My parents are rolling through on the way to Tuesday and Wednesday practice rounds. They offered my wife and I the tickets but I
turned them down last night. Not worth the 5 hour drive each way and I would not go for two days. After one day I am pretty bored
with watching others play golf and looking at the course. On the flip side this is a premier golfing event in which the fans and players
alike seem to get very patriotic and into the golf ( just like the Olympics I'm sure ). Interesting article about who's in and who's on
the bubble to make the teams....



We’re set for a wild weekend at a major championship venue when the FedEx Cup Playoffs get underway this week — but it won’t have anything to do with the $10 million prize at stake over the next four tournaments.

A week from today, we’ll know two-thirds of the Davis Love III’s roster for the US Ryder Cup team that will take the course at Hazeltine in a little over a month from now.

The opening event of the playoffs -- The Barclays -- will get underway from Bethpage Black this Thursday, and it’ll be the final event where US players can move up into the Top 8 Ryder Cup spots on points and not have to worry about needing a captain’s pick from Love to make the squad. Three of those picks will be handed out after the BMW Championship in Indianapolis, and the final pick not until after the season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta.

Meanwhile, things are looking a bit clearer already for Darren Clarke’s European side. The Euros offer up 9 automatic qualifying spots to the US’ 8 -- and they’re set to finish things up after The Barclays and European Tour stop in Denmark next week as well. However, all 9 automatic spots were clinched this weekend after Belgium’s Thomas Pieters couldn’t Asian Tour-based American Paul Peterson at the Czech Masters.

Here’s a look at who’s in, who’s out, and whose hopes might be at the mercy of Love & Clarke heading into the final tournament to clinch an automatic spot.

USA

LOCKS

Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson, Jimmy Walker, Brooks Koepka

The first four have all mathematically locked up Ryder Cup spots — and it would take a near-miracle to get Koepka out of the Top 8 with one tournament left to play. Koepka has 4,873 points — 463 points clear of Brandt Snedeker in 6th place in the standings. Since 1 cup point is assigned for every $1,000 earned, Koepka would need to miss the cut and then all these other things to happen to fall out of the automatic spots:

JB Holmes, Bubba Watson, Matt Kuchar, or Rickie Fowler wins the Barclays
Patrick Reed finishes 2nd
Zach Johnson finishes 3rd
Brandt Snedeker finishes 4th and makes a minimum of $460,000
It’s a pipe dream for the first three to happen -- and even if Sneds were to finish 4th, it’s still probably unlikely. While the Barclays purse will bump to $8.5 Million this year and we haven’t seen official per-place numbers yet, the standard tour 4.8% for a fourth place finish would only be $408,000. That figure could be higher considering it’s a FedEx Cup and ties can make weird things happen, but it doesn’t matter. This won’t happen. Brooks is here, and he’s on the roster.

ON THE BUBBLE

Brandt Snedeker, Zach Johnson, Patrick Reed, JB Holmes, Bubba Watson, Matt Kuchar

Okay, here’s where the fun part begins. Less than 400 points separate Snedeker in 6th place and Matt Kuchar all the way down in 11th. To be exact since we’re down to one event, $393,460 worth of Barclays prize money separate Snedeker and Kuchar. A Kuchar 4th place finish and a Snedeker early Sunday finish in the 50s or 60s might be enough to make up that gap. That’s just how volatile the bottom of the Top 8 looks at the moment.

It’s even tighter if you hone in on the race for the final automatic spot. Patrick Reed is only 31 points clear of JB Holmes in 9th. The margin is so dang slim that I’d feel comfortable saying whoever has the better Barclays finish will sit above the other in the Cup standings -- whether that be inside the 8 or not, depending on how the others around them fall. Kuchar and Bubba Watson could pass Reed too, both within 200 points — but they’d almost assuredly need Top 10 (possibly a Top 15 for Watson) finishes to have a chance to do so. Of course, they’re not the only ones that could play their way in this week.

WIN (OR MAYBE JUST A TOP 10) AND YOU’RE IN. MAYBE.

