Rory McIlroy might be headlining the field for this week’s Amgen Irish Open, but he’s not the only headline.
For the first time since 2015, Royal County Down, considered one of the best golf courses in the world, will host a DP World Tour event. This will mark just the fourth time that the Newcastle, Northern Ireland layout will host the Irish Open, doing so in 1928, 1935 and 2015. It also has hosted several notable amateur championships, including the 2007 Walker Cup, which featured several future major winners and PGA Tour standouts, including McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Webb Simpson.
Royal County Down checks in at No. 1 on Golf Digest’s most recent World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses list. It’s also first on Golfweek’s Best International Courses for 2024 and sixth on Golf.com’s Top 100 Courses in the World for 2023-24.
Joining McIlroy in this week’s field are Shane Lowry, Bob MacIntyre, Nicolai Hojgaard and Tom McKibbin, the 21-year-old who grew up on the same course as McIlroy, Holywood Golf Club outside of Belfast.
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Ask Keegan Bradley, whose Ryder Cup bid in 2023 played out in front of, well, everyone who watched “Full Swing” on Netflix. Or Russell Henley, the bastion of consistency always overlooked. Every installment of captain’s picks — for any team event — leaves several players on the outside looking in. For every congratulatory phone call, there are more calls of disappointment.
Tuesday was the day that disappointment became official. Jim Furyk and Mike Weir each announced their six captain’s picks ahead of this month’s Presidents Cup, which kicks off in three weeks. It has become formulaic over the years — via Ryder Cups, Presidents Cups, Solheim Cups — for captains to issue six automatic spots and make six wildcard picks. That’s half the team! But the freedom is important. It allows the data analysts dial in perfect pairings. Ultimately, though, both the genius of a pick or the questioning are assigned to the captains, fairly or not.
Without further ado, below are the six picks that were made and the players who were passed up in the process.
International Team picks: Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith, Mackenzie Hughes, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Si Woo Kim, Min Woo Lee
Team USA picks: Sam Burns, Russell Henley, Keegan Bradley, Max Homa, Brian Harman, Tony Finau
Biggest snubs
The ones everyone will talk about for the coming weeks.
Nick Taylor
This year’s Cup will be played in Montreal. It will be captained by a Canadian. There are three Canadians on the roster. But the literal logo for the Canadian Open, Nick Taylor, will somehow not be involved. Taylor won earlier this year, too, at the Phoenix Open, but that was back in February. This is September. Taylor hasn’t nabbed a top-25 finish in the last five months, missing the cut at every major. As far as in-form players go, he’s not on the list. But it’s not all about that.
Justin Thomas
Thomas is on the Ryder Cup committee, which was put in place to make captain’s selections, derive how the team would look, and build a solid foundation for Team USA for decades. He deserves that spot, too, having competed in every team competition since 2017. He’s starred on a number of those teams, too. But he is apparently not a fit for Furyk’s roster. The American captain was asked about Thomas specifically when he joined Golf Channel to explain his picks, and the first two words out of his mouth were rather telling: “Tough, tough.”
If the U.S. loses in Montreal, this is the pick that will be cited more than any other.
Harshest snubs
The highest ranked players (in standings) who weren’t picked.
Cam Davis
It’s pretty straightforward: Davis was just a few strokes from making this team. The automatic qualifying for the Internationals is based solely off world ranking, and Davis made a last-ditch effort to make it two weeks ago at the BMW Championship. He finished T5 in Colorado and jumped to 8th in the standings, which had many people penciling him in as a pick. Weir was not one of them. Davis, who won two matches in his Prez Cup debut two years ago, will have to watch from home.
Chris Kirk
This is merely a technicality. Furyk, oddly enough, selected players ranked 7th through 12th. So there isn’t a single player who could argue their involvement on points by being in the top 12 and not being one of the 12 on the team. Kirk, who won early this year in Hawaii, ranked 13th and advanced to the Tour Championship, but dropped into a bit of a lull this summer that kept him on the outside looking in.
Snubs that could mean something
The ones we’ll look back on with curiosity.
International: Thriston Lawrence
Remember how the South African nearly won The Open at Royal Troon? That was six weeks ago. What’s Lawrence been up to since? He won by five in an event back home on the Sunshine Tour, and then finished solo second at the Betfred British Masters last weekend. His omission tells you that Weir had these picks made in advance of last weekend. He could live to regret this one.
U.S.: Akshay Bhatia
Part of the reason the Presidents Cup feels meaningful is it can exist as a breeding ground for future Ryder Cup success. That is not to diminish it. One event is simply a much bigger deal than the other. And it is likely that Bhatia will be involved in Ryder Cups later in his career, perhaps as soon as 2025.
