Zach Johnson’s Final Decision Is Looming and, If History Is a Guide, Expect Some Surprises
In less than a week the United States Ryder Cup team will be locked in, as captain Zach Johnson, while seated at the PGA of America’s new home in Frisco, Texas, will reveal the six players who will complete his roster.
Most believe there is one lock: Brooks Koepka.
The five-time major winner was safely inside the top six on the points list since he won the PGA Championship at Oak Hill in May. Only on the final weekend of automatic qualifying did he slide to seventh and lose his automatic spot.
So, he clearly deserves a spot, right? In fact, history is not on Koepka’s side.
In five of the past eight Ryder Cups, a U.S. player on the bubble—or to say it another way, a player who narrowly missed out on the automatic selection—was not a captain’s pick.
Bubba Watson in 2016, Jason Dufner in ’14, Hunter Mahan in ’12, Anthony Kim in ’10 and John Rollins in ’06 were each bypassed by their respective captains. Watson actually became a vice captain for Davis Love III.
Each captain had their reasons, be it pairings, camaraderie or form, but almost two years of hard work wasn’t enough for guys who clearly believed they had earned it.
“He can do whatever he wants,” says Steve Stricker, the 2021 U.S. captain and vice captain for this year’s team, in a recent interview with Sports Illustrated. “Odds are we are going to pick him, but it’s nice to have that flexibility.”
Stricker’s first Ryder Cup came in 2008 under Paul Azinger. Like Koepka, Stricker was on the bubble and needed a captain’s pick to play at Valhalla. He’d been playing well and was confident he was going to be a pick, but still had some nerves.
“I just think that the way the system is, if you’re ninth, I would consider you having not qualified based on previous year’s performance,” says Azinger of the bubble guy and the two-year process. “I would consider you if you’re in our top nine; you should probably be an automatic.”
Azinger played in four Ryder Cup matches, including the 1993 U.S. win at the Belfry, the last time the U.S. won on foreign soil.
Azinger, who at 63 does color commentary for NBC Sports golf coverage, vividly remembers the experience of playing on the 1993 team captained by Tom Watson.
The U.S. team took the Concorde over the pond and on each seat in front of the 12 was taped an article with comments from Seve Ballesteros after a runner-up finish at the European Masters, three weeks before the Ryder Cup.
The article included comments from the Spaniard that the flight on the Concorde would be nothing but an expensive courier service for the U.S. team and that all the team was doing by coming here is bringing us the Cup back. We will win the Cup. No question.
“That made us all kind of single-minded,” Azinger said.
Another trick Watson used to keep his team focused was the clock.
Watson had calculated the time from touchdown in the U.K. to the takeoff to return home and told the players up front about the clock, posting on his door the hours left in the trip. And every time he left his room, he had recalculated the time, and the number kept getting smaller and smaller as the week came to a close.
“We couldn’t quit,” Azinger said, before the clock wound down to zero. “And that was our theme for the week. ‘What time is it?’ And when we hopped on that plane, Watson held up a big zero with the Ryder Cup and yelled out, ‘What time is it?’ ‘Zero!’ everyone yelled, and we had the Ryder Cup, and we were heading home.”
It’s unclear whether Johnson has any Watsonian tricks up his sleeve to break the 30-year road winless drought, but one thing is clear: Johnson is on the clock, and his decisions about his additional six players are not far away now.
Koepka seemingly fits the bill and has done enough for a pick, via a win at the PGA and a runner-up at the Masters. But once upon a time Bubba Watson, Jason Dufner, Hunter Mahan, Anthony Kim and John Rollins likely felt the same way.
“You look at our guys, and then you say, ‘Who’s gonna out-putt so-and-so?’ And then you just go down the list, and that’s how I would analyze it,” Azinger said. I already look at Europe like, Wow, they can putt. And I don’t know if they’re gonna out-putt our Americans or not?”