Zach Johnson got the team he wanted, but is it the right fit for the course?
History is the ultimate judge, and the relative success or failure of the U.S. Ryder Cup team next month in Rome will decide whether Zach Johnson’s six captain’s picks helped turn the tide of America’s futility in Europe or were simply another chapter in a slide that dates back three decades.
Johnson went with Brooks Koepka, Jordan Spieth, Collin Morikawa, Sam Burns, Rickie Fowler and Justin Thomas, Nos. 7, 8, 10, 12, 13 and 15 on the final U.S. points list, respectively, and pretty much what anyone with a modicum of interest and a voice on social media thought would be his lineup.
Koepka dropped out of the top 6 automatic qualifiers at the 11th hour and was a lock, despite some push back because of his status as a member of LIV Golf. Prior to June 6 that might have been an issue, but ever since the framework agreement was announced between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, it’s a non-story.
It was also telling that Johnson’s response when asked about picking Koepka was, “guys want to play with him,” which is code for, “guys like him.”
Spieth is the U.S. side’s most experienced Ryder Cup player, which always weighs heavily for an overseas match, and Morikawa and Fowler likely got the nod for experience as well. Thomas is the most successful active match-play competitor on the U.S. side with a 6-2-1 record, and Johnson called him the “heart and soul” of the team. While Burns is the outlier, he did win the WGC-Match Play in March and is an easy fit to pair with Scottie Scheffler, who he counts as a close friend.
Johnson’s picks were largely safe considering that Cameron Young (No. 9 on the points list) was the only player among the top 10 who wasn’t selected, and with three rookies already qualified for the team – Max Homa, Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman – most captains would have leaned on experience.
But it’s not necessarily the players that he picked as much as it is their style of play that will leave Johnson open to second-guessing.
By most accounts, Marco Simone Golf & Country Club in Rome is a super-charged version of Le Golf National, host of the 2018 matches outside of Paris. You remember Le Golf National: narrow fairways with ridiculously thick rough groomed back toward the tee box in the 300- to 320-yard range; small greens that registered just a tad faster on the Stimpmeter than your average muni.
Le Golf National was everything a PGA Tour course is not and as a result the U.S. side – which featured the heavyweight likes of then-world Nos. 1 Koepka, 2 Dustin Johnson, 6 Thomas, 7 Patrick Cantlay, 8 Tiger Woods, 9 Xander Schauffele and 10 Bryson DeChambeau – got rolled.
That colossus of American firepower was swept in Friday’s foursomes session, began the Sunday singles frame trailing, 10-6, and won just one of the last seven matches on the way to a 17 ½ to 10 ½ defeat.
Given the unique demands of Le Golf National the punchy analysis leaving Paris was that the U.S. team would have been better off playing Furyk and his two vice captains, Johnson and Matt Kuchar, a threesome of fairways-and-greens players with above-average short games.
If Marco Simone is going to be a similar test, which, according to at least one source close to the European team, it will, Johnson’s picks don’t exactly align with that statistical fingerprint. During his press conference on Tuesday, the U.S. captain referenced the models he used to select his six picks, but the data doesn’t seem to back that up.
“It's not just saying we have these one or two stats that fit this golf course. We have the ability to put these guys on that golf course and essentially the way their games are and see if they fit,” Johnson said. “When modeling the golf course, we kind of know what the tendencies are as far as what they've done over there tee to green in the setup, so all of those factors are kind of molded into one when it comes to the modeling, the fit for Marco Simone.”
According to the European team source, there are four facets that a captain should consider when picking a player for Marco Simone – driving accuracy, putting, greens in regulation and scrambling – and a statistical breakdown of Johnson’s picks paints an incomplete picture, based on that criteria.
Morikawa is second in driving accuracy, 111th in strokes gained: putting, third in GIR and 83rd in scrambling; Fowler is 93rd, 44th, 33rd and 51st, respectively.
Spieth ranks inside the top 50 in just one of those categories (scrambling, 32nd) and Burns is well outside the top 100 in accuracy and GIR, but is 11th in sg: putting and 48th in scrambling. It’s Thomas, however, who ranks outside the top 100 in all four categories, that truly goes against the grain.
Comparison shopping is the best part of captain’s picks and potential alternatives to Thomas fit the profile better.
While Young is inside the top 100 in only one of those categories (46th in GIR), Lucas Glover – a late consideration after winning back-to-back events to end the season – was ninth in accuracy, 156th in sg: putting, 12th in GIR and 24th in scrambling. Keegan Bradley was 95th in accuracy, 21st in sg: putting, 73rd in GIR and 137th in scrambling. Johnson’s model might have just been a loose guideline.
“As far as course fit and the guys, I can't come up with one or two or three stats that would just fall off the page there,” Johnson said. “It's really taking those individuals into the golf course and seeing how they will perform.
“In talking to all of the individuals that we confer with on this process, these are the six guys that we feel we need to go over there to complement the six guys that earned their way and make this team complete.”
The collapse of the 2014 U.S. team in Scotland and the task force that followed focused on creating continuity between teams which would, in theory, shorten the learning curve for captains. Johnson’s leadership has largely followed the blueprint. But if Marco Simone is what we think it is, the lesson of the ’18 matches could loom large in Rome.
