.
Add in Max Homa, who is nipping on the heels of Cantlay and Schauffele (neither of whom have won in 2023) and Rickie Fowler, a huge plus in the team room who recently won and is playing well, and Johnson has his hands full with a month left before his picks are due.
“I think I've got a selection of riches,” Johnson said after his final round at Royal Liverpool. “Again, more positives than anything. The state of American golf is great. Some of the guys that are kind of on the fringe of starting to play really well, which is awesome.”
Johnson would prefer that his decision be difficult because that would mean all his potential picks are in good form.
At the same time, Johnson is not much for picking the best 12 Americans but would rather just use the Herb Brooks approach and pick the best team.
In 1980, Brooks picked 20 players for the U.S. hockey team—not the 20 best players in the country, but the ones he believed would eventually become the best team.
“I think when it comes to the 12 best players, that's extremely subjective, how do you really measure that? Are you going to go off World Ranking, FedEx? What's your measurement? I think that's very difficult,” Johnson said. “It's also very difficult to put the 12 best guys together for that week. But I'm leaning more on that. I don't know if it's horses for courses, but that's an element.”
The team room atmosphere is an important component and Johnson wants to make sure that the 12 on the team, plus himself and the assistant captains, want to be around each other.
In the past communication has been a big issue, including leading up to the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles where the U.S. team got drilled 16.5-11.5. Since then the U.S. team has tried to be more transparent, which has generally worked, but the process will be tested when the team travels to Rome.
Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson and Collin Morikawa are all alumni from the 2021 team and all likely needing a pick to make the 2023 squad.
Add in the resurgence of Fowler, the solid play of Homa (who had his first top 10 in a major on Sunday), Cameron Young (who is inside the top 10 on the points list) and recent winner Keegan Bradley and there are too many players for the 12 spots.
Of course, with four events to go this can change dramatically, but one thing is clear: Johnson has a formula and he's not likely to pick seven through 12 in points as other have done.
Continuity, camaraderie and unselfishness will be paramount.
Pairings are important as well as form but in the end, Johnson likely wants to mold this team in his image of a tenacious player that got everything out of his game.
But all of this is still a bit academic, since the process of picking players is not balanced but skewed toward money and the FedEx Cup is all about money.
“Between now and, say, Chicago, it's going to be discussions, it's going to be probably solidifying my leadership team, and then starting to piece some things together,” Johnson said. "But our point system is just so volatile—our points system is based on money, and when you inflate the money, volatility ensues.”
It’s a volatility that is seemingly unfair and favors those that get into those events, but it’s the process that was agreed upon, so Johnson will have to use the tools given him by the PGA of America and wait.
“I can't sit here and say that, oh, this is going to happen, that's going to happen, I have no idea, because you just never know what might happen based on how guys finish,” Johnson said. “Finishing in the top 10 in one of those elevated events is just substantial. “