Rickie Fowler, Scott Piercy, Bill Haas, Jim Furyk, Daniel Berger, William McGirt, Kevin Chappell, Jason Dufner, Kevin Na, Daniel Summerhays, Charley Hoffman, Ryan Moore

Everyone on this list has a chance to still clinch a spot on the Ryder Cup roster this weekend — mathematically. Whether that’s realistic or not for each depends on how far you’d like to go down the list. For Rickie, it’s pretty simple: Win the Barclays and you’re on the team, no other help required. He’s less than 400 points behind Reed though, so a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th depending on how Reed, Watson, and Kuchar play could all do the trick.

Others would stand a good shot to get in with a win, too. Despite being another 600 or so points behind Fowler, Scott Piercy, Bill Haas, Jim Furyk, Daniel Berger, and Will McGirt all have somewhat reasonable scenarios to get on the roster with wins. Most of those start with Patrick Reed finishing somewhere south of 5th place with a bunch of other permutations that we’ll get into should any of those 5 be hanging around the lead through the first couple of rounds.

Ryan Moore could play his way with a win if Reed, JB Holmes, and a handful of others above him miss the cut or finish way down the leaderboard. Probably not gonna happen, but hey, golf is weird as hell.

CAPTAIN’S PICKS, RIGHT NOW

Bubba Watson, JB Holmes, Matt Kuchar, Jim Furyk

Listen, I’m not saying this is what it should be or what it will be — there’s plenty of time for an American player to emerge and pull a Billy Horschel late in the year here. But the sooner you realize DL3’s gonna put Jim Furyk’s very bad career Cup record on this roster, the better it’s gonna be for your blood pressure after the BMW in a couple weeks.

American Ryder Cup golf needs some sort of new blood and I’d like to see Danny Berger and Justin Thomas get a look. But, yeah, I don’t know.

Also Rickie Fowler is really nice and a good dude and fun on social media and generally good for American golf. He’s also playing replacement-level tour player golf this year, at best. If he turns in a nice Playoff run, put him on the roster, fine, put him on the team. But I wouldn’t even consider him for a spot prior to the Tour Championship. Don’t @ me about this.


EUROPE

LOCKS

Rory McIlroy, Danny Willett, Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Chris Wood, Matt Fitzpatrick, Andy Sullivan

As mentioned earlier, Darren Clarke’s automatic qualifiers for the team are now locked after Thomas Pieters failed to win the Czech Masters this past weekend. That means team has:

The current Masters champion
The current Open Champion, playing the best golf of his life
One of the best Ryder Cup players ever in the midst of a very good year
An Olympic gold medal
An Olympic silver medal
The guy who is still most talented player on earth
That’s, uh, a pretty dang good team! But there’s another side of the coin, too. Darren Clarke is already guaranteed to have five Ryder Cup rookies on his European roster (Willett, RCB, Wood, Fitzpatrick, Sullivan). Of course, four of those five rookies have winning records in match play settings and two — Willett and Cabrera Bello — have been especially prolific.

But Chris Wood’s been real bad, though. So, there’s that!

CAPTAIN’S PICKS, AT THE MOMENT

Martin Kaymer, Russell Knox, Lee Westwood

Darren Clarke will likely make these selections after this weekend, and we’ll know the entire European team a full month before the US team fills out the roster. With a former Cup hero and multiple time major winner like Kaymer rounding back into form, it’d be a shock to see him off the roster. It’ll be dang travesty if Russell Knox is kept off the Euro roster. Primarily playing in the US, he’s 4th in the FedEx Cup standings and if it weren’t for a technicality about when his European Tour status got established — he’d already be on the roster. Thomas Pieters is playing some of the best golf in Europe right now and should be on this team, but there’s no way Clarke is taking 7 rookies to Hazeltine. It’ll be Lee Westwood for the last spot, or someone similar.

_________________
Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

I cannot wait for this. Its going to be a tall taks, but I think the US has a real good chance at winning this thing.

_________________

Hard to imagine a Euro team without Poulter. Seems like no matter how bad he's playing, he somehow gets up for the Cup.

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Soccer 1,2,3
Spanish Honor Society 1,2,3,4
Forensics 1,2,3,4

"Smiles with Nostrils"

"...no Hmong, go find some blacks"

we'll get our ass kicked again.

