Everyone loses if US Ryder Cup team excludes LIV golfers

ONE thing the otherwise irrelevant LIV Golf circuit has taught us is this: Tournament golf is best in both viewing and competition when the best players are gathered in one place.

That was true at the PGA Championship, in which Brooks Koepka (LIV) beat Viktor Hovland (PGA Tour). It will be true next month at the US Open and in July at the British Open. And it should be true at the Ryder Cup in September.

That biennial team event between the US and Europe is among the best competitions in golf and it would be terrible if the American team chose to hamper its chances of winning on European soil for the first time since 1993. That’s what this is for captain Zach Johnson and the PGA of America: a choice.

I in no way support LIV Golf, but that’s because of the filthy Saudi money that funds it. The human rights violations carried out by the same people who hand out the LIV cheques can’t be ignored, and that stains the entire operation and the golfers who play there. It’s not about the PGA Tour’s anxiety about an upstart, alternative operation. It'’s about sleeping with a clear conscience.

But there’s just no arguing that a selection of the 12 players best suited to retain the Ryder Cup the Americans won in a blowout at Whistling Straits in 2021 would exclude LIV players. Yet the man tapped to choose half the team can’t even commit to considering them. That’s a problem.

“I think it’s too premature – frankly irresponsible – to even have any sort of opinion about that,” Johnson said at the PGA Championship.

Actually, Zach, it’s irresponsible to have an opinion on whether you would mull taking a LIV player with one or two or three of your captain’s picks. Dustin Johnson? Bryson DeChambeau? Patrick Reed? You have to at least think about them, or you’re doing the team a disservice.

For the US side, the system works like this: The top six points-earners as at August 20 automatically qualify for

the team that will face the Europeans in Rome. The other six selections will be up to Johnson and his vice-captains. The catch: Other than at the majors, points are awarded exclusively at PGA Tour events. LIV golfers are barred from PGA Tour events.

So at the moment, Koepka – who earned double points by winning the PGA Championship – is the only LIV golfer in the top six. If he doesn’t perform well at the remaining two majors, he could easily be bumped out of the top six by players who have the opportunity to earn points every week.

Yet Koepka’s play at the Masters (tied

for second) and the PGA makes it nearly impossible to argue that the best US team would be one without him. Scottie Scheffler is ranked No 1 in the world and is the only player above Koepka in the Ryder Cup standings. Listen to him.

“I don't care about tours or anything like that,” he said at the PGA. “I want to win the Ryder Cup … We want a team of guys that are going over there together to bring the cup back home, and that’s all I really care about.”

Appropriately so. For its part, Europe is in a bit of a bind. While the American side of the Ryder Cup is run by the PGA of America, a separate entity from the PGA

Tour, the European side of the competition is overseen by Ryder Cup Europe, an outfit owned partly by the DP World Tour. That circuit, like the PGA Tour (but unlike the PGA of America), is in a legal battle with LIV Golf.

Ryder Cup Europe ousted its chosen captain, Henrik Stenson of Sweden, when he joined LIV last year. The DP World Tour is fining LIV players who maintain membership on its tour, and membership on the DP World Tour is required to play for Europe in the Ryder Cup. England’s Luke Donald, Stenson’s replacement as captain, has made it clear to at least one LIV player that he would not be selected.

“I wanted him to be sincere and tell me the truth, and he pretty much told me that I had no chance,” Spain’s Sergio Garcia, a Ryder Cup mainstay for two decades, said last week at the LIV event outside Washington. “It was sad because I felt like, not only because of my history but the way I’ve been playing, that I probably could have a chance. But it didn’t sound like it.”

The majors, to this point, are untarnished by the LIV-PGA Tour-DP World Tour spat – but unless the formula for gaining entry to them changes, that won’t last long. The US Open, for instance, includes automatic entry for players in the top 60 of the world rankings – a system that doesn’t award points for LIV’s 54-hole glorified exhibitions.

Both of the following can be true: The rankings shouldn’t grant LIV events points that are on par with those from the PGA Tour, and the majors have to come up with a system that acknowledges LIV Golf includes some of the best players in the world. Their tournaments would be weakened without them.

One consideration LIV players are knocking around, according to DeChambeau, the 2020 US Open champion, is “creating an exemption category for LIV players based on how they play during the course of the year … The (Official World Golf Ranking) points, we’ve gone so far down the list now that it’s really difficult to make us even relevant.”

He's right about that. The only American LIV players in the top 60 are Koepka (14th) and Reed (47th). Their current option for gaining entry to the majors: Win one and get the exemptions that come with the trophy. That’s it.

Back to the Ryder Cup. LIV Golf may be nauseating, but it has changed the sport. Allowing those changes to include thinning down golf’s greatest events would help no one and hurt everyone.

A US Ryder Cup team that couldn’t even consider the inclusion of Brooks Koepka or Dustin Johnson would be seeking a political victory in Italy, not a golf victory. That shouldn’t happen. Don’t let it, Zach.