PC pickin': Canadians, Keegan and no JT
Furyk auto-drafts strictly by the book; Weir stocks up on homegrown talent for Montreal
Keegan Bradley gets a pick to play Presidents Cup (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Keegan Bradley’s command apprenticeship will have to wait.
In perhaps the biggest intrigue surrounding Jim Furyk’s picks for his U.S. Presidents Cup team on Tuesday, it was the 2025 U.S. Ryder Cup captain who got the call to be a player instead of assistant captain later this month at Royal Montreal.
And if turnabout is fair play, the subplot to the entire situation is Justin Thomas did not get selected.
Last year, amid considerable fanfare, Bradley was bypassed by U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson in favor of a slew of buddy picks, including Thomas, Jordan Spieth, Rickie Fowler and Sam Burns.
None of them had a particularly great Ryder Cup, and the “Boys Club’’ talking point picked up considerable momentum afterward, with Bradley’s disappointment on full display in season two of the Netflix “Full Swing” documentary.
When Bradley became the surprise choice this summer to lead the U.S. team next year at Bethpage Black, the idea of him competing in the Presidents Cup this year didn’t seem to register.
He hadn’t posted a top-10 finish since he tied for second at the Charles Schwab Challenge in May and was well out of the points race.
But after sweating out a poor performance at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and barely getting the last top-50 spot into the BMW Championship field, Bradley won at Castle Pines to secure his seventh career PGA Tour title, earning a spot in the Tour Championship and moving to 10th place in the final Presidents Cup standings.
That was good enough for Furyk, who added Nos. 7-12 off the points list as his captain’s picks.
“That definitely caught a lot of folks’ eyes,’’ Furyk said Tuesday during a conference call to explain his six picks. “The assistant captains, knowing a guy’s season is on the line and he goes out and performs under the ultimate pressure. After that, it seemed a foregone conclusion he was going to join our team.
“For me, having all the pressure on him and knowing it was pretty much win and he was in or out and he was able to do it, was pretty key.”
The six automatic qualifiers for the U.S. team were Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay and Sahith Theegala. Only Theegala did not have previous U.S. team experience.
Furyk then went straight down the points list in choosing Sam Burns, Tony Finau, Russell Henley, Bradley, Brian Harman and Max Homa.
Henley will be competing on his first international team and while Harman and Homa did not have great summers, neither did anyone outside of the top 12. Thomas finished 19th in the points. Rookie Nick Dunlap, who won twice this year including once as an amateur, was also bypassed despite having a small window to earn points.
“I definitely don’t want this to be about why one person was picked over another,” Furyk said when explaining Homa as one of his picks. “I look at how Max has played the last two years. He was undefeated (at the Presidents Cup) in Charlotte and had our best record last year in Rome (at the Ryder Cup). And he brings a lot of intangibles. Emotional leader. Kind of the glue. Brings the team together. It comes very natural to Max.”
Bradley, 38, will forego his vice captain’s role that he believed was very valuable to his captaincy next year. Furyk said he will likely be replaced but will be kept in the loop on all decisions so as to help him with his own captaincy.
“It will be a lot of the same guys next year,” Furyk said.
The Americans is 12-1-1 in the competition and have won nine in a row. Team USA’s only loss came in 1998 in Australia.
Canadians Mackenzie Hughes (left) and Corey Conners make Mike Weir’s list (Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
International team captain Mike Weir chose three Canadians among his six picks to round out his 12-man team.
Weir, who won the 2003 Masters and is from Canada, announced that fellow Canadians Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith and Mackenzie Hughes would be joining automatic qualifiers Hideki Matsuyama, Sungjae Im, Adam Scott, Tom Kim, Jason Day and Ben An.
All six of the automatic qualifiers have previous Presidents Cup experience and Weir is tapping into the three Canadians to help with a home crowd atmosphere. In picking those three players, Weir bypassed Canadians Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin.
Taylor won last year’s RBC Canadian Open — the first Canadian to do so since 1954 — and had a victory in Phoenix earlier this year. But his form fell off considerably after that. Weir went past him to pick Hughes.
His other picks were South Africa’s Christiaan Bezuidenhout, first-timer Min Woo Lee of Australia and South Korea’s Si Woo Kim.