What’s the point of having picks, when it comes to the Ryder Cup?

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Download NBA 2K Mobile now on the App Store and Google Play. A bit unceremoniously, I might add, Zach Johnson, the captain of the United States Ryder Cup team, just spit out kind of what we all expected, which is that Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Colin Morikawa, Ricky Fowler, and Sam Burns would be the six players added to the original qualifying six for the Ryder Cup team. Bob Herrig of Sports Illustrated, golf writer extraordinaire joins us on the Adam Gold Show. There really wasn't anything surprising here. Were you concerned at all that Brooks Koepka, who won a major, the PGA by the way, and the PGA of America runs the Ryder Cup, and nearly won the Masters, were you concerned at all that there might be some live pushback and that somehow Zach might overlook, in air quotes, Brooks Koepka?

Yeah, hi Adam. I think I was mildly concerned about that. I mean, I brought it up as a possibility when he fell out of the top six. Listen, it would have been foolish to do that. It would have created undue angst. The people that don't want him on there are just, look, I get that there's a lot of venom towards Liv, and that there's a lot of people that really, really don't like it, and that's fine, but the tour decided to enter into this framework agreement under the guise of making peace in the game, and then you're going to keep out a guy who clearly, he makes that team, you know, he makes that team, he played 10 Ryder Cup qualifying events, four this year and six last year, when the points were greatly reduced last year, and he really had a bad year, and you know, Xander Shafle, who should be on the team and finish six, played in 26 qualifying events.

Right. I mean, come on, he was, you know, I have a standard line, if you're not in the top six, if you're not an automatic qualifier, you don't deserve anything, but Brooks is the closest to deserving it as anybody, and I think, you know, it's, you know, his comments suggested that the other guys wanted him on the team, his major record, his Ryder Cup record, all of that means you put him on there. And Zach basically said today, after the selections were announced, that Brooks made the team. I mean, as you alluded to, he played in so few events, and frankly, could have won more majors. He basically made the team with his play. He's also one of those guys that relishes this, and I think, and Zach talked about being good in the team room, and he's certainly good inside the ropes.

This, he was made for events like this. Here's my curiosity, and I don't know, I had reached out to you just to get your thoughts on who you thought might be picked, and I have, I mean, not that I write, because you're, that's you, but I tweet because this is what I do, it's quicker. I thought all along that if it were up to me, I would be taking Dustin Johnson as well. Do you think that there was ever a consideration to take Dustin Johnson?

Yeah, that's a curious one, I suppose. And Zach said today that he didn't even call Johnson nor DeChambeau, which I found to be, certainly in DJ's case, surprising. He said he really just looked at the guys who are close in the points, and obviously, Bryson and Dustin Johnson weren't close in the points because they weren't earning points, you know, but there was an argument to be made, I think way more so for DJ than for Bryson, five and oh two years ago, still very popular among all these guys. Of all the guys who went to live, there's probably the least amount of venom towards him. He never spoke badly about the PGA Tour.

He resigned his membership immediately. In fact, he said nothing but good things about the PGA Tour. I just wanted to do this opportunity, you know, he's been very, very low key about the whole thing.

He didn't get involved in the lawsuit, none of that stuff. So there was a guy that you could have picked, I think, you know, look, he didn't play great either the last couple of months. And, you know, if he had done anything, I think if he has a good British Open or, you know, or if he had won the last one of the last two live events or something like that, you know, his play in the majors was a little bit disappointing. I think his best finish was 10th at the US Open.

He does anything there. I think he's way more in the conversation. Because clearly Zach was looking for experience. Five of the six picks have played in the Ryder Cup. And the one who hasn't, which was Sam Burns, is good buddies with Scheffler. They were partners at the President's Cup last year. Zach made it pretty clear that the sort of the feelings of the players and the ability to find pairings amongst them, they're comfortable with, you know, really kind of was a big consideration. So I mean, you could map out some pairings right now that wouldn't be out of the realm. Cantlay and Shockley have been teammates in both President's Cup and Ryder Cup.

You could, Spieth and Thomas have been a good team. In fact, there's a controversial team in Paris and they went three and one in a terrible US effort otherwise. Burns and Scheffler played now they didn't have a great record in the President's Cup last year, but they do have experience playing together.

And that matters, I think, you know, in these formats. And then, you know, so there's three of three of the four teams right there, you know, and so now you've, I mean, I could easily see those three teams playing all four matches and now you've only got one other team and you've got a great ball striker Morikawa. You know, you've got newcomers like Harmon and Wyndham Clark, who's, you know, Wyndham Clark's a good putter. You know, Max Houma has President's Cup experience.

He could play great with Morikawa. I mean, you know, it's now all of a sudden like the piece is fit and, you know, I've seen a lot of blowback about Justin Thomas. Oh, you know, good old boys and all this stuff. Well, you know, look, Justin Thomas isn't exactly a good old boys 30. He's only played in two Ryder Cups.

You know, I understand why there's concern. He hasn't played well this year, but the whole reason for giving yourself picks is so that you can mix and match and yet you can make a decision like this. Otherwise, just take the top 12.

Right. I mean, in the past, certain captains have done similar to that. I think Jack Nicklaus, when he was a captain at one point, just went to the next and that point they only had two other picks.

There was the top 10 qualify. He would just take the next two. Made it easy on himself.

He didn't have to ruffle any feathers. Bob Herrig of Sports Illustrated at Bob Herrig on Twitter is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show. I never for one second thought that that Justin Thomas would not be on this team.

