One round remains at East Lake, which means that Sunday\u2019s final round of the Tour Championship is the last chance for prospective U.S. Ryder Cup captain\u2019s picks to impress captain Keegan Bradley and his inner circle.<\/p>\n
Bradley will announce his six picks at 11 a.m. ET Wednesday on Golf Channel, and he\u2019s likely already made up his mind on a few of them, including certain locks Justin Thomas, Collin Morikawa and Patrick Cantlay, the latter of whom might just win the FedExCup on Sunday evening.<\/p>\n
And the decision whether or not to pick himself got tougher for Bradley after a 7-under 63 on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s difficult because I want to put the team in the best position to win the Ryder Cup,\u201d Bradley reiterated after what he called maybe his best round of the year. \u201cSo there\u2019s sort of an unknown of \u2013 Arnold Palmer did it in 1963, but it\u2019s a totally different tournament now. It\u2019s just a heavy decision. All the picks are tough. Captain is going to be judged on who they pick. Pretty strange thing to pick yourself….<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we\u2019re going to do the best we can to make the right decision, and it\u2019s going to be controversial to certain people either way. I\u2019m prepared for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
As for the rest of the potential picks, there\u2019s probably a decent amount still to be decided over the final 18 holes at East Lake.<\/p>\n
Here is a closer look at the players likely still being considered:<\/p>\n
Justin Thomas<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 7th
OWGR: 5th
Data Golf rank: 17th
Last three finishes: T-33 (BMW), T-28 (FedEx St. Jude), T-34 (Open)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-10 (8 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He doesn\u2019t retire before Wednesday. Thomas is a lock for a fourth Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n
Collin Morikawa<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 8th
OWGR: 7th
Data Golf rank: 27th
Last three finishes: T-33 (BMW), T-22 (FedEx St. Jude), MC (Open)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-16 (6 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: The same as Thomas. For as much as he\u2019s struggled of late, it\u2019s hard to envision Morikawa, as the world\u2019s sixth-ranked American, being left off the team.<\/p>\n
Patrick Cantlay<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 15th
OWGR: 23rd
Data Golf rank: 22nd
Last three finishes: T-30 (BMW), T-9 (FedEx St. Jude), MC (Open)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-1 (16 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He gets through Sunday without posting something in the 80s. Cantlay is probably a lock, but he may just win the FedExCup before hearing his name called by Bradley.<\/p>\n
Ben Griffin<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 9th
OWGR: 17th
Data Golf rank: 7th
Last three finishes: T-12 (BMW), T-9 (FedEx St. Jude), T-11 (Wyndham)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-7 (9 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: The same as Cantlay. Though not part of the Boys ClubTM, Griffin has been too good for too long this year to not be picked. Wrapping up his season with a fourth straight top-12 will just be icing on the cake.<\/p>\n
Keegan Bradley<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 11th
OWGR: 13th
Data Golf rank: 24th
Last three finishes: T-17 (BMW), T-44 (FedEx St. Jude), MC (Wyndham)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: 4th (13 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He remains inside the top five \u2013 and ahead of Burns or Young \u2013 at East Lake and feels comfortable picking himself. But if Burns and Young both have great Sundays, there\u2019s a chance Bradley is OK with just being the captain.<\/p>\n
Cameron Young<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 14th
OWGR: 20th
Data Golf rank: 23rd
Last three finishes: 11th (BMW), 5th (FedEx St. Jude), WIN (Wyndham)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: 6th (10 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He beats Sam Burns at East Lake. Young has the better record recently, though Burns was better earlier in the year and in the majors.<\/p>\n
Sam Burns<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 16th
OWGR: 22nd
Data Golf rank: 15th
Last three finishes: T-4 (BMW), T-28 (FedEx St. Jude), T-61 (Wyndham)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-7 (9 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He beats Young. Of course, he and Young will both make it if Bradley doesn\u2019t want to give himself a playing nod and Maverick McNealy doesn\u2019t go off.<\/p>\n
Maverick McNealy<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 10th
OWGR: 19th
Data Golf rank: 20th
Last three finishes: 3rd (BMW), T-28 (FedEx St. Jude), MC (3M)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-16 (6 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He plays well enough on Sunday to pass both Young and Burns \u2013 with one of those two completely self-destructing down the stretch. That\u2019s probably the only way unless Bradley doesn\u2019t pick himself.<\/p>\n
Chris Gotterup<\/p>\n
Ryder Cup points finish: 20th
OWGR: 27th
Data Golf rank: 32nd
Last three finishes: T-33 (BMW), T-54 (FedEx St. Jude), T-10 (3M)
Tour Championship position through 54 holes: T-10 (8 under)
He\u2019ll be picked if\u2026: He does the unthinkable and wins the Tour Championship and FedExCup, making up an eight-shot deficit on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One round remains at East Lake, which means that Sunday\u2019s final round of the Tour Championship is the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":91694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-91693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/91694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}