Ryder Cup decision time for Tiger
Team drama illustrates merit from Australia to Louisiana; Stray Shots misses marquee moments
Can Tiger Woods be engaged enough to captain America? (Aurelien Meunier/Getty Images)
The PGA Championship is approaching with a return to Valhalla Golf Club, the fourth time the Louisville, Kentucky, venue will stage what is now the year’s second major championship.
It is where Tiger Woods captured a riveting victory in 2000 in a playoff over Bob May, one that gave him a third straight major title — a first since Ben Hogan in 1953 — on his way to the “Tiger Slam,’’ which he completed by winning the 2001 Masters.
With two weeks to go, it is unclear whether Woods will even play the PGA Championship. He suggested at the Masters that he would attempt to do so, but given his physical limitations, nothing about his schedule is guaranteed anymore.
Still, the 48-year-old 15-time major champion who won the PGA four times will still dominate the conversation.
The reason? The Ryder Cup.
The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black is still 18 months away, but the PGA of America is long past the point of naming the next captain to take over the role Zach Johnson filled in Rome last year. This is certainly not the end of the world, but the clock is ticking. The organization that runs the Ryder Cup in the United States wants to be able to market its captain, along with a slew of other things.
Europe long ago named England’s Luke Donald to reprise his winning role from Rome.
Woods is the favorite of the PGA of America to take up the reins of an American team that was badly beaten in Rome while Donald will try to win the cup for Europe in the United States for the first time since 2012 at Medinah.
The PGA of America doesn’t want that to occur, so they are pulling out the big guns to protect the home field.
For those that are in the know, you will remember this was Phil Mickelson’s Ryder Cup captaincy to lose in his adopted New York market. Mickelson managed to lose it when the big left-hander jumped to LIV Golf, essentially forfeiting his presumed spot in Long Island.
So now all eyes are on Woods, who may or may not have met with CEO Seth Waugh of the PGA of America about the opening. Woods asked to hold off those conversations until after the Masters.
Woods has resisted committing to being captain since he has a lot going on, including his role as a player director on the PGA Tour Policy Board. He said in December when asked specifically about the Ryder Cup that the board duties took precedent. Well, now it’s getting to the time to decide.
None of us get a vote here, but if we did, I would vote on passing on Tiger and going for another American to helm the team on home turf.
Unlike the Presidents Cup, where Woods excelled as playing captain in Australia, the Ryder Cup captaincy is so much more of a commitment than the contrived PGA Tour knockoff version.
Woods would not be a good fit for such a commitment.
It’s possible the PGA of America could cut back on Woods’ role — something they have already been discussing internally — so he can meet newly outlined limited responsibilities, that no other captain has been allowed to do.
Woods, one of the best players on the planet for most of his career, was never a great Ryder Cupper with a record of 13-21-3 in eight Ryder Cups. Team USA is 1-7 against Europe in Ryder Cups with Tiger on the team — the lone victory coming in 1999 at Brookline.
Does his record matter? Maybe or maybe not. But it’s just more a part of a bigger picture.
For Woods, with his record, his involvement on both PGA Tour boards, his dislike for LIV Golf and its players and the fact that the commitment to his captaincy would be watered down to placate him … it leaves an uneasiness.
The Ryder Cup is still one of the most important events in golf and to lessen the responsibility of the position to get the captain you want seems disingenuous to both the fans and the competition.
Let find someone else and potentially schedule Woods to helm the U.S. team in Ireland in 2027.
South Africa’s Dean Burmester tried to quiet the Aussie gallery (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)
Team golf hits its mark
Two weekend events a half a world away from each other — in Adelaide, South Australia and New Orleans, Louisiana — proved that team golf can have an important place in a game filled with individual competition.
This is not a profound statement, but for some reason, the powers that be in professional golf have largely ignored this fundamental truth.
It’s similar to the concept that people get more into match play than stroke play, which used to be a constant in professional golf. That was before the TV bill-payers objected to the format because big names could easily be gone from the competition before viewers settled down to watch. That’s why the PGA Championship switched from match play to medal after 1957, at the dawn of the golf on television era.
