absolutely awesome<\/a>) tournament performance in an overall pedestrian season is not enough reason to pick him. We always do this with every recent winner. We must stop! He\u2019s No. 34 on DataGolf. There are so many more trustworthy golfers who bring the same traits he does. Now, if Young continues this through the playoffs and contends multiple times this month, I\u2019d welcome him on. He\u2019s so talented, an excellent course fit, and his aggressive style should be great in cup golf. But he needs to go earn it.<\/p>\nGabby:<\/strong> I\u2019d say an in-form Cameron Young (No. 15 on the points list) feels not quite as \u201cin the conversation\u201d as Sam Burns (No. 16). Young will bring new life to the team, he\u2019s trending at the perfect moment, and he once won the New York State Open at Bethpage Black as an amateur \u2014 so the course fit is there. But if Young doesn\u2019t perform in the playoffs, it would make perfect sense for Bradley to take someone like Burns, who is putting lights out this year, is Scottie Scheffler\u2019s best friend, and has Ryder Cup experience.<\/p>\nHugh:<\/strong> While I respect Young finally converting an opportunity into a win on the PGA Tour, I\u2019m just not ready to think this is anything more than a guy having a really good week at an opportune time. He\u2019s a more familiar name than many of the other bubble candidates for the final two or three spots on the U.S. team, but Ben Griffin, Harris English and Chris Gotterup all have better strokes-gained numbers over the last three months than Young. So is he even the best \u201chot at the right time\u201d candidate?<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2227914045-scaled.jpg\")
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Bradley has had a rough go of it since the Travelers Championship win. (Johnnie Izquierdo \/ Getty Images)Vibe check on Keegan Bradley as a playing captain?<\/strong><\/p>\nGabby:<\/strong> It almost felt like Bradley was a lock to play after he won the Travelers, but things can change quickly during pre-Ryder Cup summers. Bradley followed the victory with a T41 in Detroit, a T30 at The Open and a missed cut at the Wyndham. If he doesn\u2019t make a run at one of the playoff events, I think he\u2019ll have a hard time selecting himself. The playing captain role is a lot of pressure for Bradley to willingly endure if there are other Americans who could contribute to the team without distraction. Short of that playoff success, I\u2019m starting to think Bradley should fully devote himself to the captaincy and take the variables off the table.<\/p>\nBrody:<\/strong> When he won the Travelers, he was objectively playing better golf over the last 12 months than all but maybe four or five Americans. I thought it would be a huge mistake to leave off a good golfer solely because we place so much weight on the importance of the guy picking teams. But his last three starts have been a regression. So, I\u2019m less adamant in my thoughts if he ends the season as, say, the 10th-best American. The question really comes down to how important you think this whole captain thing is. Unless he thrives in the FedEx Cup, he\u2019s probably not playing well enough to truly validate being a playing captain.<\/p>\nHugh:<\/strong> He\u2019s going to be on the team, that much I\u2019m sure of. I don\u2019t even know if there\u2019s a way he\u2019s not, short of falling out of the top 12 in points (which could happen, I suppose). However, this is falling perfectly into place for the murky middle worst-case scenario we all discussed when he was selected as captain a year ago. If the U.S. doesn\u2019t win, it\u2019ll be viewed as a massive mistake, no matter how well Bradley plays. And if the U.S. loses AND Bradley struggles, oh boy \u2026 there\u2019ll be some Stephen A. Smith-level takes coming out of that media center.<\/p>\nThe FedEx Cup playoffs begin this week. Rory McIlroy won\u2019t be there. Is that a problem?<\/strong><\/p>\nHugh:<\/strong> While understanding all the reasons why the PGA Tour has to hold a playoff, it highlights the fact that golf and a playoff are just never really going to happen. The sport is too sponsor-dependent to select a format that has real, win-or-go-home stakes. But the tour needs some incentive to make sure Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy and the rest don\u2019t disappear after the Open Championship, so here we are trucking through the American South in August with big piles of cash on the line. It\u2019s not a problem if McIlroy is the outlier, but it becomes one if this is the start of a trend.<\/p>\nBrody:<\/strong> It\u2019s a problem in the big picture of the playoffs. McIlroy is making it abundantly clear that a top player doesn\u2019t need to play in the first round of the playoffs to qualify for the Tour Championship, and in the new format, his place in the top 30 won\u2019t matter. That is a pretty substantial problem for trying to make all three events matter. It\u2019s still a good tournament with plenty of stars in Memphis, and the intrigue of golfers trying to make the season top 50 always interests me. But I\u2019m worried about what McIlroy\u2019s absence says about the new Tour Championship.<\/p>\nGabby:<\/strong> Yes, but this is an extremely Rory McIlroy-specific problem. McIlroy has elected to skip several signature events in the past, and he\u2019s been vocal about his shifting priorities after winning the Masters. I don\u2019t see this being a prevalent loophole used by other top stars (that, if you\u2019re firmly in the top-30 in the FedEx Cup, there is no incentive to improve your status in the ranking \u2014 starting strokes at the Tour Championship don\u2019t exist anymore). That being said, the PGA Tour should absolutely have its top players locked in to play each of the three playoff events to close out the season with must-see TV. Perhaps McIlroy wouldn\u2019t feel compelled to skip Memphis if the event \u2026 wasn\u2019t in scorching hot Memphis.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/GettyImages-2228097367-scaled.jpg\")
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Spieth is 48th in the PGA Tour\u2019s FedEx Cup standings. (Johnnie Izquierdo \/ Getty Images)Xander Schauffele and Jordan Spieth are both closer to falling out of the top 50 than getting into the top 30. Who needs to make it to Atlanta more?<\/strong><\/p>\nBrody:<\/strong> Spieth. Schauffele\u2019s frustrating 2025 can be written off as a weird, injury-delayed outlier in an otherwise consistent career. He has absolutely nothing to prove, and it helps that Schauffele has played well in all four majors with four top 30s and two top 10s. But Spieth is both fighting to make a Ryder Cup team and to return to being an elite golfer. He\u2019s shown progress since his 2024 wrist surgery, but if he still misses the Tour Championship, it will be three years without a win and four years since he\u2019s played like a top-tier golfer. That\u2019s more difficult to come to terms with.<\/p>\nGabby:<\/strong> Spieth needs to make it to Atlanta if he has any chance of making the Ryder Cup team. He\u2019s coming off his wrist surgery and managed four top-10 finishes this season, but we really haven\u2019t seen Spieth truly contend for a win since 2023. Spieth already had to rely on sponsor exemptions to get into several signature events this year, and any downward mobility would put him at risk of needing those again in 2026. But really, Spieth has to give Keegan Bradley a reason to pick him for the U.S. team these next few weeks. Schauffele has had a strange year with costly absences and rust, but he won half of the majors last year. He\u2019ll be fine.<\/p>\nHugh:<\/strong> As much as I\u2019d love to make the contrarian argument that Schauffele deeply needs to be at the Tour Championship, I can\u2019t. Injuries stopped his season before it started, and he just never got it going, but he still won two majors a year ago and will be on the Ryder Cup team. He\u2019s fine. And in the big picture, the top 30 alone does not change Spieth\u2019s career, either. But if he\u2019s going to make a Ryder Cup team, it would help! Moreover, he needs to stay in the top 50, because it would be a terrible look to spend another year picking up sponsor exemptions just to get into signature events.<\/p>\n(Top photo of Cameron Young: Jared C. Tilton \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019re entering the final stretch of the PGA Tour season, with the beginning of the three-event FedEx Cup…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":127414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1430,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-127413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114989739915539568","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}