{"id":176799,"date":"2025-10-03T05:53:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-03T05:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/176799\/"},"modified":"2025-10-03T05:53:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-03T05:53:16","slug":"three-liv-golf-players-should-have-made-us-ryder-cup-team-admits-former-captain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/176799\/","title":{"rendered":"Three LIV Golf players should have made US Ryder Cup team admits former captain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former winning captain Paul Azinger is of the mindset that LIV Golf superstar and five-time major champion Brooks Koepka would have made a big difference to the result had he been on Keegan Bradley’s 2025 Ryder Cup team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Azinger<\/a>, 65, also considers both LIV Golf<\/a>‘s Patrick Reed and Dustin Johnson were unfortunate not to have boarded a flight to New York as well.<\/p>\n

Between Koepka, Reed and Johnson, you have eight major titles and 12 Ryder Cup<\/a> appearances between them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In the eyes of Azinger, who skippered the stars and stripes to victory at Valhalla in 2008, one of Bradley’s biggest errors lied in his captain’s picks.<\/p>\n

Azinger claims he would have possibly divided his six picks into three PGA Tour players and three LIV Golf players.<\/p>\n

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Related:<\/p>\n

Koepka, Reed and Johnson have not particularly had their best stuff on LIV Golf this season, but Azinger thinks experience counts on the big stage.<\/p>\n

\"Brooks <\/p>\n

Brooks Koepka<\/p>\n

As it turned out, Bryson DeChambeau<\/a> was the only LIV Golf player on Bradley’s Team USA – but he made the team automatically based on his impressive performances in the majors.\u00a0<\/p>\n

DeChambeau was one of three LIV Golf players in total at the 2025 Ryder Cup as Luke Donald’s Europe, who went on to win 15-13, had Tyrrell Hatton and Jon Rahm on their team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"Bryson <\/p>\n

Bryson DeChambeau<\/p>\n

Azinger said on Golf\u2019s SubPar<\/a> podcast:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I feel like once we dipped into the well on LIV, we probably should have brought five times major winning (Brooks)\u00a0Koepka\u00a0who won the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black.<\/p>\n

“Then maybe pick\u00a0Patrick Reed\u00a0and\u00a0Dustin Johnson. If you are going to dip into the LIV pool and pull Bryson.”<\/p>\n

Azinger added:\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I would have really probably pulled Koepka.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There is no way Koepka is not going to man up and play great this Ryder Cup, but they did not.<\/p>\n

“But Europe did not have a problem bringing Rahm and Hatton, they play for the Smashers over there on the LIV Tour, so they are already teammates. That was a brilliant pair and a brilliant pick, Luke did everything right.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It should be noted for reference that Hatton and Rahm play for Legion XIII, not the Smashers as that’s not even a team.<\/p>\n

Smash GC is a team, however, and Koepka is the captain.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Azinger also labelled McIlroy something of a hypocrite<\/a> following his antics at the 2025 Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n

Watch the full interview here:<\/p>\n

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Subscribe to our Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former winning captain Paul Azinger is of the mindset that LIV Golf superstar and five-time major champion Brooks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176800,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-176799","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-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176800"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}