There is a strong case to be made that Keegan Bradley, ranked 11th in the world, should be one of the 12 players on the American Ryder Cup roster at Bethpage Black later this month and it felt like a mild surprise last Wednesday when he announced his six captain’s picks without including himself.
With six players already locked in, Bradley ultimately added Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa, Ben Griffin, Patrick Cantlay, Cameron Young and Sam Burns. It’s easy to justify each of those picks, though Morikawa’s recent form has raised some concerns. He will be easy to slot into foursomes play, however, with his consistent ball-striking.
Bradley acknowledged that current form helped make his decision easier. Both Young – who has a win and three other top-11 finishes in his last four starts – and Burns obliged by supplementing their cases in recent weeks.
“The last 48 hours we had the team set. We weren’t scrambling at all,” Bradley said. “There was a really tough decision. There was a point this year I was playing. These guys stepped up in a major way and played their way onto the team. It was an extremely difficult decision but one I’m really happy with and glad it’s over.” READ MORE
Chris Condon, PGA TOUR
In what may be considered a further blow to the dwindling opportunities of rank-and-file PGA Tour players, the Masters has eliminated automatic invitations to the winners of the tour’s seven fall series events. In their place, the tournament will extend invitations to the winners of six select national open championships across several international tours, it was announced last Tuesday in a news release issued jointly with the R&A regarding aligning aspects of the qualification criteria for the Masters and the Open Championship.
Starting with the 2026 Masters, current winners of the Australian, South African, Scottish, Spanish, Japan and Hong Kong Opens will receive automatic invitations to both the Masters and Open Championship. To make room for these national open champions at Augusta National in April, the tournament amended its qualification criteria, specifically qualification No. 17, to invite only individual winners of PGA Tour events that award a full FedEx Cup point allocation applied to the season-ending Tour Championship. That means the winners of the seven remaining tour events this fall from the Procore Championship in Napa, California (Sept. 11-14) to the RSM Classic at Sea Island in Georgia (Nov. 20-23) will no longer be extended Masters invitations. READ MORE
Kapalua Resort, the Hawaii course where the PGA Tour has started every year since 1999, is shutting down for two months as it tries to save its water-starved courses during a dispute over the handling of a century-old water system on Maui.
The 60-day closure, which starts Tuesday for the Plantation and Bay courses at Kapalua, has raised concerns the resort might not be able to host The Sentry to start the tour's 2026 season.
“The golf course has been damaged with no water for months,” Alex Nakajima, the general manager of Kapalua Golf and Tennis, said. “I proposed to the owner that we need to shut the golf course to increase our chances to save the golf course and the tournament.”
Nakajima said he thinks the best hope is to use what little water Kapalua gets for a slow-releasing fertilizer and to keep customers off the courses while the staff removes dead grass. He said the courses have not had water since July 25.
Tadashi Yanai, the Japanese billionaire who owns Kapalua, Kapalua homeowners and Hua Momona Farms filed a lawsuit last week against Maui Land & Pineapple, alleging it has not maintained the water delivery system. READ MORE
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry defended the state’s decision to spend more than $7 million to bring a Saudi-owned LIV Golf event to New Orleans next summer. The tournament will take place June 26-28 at the Bayou Oaks golf complex at New Orleans City Park.
Of the $7.2 million Louisiana is putting toward the event, $2.2 million will go toward upgrading the public Bayou Oaks course, and the remaining $5 million will go to LIV Golf as a hosting fee. Landry largely dismissed concerns about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, saying making deals with Saudi officials is nothing new.
“I think that the Saudis have been doing business with Louisiana for quite some time. God knows how much oil they have sent our refineries,” the Louisiana Illuminator quoted Landry as saying. There have also been questions about whether Louisiana should be paying LIV Golf millions of dollars when the tour has financial resources that dwarf the state’s. READ MORE
Tap-Ins
Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are set to headline an all-star event in December put on by Versant, the new company made up of NBCUniversal cable networks spun off by Comcast, Sports Business Journal reported. Scheffler and McIlroy are expected to serve as captains of two four-man teams, likely in a U.S. versus international, skills-type format at Trump National Golf Club Jupiter in Florida, the report said. READ MORE
Tommy Fleetwood’s victory in the Tour Championship two Sundays ago drew an average of nearly 4.5 million viewers on NBC, a 34 percent increase over Scheffler’s victory in last year’s tournament. It was the highest-rated non-major final round of the year. READ MORE
DP World Tour veteran Mike Lorenzo-Vera, who announced in April that he would retire from competition due to ongoing mental health struggles, made his final start last week at the Omega European Masters. READ MORE
Cybersecurity company Fortinet Inc. has signed a multiyear deal to become the title partner of the LPGA’s Founders Cup tournament, it was announced Tuesday. The 2026 Fortinent Founders Cup will be played March 19-22 at Sharon Heights Country Club in Menlo Park, California, and will offer a $3 million purse, up from $2 million this year. READ MORE
Compiled by Mike Cullity