Now — since the demise of the WGC Match Play last season — match play at the professional level is limited mainly to international team competitions such as the Ryder Cup, Presidents Cup and Solheim Cup. The amateur game still embraces it for major USGA and R&A events as well as the Walker Cup and Curtis Cup. The patriotism component adds to the interest level as well.
This weekend again supported the idea of team golf — both Down Under in Australia and in the bayou of New Orleans — with overwhelming success.
Rippers GC mates do shoeys to celebrate raucus win Down Under (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)
LIV Golf Adelaide concluded with a the first-ever head-to-head team playoff between Ripper GC (made up of Australians) and Stinger GC (an all-South African team) that saw raucous Aussie fans rooting for the Cam Smith-led Ripper team and actually cheering bad shots by South Africans Louis Oosthuizen and Dean Burmester.
Needless to say, the Ripper victory in overtime was a welcome outcome and the fans soaked it all in.
Back in the states, where the LIV event was on in the middle of the night, it showed promise, enhanced by the match-play nature of the sudden-death playoff — something that is missed in the primary LIV format of individual players adding their scores for the team total.
Irish mates Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry belted out laughs (Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images)
In the Zurich Classic of New Orleans — which had two-man teams playing alternate rounds of better-ball and alternate-shot over four days — the Irish team of Shane Lowry and Rory McIlroy took the title in an alternate-shot playoff win as well over Chad Ramey and Martin Trainer.
Neither event lacked for excitement, which makes you wonder why we don’t see more team golf?
Stray Shots: Pre-PGA May doldrums?
By Peter Kaufman
1. Who Are Those Guys? I will grant you the major-winning Irish champions and the Canadian duo of Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor. But the rest of the top 10 this weekend at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, and most of the rest of the field? Let’s be honest — looking at this list, could you really tell me if this was a group of professional golfers, or a list of sixth- and seventh-round NFL draft picks, or even names on Most Wanted posters at the Post Office?
EARNINGS
---- ----- -----
1. McIlroy/Lowry -25 $2,572,100
2. Ramey/Trainer -25 $1,050,200
3. Brehm/Hubbard -24 $687,525
4. Blair/Fishburn -23 $468,363
4. Echavarria/Greyserman -23 $468,363
4. Stevens/Barjon -23 $468,363
4. Higgo/Fox -23 $468,363
8. Hadley/Sigg -22 $298,150
8. Detry/MacIntyre -22 $298,150
10. N.Taylor/Hadwin -21 $244,750Between this field, and it being a tag-team event, is Rory McIlroy really counting this as his 25th PGA Tour victory? The shame of it.
2. No Scottie, No Major, No Villains, No Bueno. No, Scottie still is not Mr. Excitement. But I know I missed his other-worldly excellence this week, and will confess a quick glance of the Scheffler-less leaderboard, replete with pretty few name players and two-man teams at that, did not exactly have me grabbing the remote from my daughter and telling her “don’t you dare change the channel.” What about you?
3. What’s Next? The CJ Cup Byron Nelson in Texas, a Carolinas combo of Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, N.C., and inaugural Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Classic and finally on the PGA Championship on May 16-19, which this year is at Valhalla in Kentucky. Only four players in the OWGR top 30 are playing this week at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas — Jordan Spieth (No. 20), Jason Day (22), Tom Kim (23) and Will Zalatoris (30).
Another week of No Scottie, No Major, No Villains, No Bueno? Well this week, if past is prologue, the tournament should produce a lot of low scores and potentially a real shoot-out, with not just FedEx Cup points but also an ability to join the Wells Fargo and PGA fields. Sure hope it’s compelling this weekend. It would really be good to be entertained before the PGA Championship.
4. It’s Really Quiet. LIV/PIF/PGA Tour negotiations, allegedly taking place, are under the radar. Mr. Scheffler is tending to his bride and child (not many kids have been in the glare of publicity before being born as this one). Nelly Korda took last week off. Just not a lot of interesting things seem to be happening this week.
All of the LIV-haters constantly whine that “can’t we just get back to golf, the way it used to be and should be?” I have to say, with all quiet on the Saudi front, it’s just suddenly a trifle boring.