The 22-year-old just completed the best season of his career, winning the Valero Texas Open in April and advancing to the Tour Championship. He ranked 14th in the standings, too, which is so close to 12th it might as well be the same thing. Twelve months from now, Bradley may wish that Bhatia got his beak wet in Montreal before competing at Bethpage Black.
Also receiving votes!
The snubs we feel saddest for.
Adam Hadwin
Mack Hughes and Taylor Pendrith got the Presidents Cup nod. Nick Taylor and Corey Conners had their Olympics in Paris. The only Canadian on the outside looking of all of that is Hadwin. That’s tough.
Billy Horschel
Max Homa’s successful teammate at the 2022 Cup has been through the ringer since. And come out on the other side! But he came just short of a spot in this year’s Cup.
CASTLE ROCK, Colo — Keegan Bradley went from the last man in the BMW Championship to a winner Sunday, closing with an even-par 72 for a one-shot victory that opened up all sorts of possibilities he never imagined possible a week ago.
Bradley pulled away from mistake-prone Adam Scott early on the back nine and delivered a clutch shot into the par-5 17th that all but sealed the seventh victory of his PGA Tour career, and the most unlikely.
He was biting his nails a week ago, needing help just to finish at No. 50 in the FedEx Cup and qualify for the second postseason event. And then he managed the mile-high air, the wind and the Sunday pressure to win at Castle Pines.
“It just shows why you've got to grind it out because you never know how fast it can switch,” Bradley said on the 18th green, where he stood alongside his father. Mark Bradley, a longtime club professional, had never seen his 38-year-old son win in person.
The victory moved Bradley from No. 50 to No. 4 in the FedEx Cup, sending him to the Tour Championship where he will start four shots behind Scottie Scheffler in a 72-hole chase for the $25 million prize.
There's also another cup in play. Bradley, the first Ryder Cup captain to win a PGA Tour event since Davis Love III nine years ago, moved to No. 10 in the Presidents Cup standings. The top six after the BMW Championship automatically qualified, and Jim Furyk gets six captain's picks. Bradley will surely be in the conversation after winning for the third straight year.
Bradley heard plenty of “U-S-A! “U-S-A!”” chants as he went along the back nine at Castle Pines, the loudest coming on the 18th when thousands of spectators were allowed to encircle the green for the final touch of a big week.
Scott, a runner-up at the Scottish Open last month, was tied for the lead until starting the back nine with three soft bogeys, two of them with a wedge in his hand from the fairway. He birdied the closing par 5s, but lost a big chance when he overshot the 15th green from 101 yards.
He closed with a 72, though it also moved him into the top 30 who qualifying for East Lake.
Sam Burns finished with a Sunday-best 65, including a bogey on the par-5 14th, and shared second place with Scott and Ludvig Aberg of Sweden, who let another good chance get away with too many Sunday mistakes.
Aberg was 12 under on the par 5s going into the final round, and he played them at even par. He closed with a 71.
Justin Thomas somehow made it to East Lake for the Tour Championship, even though he was already home in Florida in the same nail-biting spot as Bradley was a week ago.
Thomas needed plenty of help to get the 30th spot, and it came from former British Open champion Brian Harman and Alex Noren. Harman needed a par on the last hole to stay in the top 30 and made double bogey.
Noren, who has never made it to East Lake, was poised to finish in the top 30 when he holed a 25-foot par putt on the 13th hole and made birdie on the 14th. But he finished with three straight bogeys, the most damaging on the par-5 17th, the easiest hole at Castle Pines. He had to lay up from a drive in the rough and hit wedge into a bunker. He shot 75.
The 17th is where Bradley, who finished at 12-under 276, all but sealed it.
Burns had posted at 277. Aberg and Scott remained closed. Bradley hit a 5-iron between two bunkers to a back left pin on a firm green to 16 feet, the closest shot of the day. He missed the eagle chance, but it gave him a two-shot lead going to the 18th.
And while he missed a 4-foot par putt that only determined the margin, he reacted with energy that has come to be expected from the 38-year-old New Englander. He thrust his arm in the air and soaked up the “U-S-A! U-S-A!” chants.
Bradley earned $4 million for his second title in the BMW Championship, also winning at Aronimink in 2018 when he was the No. 52 seed in what was then a 70-man field.
Bradley and Scott joined Tommy Fleetwood (69) and Chris Kirk (69) who moved into the top 30 to qualifying for the Tour Championship. They bumped out Harman, Jason Day, Davis Thompson and Denny McCarthy.