Looking less and less forward to the Ryder Cup every installment.

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Latest Golf Digest has an interesting article discussing all of the potential Ryder Cuppers and they spoke with other players and people associated with
professional golf and got some real down and dirty opinions about the guys. Who the head cases are, who have mechanical problems with their swings.
It really is a no holds barred look at the guys and I found it very interesting. I can't find the article online but if you see the issue I highly recommend
reading the article.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

I read that last week too, it was a very good piece.

I'm glad Furyk probably played himself out of the running for a Captain's Pick this weekend.

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It shouldn't be a tall task. I think on paper this is the US team is the biggest favorite they've ever been in the modern era. US world ranking average is something like 14 whereas Europe is 27.

Let's all keep that in mind if the US chokes another one of these away.

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Rickie Fowler
Matt Kuchar
JB Holmes

Those are the 3 captains pick that Love made today. The final one will come next week after the Tour Championship.

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No big surprises with these picks, maybe Holmes a bit but with his solid play this past weekend it makes sense.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Ryan Moore needs to be the final captain's pick.

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Ryan Moore is the final pick.

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excellent, finally took someone who deserved it.

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My parents went to the Ryder Cup practice round yesterday and were pretty disappointed. I have to take this with a grain of salt
since they are a bit old and such but they said that it took two hours to get to the shuttle buses and have them dropped off and
enter through the front gate. Traffic was just horrible according to them and was very disorganized. Because there are only a
handful of players the people were 10-12 deep everywhere. They found a seat on 9 and watched all the Euros come up and
then found a place to see from on 18 and watched the Americans come up and that was pretty much their day. I heard on
Golf Channel when I was home for lunch that they had 40,000 at the practice round yesterday and that the fire marshal had
to close the Merchandise tent because there were way too many people in there and it was a fire hazard. Other complaints
from my folks included paying $10 for a brat and $5 for a Diet Coke. They have been spoiled at Augusta for too long! I'll be
very happy watching what I can on TV this weekend when I am not playing myself.

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Flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami

Ryder Cup has to be without a doubt the single worst sporting event you can attend as a fan.


I went twice in 2012, I think I saw 4 shots total combined over both days.

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Sunday at Medinah in 2012 was phenomenal. Best day ever at a golf event.

I even got a fist-bump from MJ.

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Sex isn't dirty, sex isn't a crime. It's a loving act between two or more consenting adults.

-Hank Kingsley

Danny Willets' brother. Wow

http://www.nationalclubgolfer.com/2016/ ... y-brother/

Pete Willet is the breakout star of the Ryder Cup.

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I'm so sick of these Brits complaining about American fans. If Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Danny Willett's little brother, and the rest of the crumpet eating homos don't like American fans, then go home, and play on the European Tour. It's even worse when you consider the behavior of soccer fans in England.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way

I think its hilarious, doesn't bother me one brit.

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USA! USA! USA!

http://www.rydercup.com/news-media/usa/ ... 37388920=1

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Cool story. I would have blasted that thing 10 feet past the hole and then ran away and cried.

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I would've tripped going up to the green.

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I mean seriously... I dislike having to tee off if the group behind us is waiting at the tee box. In front of professionals and a huge crowd... No way.

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Dat wuz Arnie lookin out fer his fellow American.

Yep. Stay home and watch it.

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Tomorrow's Foursomes matches;

Speith & Reed va Stenson & Rose
Fowler & Mickelson vs McIlroy & Sullivan
Walker & Z. Jonson vs Garcia & Kaymer
Kuchar & D. Johnson vs Westwood & Pieters

USA! USA! USA!

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Saw this on the news. Pretty cool.

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Elections have consequences.

HAPPY RYDER CUP DAY!!

U S A! U S A!

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what you mean throwing bananas at black players and making gorilla noises isn't gentlemen like?

That's perfectly acceptable. Yelling "baba booey" after a golf shot crosses a line.

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Good people drink good beer - Hunter S. Thompson

<º)))><

Waiting for the time when I can finally say
That this has all been wonderful, but now I'm on my way