“I’m just glad Scottie [Scheffler] was able to hold on at the end,” U.S. Presidents Cup captain Jim Furyk joked Monday.
Scheffler, the world No. 1 and the favorite to win this year’s PGA Tour player of the year award, locked up his spot on the U.S. team months ago. But Furyk knows the waiting for automatic qualifying to end, which it did Sunday with the top 6 in U.S. points earning a spot on his team, was the easy part. Now comes the challenging part.
“It feels like the build-up takes so long and once [automatic qualifying] is over everything happens so fast,” Furyk told GolfChannel.com. “I learned [as captain of the 2018 U.S. Ryder Cup team] how quickly the last two or three weeks went.”
Furyk said there are plenty of lessons from the U.S. loss at the ’18 Ryder Cup that will factor into his turn as a Presidents Cup captain, including the type of course the Americans will face at Royal Montreal. He took a scouting trip to the course with his family about a month ago and expects “some heavy rough and tight fairways.”
It was a similar setup in ’18 at Le Golf National, which was famously lined with thick rough and narrow fairways that largely mitigated the U.S. team’s power advantage. It’s those lessons that will be on Furyk’s mind as he prepares to announce the six captain’s picks next Tuesday.
“One of the things I saw going into 2018 was, we had a bunch of courses that were bomber’s golf courses and then we got to Jersey and played Ridgewood and of the top 15, one guy was a short and straight hitting and the rest were bombers [on the leaderboard],” Furyk recalled. “Knowing that we were going to Le Golf National and it was going to be set up super tight, I knew the courses we played coming in were pretty open.”
This time around, the top U.S. players have faced a more demanding test in the playoffs, from TPC Southwind at the postseason opener to last week’s stop at Castle Pines — which was won by Keegan Bradley, who was ninth for the week in fairways hit — and this week’s finale at East Lake, which has been redesigned and should be a more demanding test off the tee.
Furyk plans to be at East Lake Tuesday to meet with players and said he estimates there are 10 to 12 players who are in the mix for his six captain’s picks, including last week’s winner Bradley.
“It’s great to see him step up; he was around 18th on the list and bolstered himself,” Furyk said of next year’s U.S. Ryder Cup captain, who moved to 10th on the final Presidents Cup points list.
Along with Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay and Sahith Theegala automatically qualified for this year’s U.S. Presidents Cup team. The next six players on the final points list were Sam Burns, Tony Finau, Russell Henley, Bradley, Brian Harman and Max Homa.