In a time of crisis, organized chaos can be preferable to the illusion of order.
One way or another, the qualification process for the next Ryder Cup has been walloped by the Coronavirus outbreak. Ordinarily, the United States selects eight of its 12 Ryder Cup team members through an orderly, well reasoned points system that considers the two full seasons preceding the Cup. Under the current system, players accumulate points in all majors, World Golf Championship events, and the Players Championship — and, in a Ryder Cup year, in regular PGA Tour events too.
The idea is that, by awarding points over a span of nearly two years — with a slight preference given for the calendar’s biggest events — the team includes the eight strongest resumes over the preceding 18 months. It’s not a perfect idea, but even in years when the U.S. team falls flat, the theory remains sound.
COVID-19 has thrown a virus-sized wrench in those plans, though. If, as the PGA swears it will, the upcoming Ryder Cup goes forward as planned at Whistling Straits in September, then the months-long PGA Tour layoff will dramatically shorten the American team’s two-year window for points accumulation. But if, as James Corrigan reported on March 17, the upcoming Ryder Cup will be postponed until 2021, then Team USA’s selection process will be bastardized even further: extended out over a three-year window (giving undue weight to older results), truncated into a one-year window (forgoing due respect to results outside the preceding six months), or God knows what else.
At this point we don’t even know whether there will be any majors in 2020. And yet the U.S.’s point system relies most heavily on majors to determine most of its team.
No matter what, the process has been irreparably undermined. That’s nobody’s fault, but it’s unavoidable. The only question is what to do about it.
Here’s what to do about it: take your objective, well reasoned system, and throw the whole thing into Lake Michigan.
If the next Ryder Cup — whether it happens in 2020 or 2021 — is preceded by a months-long chunk of total inactivity, then objectiveness is a pretense. Building a team of players through a system that considers the first half of 2020 — when the first half of 2020 might not include any top-notch tournaments — is nonsensical. And that’s true whether the Ryder Cup takes place this year for next.
U.S. Ryder Cup Standings
Top 8 Qualify Automatically
Brooks Koepka
Dustin Johnson
Patrick Reed
Gary Woodland
Xander Schauffele
Webb Simpson
Justin Thomas
Tiger Woods
Tony Finau
Matt Kuchar
Bryson DeChambeau
Patrick Cantlay
Kevin Kisner
Rickie Fowler
Chez Reavie
(current as of March 23, 2020)
If the Ryder Cup happens in 2020, then you could build a team around 2019’s biggest events and whatever PGA Tour events get squeezed into the second half of 2020. But no one would suggest that’s going to provide a clear, unassailable picture of which eight U.S. players have made the best cases to represent their country. Likewise, if the Ryder Cup is pushed to 2021, you could put together a team based on that year’s results plus whatever events are salvaged in the second half of 2020, but that forgoes the supposed objective wisdom of an 18-month qualification window.
Either way, the objectivity that the points system is designed to achieve is unattainable. Either way, the sample size is smaller, and the system is necessarily more arbitrary.
So if the next U.S. Ryder Cup team is destined for an arranged marriage with arbitrariness, then let’s really do it: throw the whole points system out, and turn all 12 roster slots into captain’s picks.
To be sure, there is some danger to divorcing the team’s selection from all hints of objectiveness. It’s not like the team’s picks would have to occur without any cold, hard data to reinforce them, though: the Fedex Cup standings and the Official World Golf Rankings aren’t going anywhere, and the top dozen Americans on those lists would be obvious contenders for the team. But turning all 12 team positions into captain’s picks would allow a degree of flexibility that those lists aren’t likely to afford. As the most recent Presidents Cup demonstrated, Tiger Woods remains the game’s top player when he’s healthy. By not turning the team qualification into an exacting months-long points race, the U.S. team could allow Woods, its strongest asset, to spend the months leading into the Ryder Cup resting and preparing, rather than scrambling for points in meaningless PGA Tour events.
Undoubtedly, handing over the team’s entire composition to the whims of one person probably isn’t a precedent worth repeating. The American side’s history is replete with captains who’ve torpedoed themselves with selfish, unjustifiable selections. Such is the nature of arbitrariness. But by all accounts, U.S. captain Steve Stricker has all the hotheaded energy of a sea cucumber. And in the era of the Ryder Cup task force, the U.S. side shares the decision making more than in years past. It’ll be fine. This one time, it’ll be fine.
It’s possible that this whole thing is academic, of course. At the moment, with professional golf and the Ryder Cup points race frozen in time, the U.S. standings look sensational: if the Cup occurred today, then the American team would include seven of the world’s top 12 players. But that will change, when golf starts back up; we just don’t know how much it’ll change, because we don’t know how much golf will happen between now and the Ryder Cup. And that’s the point: a system designed to achieve order has been thrown into a windstorm of chaos.
Now, the only question is whether the U.S. team will be buffeted by those winds or ride them.
. . .
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