Not for a single second. Just because like I know I'll just use the example of Lucas Glover, who won two events and suddenly was being talked about as he could get picked. And I never thought for a second, no offense to Lucas Glover, who was a great story and got hot and won two times and saved his tour card by winning at least the first event because he was in danger of losing his card, his status without it. But he won these two events, won right down the road here at Wyndham in Greensboro. But there's nothing more overrated than the hot hand with four weeks between the tournaments that he just won and the Ryder Cup.

What is that? That doesn't do anything for you. You're not still hot. I mean, maybe you could be, but I'd rather take the player with who is historically great than the player who just happens to be on a little bit of a run right now. Did you think that Lucas Glover had a chance when we got right down to it? You know, I thought that there was the possibility if he really, you know, like was up there in these last two events that maybe now you got to think about him and again, nothing against him. And I wouldn't have had a problem with them picking him, you know, but it would have been for other reasons.

It would have been gets along with everybody. He's putting great, you know, easy to match up with somebody maybe like Brian Harmon or Wyndham Clark. I mean, if those are your reasons, fine, but you're right. A recent form doesn't mean anything. The event's a month away. I mean, JT could refine his form. I mean, just because he's been poor doesn't mean he's going to be forever. He'll have gone seven weeks since the, you know, well now he's going to, I say, you know, since the, since his last event of this year, he's playing at the Fortnite next week, you know, and I've met you though. I bet you, you know, there'll be some eyeballs to see how well he does there. The other thing I would say about that is a 72 whole stroke play tournaments over the course of the year do not are not necessarily indicative of match play success.

You know, I mean, it's just a different animal. You don't have to play every match, you know, like I, this was obviously months ago before he got hurt, but you know, when we weren't quite sure how good tiger was going to be this year, we didn't know if he was going to make it through the year or, you know, we thought that he might, but it would be limited. There'd be no way that he qualified for the team. Right. But I had this notion that I wrote about, like you could just pick them and have them play Sunday singles only because at the time you were so locked in with who was going to be on this team, including some of the guys I mentioned earlier, that you could bring tiger along for, for moral and obviously, you know, you know, a lot, a lot of support given how much he's, how much he's revered and then put them out there first on Sunday and dead and some dead and some of the crowd, because tiger just to get through one 18 hole match at as good as he is, should have probably handled that, you know? So again, like this is the point of having the picks is you, you can, you can think outside the box a little bit, you know, the guy, you know, the big, I think the big shunned guy here was cam young.

He was ninth and points. Yeah. There were years that they went to nine guys, but young hasn't won really the only part of the two biggest tournaments he's, he's been competitive in, uh, you know, over the past two years or the British open where the greens are slower just putting is not an asset. It's been a thing that holds them back.

The U S has some shaky putters as it is, and this has been their drawback and Ryder cups. So, you know, I thought I saw him as an easy guy to, to miss the, the one I, you know, in my guesses and the ones I sent to you, I was wrong about Keegan. Right. You know, I, I thought Keegan might get picked over Sam burns, but again, we don't know the back room dealings.

How much did Sheffler want burn burns is a great up and coming player, you know? Uh, so like, I don't like you started off. I don't really think any of this is a surprise.

Yeah. To me, hashtag as expected, uh, really. And I mean, I have no problem if Scotty Sheffler picked Sam burns. If Zach said, Hey, you're the number one player in the world. Uh, you're, you qualified on points basically in January.

Uh, then you get to make the first pick. Who do you like? I like Sam. He's my friend. Uh, boom. There you go.

You got, you have your friend. He was one of the, you know, the leading cat. He might've been Zach's pick also, uh, for all we know.

And especially if Dustin wasn't part of the equation, which, uh, not even getting a phone call is a little bit curious, but again, it was justifiable because if he had shot, uh, 6158 to win Greenbrier like Bryson DeChambeau did, and we'll close on this Bob Eric, uh, would Zach have had his eyes open, maybe to DJ. Hey, Carolina Panthers fans, Chris Lee and Dennis Cox here. We're excited to offer you all the insight information on your team with the newest member of the Capitol Broadcasting podcast network Panthers playbook twice a week. We'll keep you updated on your Carolina Panthers. We're talking about locker room, insight, exclusive interviews, and of course, in-depth looks at all of the Panthers wins.

Touchdown Carolina Panthers playbook, download and subscribe today at wrelsportsfan.com or wherever you discover your favorite podcasts. You know, it's possible. Uh, one of the reasons I had some pause with Kefka is because Zach's comments about live were a bit cryptic all along. And I just wonder if that's because he didn't quite know how to deal with live that, you know, he's obviously loyal to the PGA tour. He doesn't know how it was going to come across. Um, you know, he made comments like, which frankly, I, you know, I think Zach's great, but I think these comments were ill-advised. He's like, well, you know, I don't know anything about the golf courses they're playing. You know, it's hard for me to judge them.

Well, you know, that's, that's, that's, that's really not a great thing to say. There's, there's, there's stats. There's, you know, data golf stats views, strokes, gain stats that you can decipher. You can figure out, you can clearly get highlights of the event. You know, the Greenbrier is a course that he played. It was a tour event, tour course, you know, um, you know, so was Tucson. There've been, you know, I mean, so I thought that rang a little hollow and it made me wonder if he felt some pressure to really downplay those guys. I'm sure. So to your point, to your point, you know, recent form, the Greenbrier, not, not that recent to the Ryder cup. Right. True.

But it would have opened up his eyes because there were people who were championing, I guess, English for Bryson based on 6158. And I mean, that's awesome. Holy cow. That is just amazing. But it didn't, it certainly did not sway.

And I don't think really he was a candidate anyway. Bob Herig from Sports Illustrated. I appreciate your time, sir. We'll talk again. Sounds great. Thanks for having me. Take care. Bob Herig from Sports Illustrated at Bob Herig on Twitter.