The easy work has been completed for captain Zach Johnson and his U.S. Ryder Cup team.
Six players – Scottie Scheffler, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay, Brian Harman, Max Homa and Xander Schauffele – qualified for the American team via the U.S. Ryder Cup rankings after Sunday’s BMW Championship, the penultimate tournament of the PGA Tour season. Now, Johnson must sort out the six captain’s picks, which he will disclose at 10 a.m. EDT Tuesday, August 29 on Golf Channel.
Here are the U.S. qualifiers:
The Ryder Cup will be played September 29-October 1 at Marco Simone in Rome, Italy.
Norway’s Viktor Hovland has secured a spot in the Ryder Cup via the world points list, the European team announced. Hovland joins Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy and Spain’s Jon Rahm as automatic qualifiers on captain Luke Donald’s team. The three other qualifiers will be decided off the European points list on Sunday, September 3, one day before Donald completes his team with six captain’s picks. In related news, Donald finalized his staff with the addition of Francesco Molinari as a vice captain. Molinari, 40, who won a record five points for Europe in its 2018 Ryder Cup victory in France, will join his older brother, Edoardo, Thomas Bjørn, Nicolas Colsaerts and José María Olazábal as assistants. READ MORE and MORE
The DP World Tour has borrowed a page from its big brother, the PGA Tour, in establishing a season-ending playoff series next year, according to the 2023-24 schedule released last week.
At least 44 tournaments will be held in 24 countries spanning five continents, ending in consecutive weeks in November in the United Arab Emirates with the Abu Dhabi Championship and the DP World Tour Championship in Dubai, both part of the five-event Rolex Series of $9 million-plus purses.
The schedule is divided into five distinct geographical sections, and the winner of each “swing” will earn a bonus and qualify for the “Back 9” tournaments August through October on the European continent. The top 10 players will share a $6 million bonus pool and earn PGA Tour cards for 2025. READ MORE / SCHEDULE
The head of Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund must appear before a Senate panel investigating the Saudis’ proposed partnership with the PGA Tour, a leading senator said.
Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who heads the Saudis’ Public Investment Fund, pushed back against a request that he testify in front of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is scrutinizing the PGA Tour’s proposed “framework agreement” with the PIF, the financial pipeline supporting rival LIV Golf. Al-Rumayyan claimed in a letter to the panel he would be “an inappropriate witness” because of Saudi laws protecting “the confidentiality of certain information.”
Connecticut Democrat Dick Blumenthal, who chairs the subcommittee, is having none of it, writing in response that Al-Rumayyan and the PIF “cannot have it both ways: if it wants to engage with the United States commercially, it must be subject to United States law and oversight. That oversight includes this Subcommittee’s inquiry.”
Similar concerns raised by Al-Rumayyan in an antitrust lawsuit against the PGA Tour, which has been dropped as part of the proposed deal with the tour, were dismissed in federal court in California. Last month, the Senate panel challenged PGA Tour representatives Ron Price and Jimmy Dunne about the proposed deal with the Saudis. READ MORE
LIV Golf plans to allow player trades in the 12-team league in 2024, according to a report by Sports Illustrated’s Alex Miceli. LIV, which debuted its franchise model this year, intends to take the team concept a step further by giving captains the freedom to tweak their four-man rosters. READ MORE
Eight players qualified for Europe’s Solheim Cup team on Sunday.
France’s Céline Boutier and Sweden’s Maja Stark secured spots via the LET Solheim Cup points list, and six others – England’s Charley Hull, Ireland’s Leona Maguire, England’s Georgia Hall, Sweden’s Linn Grant, Spain’s Carlota Ciganda and Sweden’s Anna Nordqvist – made the team via the Rolex Rankings.
Captain Suzann Pettersen will complete her team with four at-large selections, to be announced at 11 a.m. EDT Tuesday on Golf Channel.
U.S. qualifying runs through this week’s CPKC Women’s Open, and captain Stacy Lewis will finalize her squad with three at-large selections.
The Solheim Cup will be played September 22-24 at Finca Cortesín in Spain. The Americans lead the biennial series, 10-7, but Europe has won the past two matches. READ MORE
American Lilia Vu vaulted from sixth place to first in the Rolex Rankings on the strength of her victory at the AIG Women’s Open. Vu, 25, a three-time winner on the LPGA this season including the season’s first major event, the Chevron Championship, becomes the fourth American and 17th player overall to assume the top spot since the rankings’ 2006 debut. READ MORE
Gabriela Ruffels has clinched an exemption on the LPGA for 2024 via the developmental tour’s Race for the Card standings. The 23-year-old Australian, a three-time winner this year in her second season on the Epson Tour, played college golf at USC and won the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur. READ MORE
TAP-INS
The PGA Tour’s 2027 BMW Championship will be played at Liberty National Golf Club in Jersey City, New Jersey, officials announced. READ MORE
Sweden’s Ingrid Lindblad won the McCormack Medal as the No. 1 female in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, the USGA and R&A announced. With the honor, she will receive exemptions into next year’s U.S. Women’s Open and AIG Women’s Open. Lindblad, a fifth-year graduate student at LSU, enters her final college season as an 11-time winner with the Tigers. READ MORE
The PGA of America has laid off more than 20 employees in an effort to “realign our resources around our current business priorities and goals,” according to a statement issued to Sports Illustrated’s Alex Miceli, who broke the news. The PGA recently moved its headquarters from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, to a new complex in Frisco, Texas. According to its 2021 tax filing as a 501(c)(6) tax-exempt organization, the PGA had more than $290 million in net assets, up from nearly $239 million one year earlier. READ MORE
Arccos, which makes an on-course shot-tracking product, has secured a round of funding by the PGA Tour and some of golf’s leading equipment manufacturers, the company announced. READ MORE
The R&A and Golf New Zealand will take 50-percent equity stakes in DotGolf, a New Zealand-based company providing technology solutions for golf clubs and organizations. READ MORE
Bays Golf Experience and Suites, a luxury 24-suite, 18-acre golf resort being built by TaylorMade near the PGA of America’s headquarters in Frisco, Texas, is projected to open in spring 2025. READ MORE
Steph Curry and ESPN are collaborating on an eight-part docuseries following the Howard University golf team, which was funded by a seven-figure donation from the NBA star in 2019. “Why Not Us: Howard Golf” is scheduled to premiere on August 21 on ESPNU and ESPN+. READ MORE
U.S. teams were finalized for the Junior Ryder Cup, to be held September 26-28 in Rome, Italy. The first two days of foursomes and four-balls will be played at Golf Nazionale before the final day of singles at Marco Simone, which will be the site later that week for the 44th Ryder Cup. The U.S. junior team: girls Leigh Chien, Kylie Chong, Gianna Clemente, Anna Davis, Ryleigh Knaub and Yana Wilson; boys Jackson Byrd, Billy Davis, Nicholas Gross, Will Hartman, Jay Leng Jr. and Miles Russell. READ MORE
Ron Kirby, an American course architect whose portfolio included design work in the U.S., Europe, Asia and Africa, died August 17 in Copenhagen, Denmark. He was 90. READ MORE
Compiled by Steve Harmon