Koivun a Prez Cup captain's pick? Just do it
Team USA needs to season some fresh blood; Travelers tapped as tier 1; Stray Shots
The Daily Drive is a reader supported newsletter. For about $1 a week, your paid subscription can help sustain our full-time coverage of golf.
Jackson Koivun needs fast-tracking into Team USA culture (Andrew Wevers/Getty Images)
If Jim Furyk has not done so already, he should be on the phone to Brandt Snedeker, making sure Jackson Koivun is one of his at-large picks for this year’s U.S. Presidents Cup team.
There is no point in analyzing prospective pairings, looking at the points list, seeing who else might be in line for one of Snedeker’s spots on the team that will face an International squad in September at Medinah.
If the U.S. Ryder Cup side — of which Furyk will be the captain in 2027 — is serious about ending a 34-year road losing streak to Europe next year at Adare Manor in Ireland, you get Koivun on this year’s team and get him acclimated to the system and environment.
And perhaps in the process you might even find a suitable partner for Scottie Scheffler.
Also in today’s DD
Travelers is first official Championship Series event announced
Stray Shots recaps a milestone 3M Open performance
This is really not difficult. It’s so obvious, it shouldn’t even really be a debate. In fact, if there are any other young, up-and-coming players — Luke Clanton perhaps, or Akshay Bhatia — that is deemed a potential help to the U.S. cause, get them on this year’s Presidents Cup team and use it as a testing ground for next year.
That notion of using it as a proving ground is not likely to sit well with those in charge of the Presidents Cup. And Snedeker, undoubtedly, is concerned about his team that has to play in September. All of that is fair.
But the U.S. has dominated the Presidents Cup, suffering just a single loss and a tie going back to its inception in 1994 which was a year after the last time a U.S. Ryder Cup team won on foreign soil. Team USA will again face a weakened International side that will be without some of its best options such as Joaquin Niemann and Carlos Ortiz, who play for LIV Golf and are thus ineligible.
The idea for the better part of the past decade is for the two U.S. international teams to work together, to build cohesion with continuity among assistants and captains and players. What better way to get that process going than to include a rising superstar like Koivun, no matter how his abbreviated PGA Tour season finishes.
With his victory Sunday at the 3M Open over world No. 1 Scheffler — plus major winners Hideki Matsuyama and Brian Harman stack up immediately behind him — Koivun moved to 70th in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings. Impressive for a guy
