NAPA, Calif. \u2013 The results were mixed for the U.S. Ryder Cup team on the Thursday leaderboard at the Procore Championship, which is doubling as a tune-up for this month\u2019s matches. But it\u2019s clear that captain Keegan Bradley was less concerned with birdies and bogey than he was bonding.<\/p>\n
Bradley orchestrated the groupings for Rounds 1 and 2 at the PGA Tour\u2019s fall opener to maximize his team\u2019s time together, with 10 of his 12 players travelling to Napa to prepare for the showdown with Europe in two weeks.<\/p>\n
Scottie Scheffler played alongside Russell Henley, who he seems likely to play with at Bethpage Black, and J.J. Spaun. The world No. 1 was followed by Harris English and Collin Morikawa (along with vice captain Webb Simpson); Sam Burns and Patrick Cantlay (with vice captain Gary Woodland); and Cameron Young, Ben Griffin and Justin Thomas, in consecutive tee times.<\/p>\n
Griffin paced the U.S. team with an opening 64 that left him tied for second while Henley was a shot back at 7 under and Spaun tied for seventh at 5 under. Scheffler was at 2 under followed by Burns at 1 under. Morikawa, Thomas, Cantlay, Young and English were all tied at even par.<\/p>\n
While Bradley, who is attending this week\u2019s event but is not playing, was likely pleased with Team USA\u2019s solid start, he has made it clear this week is more about familiarity and learning each other\u2019s tendencies.<\/p>\n
Some of the U.S. team members have plenty of history, like Scheffler and Henley who have been paired together nine times in their PGA Tour careers, in addition to the duo\u2019s two matches together at last year\u2019s Presidents Cup. But for Spaun, the pairing was a valuable opportunity to bond with potential partners.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t played with Scottie much and I think that\u2019s what Keegan\u2019s goal is, just to get everyone familiarized with each other. He obviously knows I haven\u2019t played with him very much,\u201d said Spaun, who has been paired five times with Scheffler on Tour. \u201cWhatever the pairings end up being, we want to get comfortable playing with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are potential partners who have little experience together, like English and Morikawa, who would be considered a strong alternate-shot option for captain Keegan. Although they\u2019ve played together five times on Tour they have not been in the same group since 2021.<\/p>\n
Griffin, one of four rookies on this year\u2019s team, has never been paired with either Young or Thomas in a Tour event, which likely made Thursday\u2019s grouping something of a valuable introduction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just really awesome to hang out with all these guys, get to know everyone better,\u201d Griffin said. \u201cThen play rounds out there together as well, just see each other\u2019s games, see if we maybe mesh well with each other, if we have any advice to give Keegan on pairings, but I think all the captains kind of know what\u2019s going to happen, they paired us all up together for reasons probably and we\u2019re just trying to have fun with each other and gear up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NAPA, Calif. \u2013 The results were mixed for the U.S. Ryder Cup team on the Thursday leaderboard at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":137595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-137594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}