Revisiting the Team USA Roster for the 2025 Ryder Cup

Two months ago, I took an initial pass at how the American side was shaping up for the 2025 Ryder Cup. Since then, there’s been a decent sample of high-profile golf tournaments, including the season’s first major. With five months until showtime at Bethpage, it’s time to revisit the state of Team USA. Plus, a shoutout to a highly decorated young talent and a couple of thoughts on distance.

A few notes:

Outside of determining auto-qualifiers, the official Ryder Cup rankings really shouldn’t be taken too seriously. The points are mostly based on dollars earned, which sure, roughly translate to strengths of fields. But the ranking is hardly a solid measurement of who should tee it up at Bethpage. For example, it obviously does not take course fit into account. Also, it fully ignores LIV. Lucas Glover, currently 15th in the standings, is getting quite a few points from T-3 finishes at TPC Sawgrass and Pebble Beach. Brooks Koepka, currently 86th in the standings, gives Team USA a better chance of winning than Glover. So when you come after me for how I’ve arranged the players above, please don’t cite the rankings. 

Team USA badly needs some players with high ballspeed to start playing better… 

Many of you are likely familiar with how I view Jordan Spieth’s future: I’m not overly optimistic. That said, he’s impressed me this season. Three straight top 20s in reasonably strong fields, including a T-14 at the Masters, demonstrate progress. Quality of the venue aside, this week’s event at TPC Craig Ranch offers Spieth a good opportunity to keep building his case for the Ryder Cup. 

I’m not putting Keegan Bradley on this list. I refuse. Unless he surrenders his captaincy, he should not tee it up at Bethpage. 

‍Wyndham Clark and Brooks Koepka occupy similar territory in my view, with slight deference to Koepka. Both are powerful, accomplished golfers, which bodes positively for Bethpage. However, neither golfer has shown much consistency recently, and I wouldn’t be afraid to leave either one at home if he doesn’t perform well over the next few months.

Player Spotlight: Jackson Koivun 

Normally I reserve this space for profiling someone in the professional ranks, but I want to share some appreciation for what Auburn sophomore Jackson Koivun has accomplished already in his collegiate career. 

Last week, Koivun birdied five of his last six holes in the stroke play portion of the SEC Championship to win his second straight SEC individual title. Insanely clutch finish. With the win, he’s the first golfer to win back-to-back SEC titles in 49 years.  

A year ago as a freshman, Koivun swept postseason honors, winning the Jack Nicklaus Award, Fred Haskins Award, Ben Hogan Award, and the Phil Mickelson Award. With NCAA Regionals starting in just under two weeks, Koivun will be an important name to monitor as he tries to add an NCAA title to his résumé. 

Koivun has hinted that he may take his time to turn professional, a decision with which he may feel increasingly comfortable as he watches 21-year-old Nick Dunlap struggle on the PGA Tour. To date, he’s teed it up in four PGA Tour events: two in 2024 and two this year. He made the cut in both appearances this year with a T-56 at the Farmers Insurance Open and a T-48 at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, a signature event. 

Though a lot can change quickly in golf, Koivun is an exciting name to keep tabs on as he continues to develop in college and beyond. He’s only 19 years old and deserves the space to develop on his own timeline, but making the cut in a strong PGA Tour field is no small feat for a teenager. Respect to Koivun for what he’s accomplished so far, and I hope we see him blossom into an elite pro whenever he decides to take that jump. ‍

Reader-Submitted Question

‍Reader: You quote-tweeted Brandel Chamblee’s tweet about distance not being the only skill required for a player to have success. Can you elaborate on that and how it relates to the distance debate? 

‍Answer: Speed is clearly not the only skill a professional golfer needs. No serious person should argue that it is. As a staunch supporter of the rollback movement, I get a little bit frustrated when the discussion turns to the relative advantage of distance over time. Anti-rollbackers will sometimes argue something to the effect of, “Distance has always been an advantage. The longest players in pro golf have always won at higher rates than shorter hitters.” 

These types of arguments are a distraction. The extent to which the advantage of distance has changed over time is irrelevant to the question of whether modern distances have compromised the sport. Those are separate discussions. 

So while we’re on this topic, let’s just zoom in for a second on an important piece of the distance debate that often goes overlooked: Scoring records are frequently getting shattered in today’s game, all of which is happening despite tournament organizers going to extreme lengths to set up golf courses to be more difficult. 

It’s not just that golf courses have been lengthened, which, by the way, tends to be omitted from the analysis of…certain people…when they say that average approach distances on the PGA Tour haven’t increased over time. But I digress! 

Beyond lengthening courses, greens now run much faster than they did in the early 2000s. If you talk to a Tour pro who has been around for 10-plus years, they’ll also tell you that pin placements today are much more difficult than they used to be. More pin placements sit on top of ridges and in areas where it’s difficult to read and hole putts compared to years past. Additionally, a significant number of golf courses have been narrowed for the purpose of driving up scoring averages. 

Note: Usage of the phrase “driving up scoring averages” versus “making more difficult” is very intentional. Narrowing a golf course doesn’t make it more difficult! 

Anyway, recently I was looking at how TPC Deere Run has been changed over the years:

{{TPC-Deere-Run-Gallery-02}}

Over the last two decades, a bunch of bunkers have been added to the par 5 second hole and the fairway is just over half the width it used to be. Now let’s look at some shot data from the years in which these Google Earth images were taken. 

{{TPC-Deere-Run-Gallery-01}}

Though this is far from a perfect apples-to-apples comparison, I tried to grab shot data from reasonably comparable rounds. For each respective year, I chose the round in which the field registered the longest driving distance average of the four rounds. In Round 3 of 2006, the field averaged 318.8 yards per drive. In Round 3 of 2024, the field averaged 330.6 yards off the tee. 

Other things to consider: the golf ball travels farther when you hit the fairway. Or put differently, the ball travels farthest when it doesn’t get stopped by rough or a fairway bunker. In Round 3 in 2006, 84% of tee shots found the 40-yard wide fairway. In Round 3 of 2024, 66% of the field found the fairway. The delta between 2024 drives and 2006 drives would increase if the fairway were doubled in width. I’ll also note that reintroducing a 40-yard wide fairway would enable golfers to swing even harder at the ball, further increasing the difference. 

The point isn’t that golfers hit the ball 10-15 yards, on average and unadjusted for field strength, farther today than they used to. The point is that we cannot ignore all the ways in which we’ve placed stress on golf courses to challenge the best players in the world when having the distance debate. Shrink the driver head. Reinstate a penalty for missing the center of the club face. Roll back the ball. 

So, sure, Brandel’s right: distance isn’t the only skill required to play at a high level. Cameron Champ isn’t very good. Astute observation! That just has nothing to do with the fundamental distance debate: that we’ve allowed equipment to overrun the game board upon which the sport is played. 

TPC Deere Run is a prime example of a fun, solid design that’s been disfigured and decimated by the modern game. Today, it’s a joke of a golf course for the modern Tour player. And as scoring records continue to get shattered while golf courses do everything in their power to stave off obsolescence, let’s not overlook all the other levers the Tour has tried to pull to keep scoring in check. 

Relatedly, it sounds like NASCAR Commissioner Steve Phelps and TaylorMade CEO and President David Abeles are the top candidates to become CEO of the PGA Tour. I hope the eventual CEO has common sense on the distance issue.

Ok, that’s all for this week. Thank you for reading! Have a question you want me to answer next week? Email me at joseph@thefriedegg.com!