FedEx St. Jude Championship<\/a> in Memphis\u2014the first of three FedEx Cup playoff events\u2014said via text to Sports Illustrated on Wednesday that he will be at the Procore Championship and will play in the tournament if he is on the team.<\/p>\n\u201cNo one is required to go,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cThe boys feel like this is the best course of action to be ready to play at their highest level at Bethpage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Procore Championship at the Silverado Resort is Sept. 11-14. It is the first of seven tournaments that are part of the PGA Tour\u2019s fall series and an opportunity for those who missed the FedEx Cup playoffs to either secure a spot in signature events next year or secure their PGA Tour card for 2026; it is also open to any other exempt members of the Tour.<\/p>\n
Asked if the gap between events was the biggest factor, Bradley said the schedule is out of the players\u2019 control. \u201cI think the guys want to feel ready to go at Bethpage (Sept. 26-28) and they feel this is the best way to do it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the aftermath of the United States\u2019s 16\u00bd to 11\u00bd defeat to Europe two years ago in Rome, there was plenty of second-guessing of captain Zach Johnson as it pertained to getting the team ready to play.<\/p>\n
Only Max Homa, Justin Thomas and Johnson\u2014the non-playing captain\u2014went to the Napa event. But nine members of the team took a quick scouting trip to Marco Simone Golf Club in Italy less than two weeks before the competition, with only Jordan Spieth, Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay skipping.<\/p>\n
\u201cLast year it was realistically four weeks [break after the Tour Championship],\u201d Clark said last year at the Procore Championship, reflecting on Ryder Cup preparation. \u201cAnd then by the time you pegged it up to play, it was the fifth week, so it\u2019s five weeks. I mean, I would never prepare for a big event where I had five weeks off between one tournament to the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
Clark said he noticed during the Ryder Cup and said so to his partner Homa.<\/p>\n
\u201cThrough four holes I said, \u2018Man, I\u2019m sorry,\u2019\u201d said Clark, who with Homa halved a Friday four-ball match against Robert MacIntyre and Justin Rose. \u201cBecause I kind of was not playing good the first four holes. I said, \u2018I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m not tournament sharp right now, I\u2019ll get into it.\u2019 Then eventually I started getting more comfortable.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for sure. I felt like a lot of us weren’t prepared.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Europeans had several events they could have played, with the entire team teeing it up two weeks prior at the BMW PGA Championship. The Irish Open, which is the week prior to the BMW, is also a likely landing spot for European Ryder Cup team players who want to compete.<\/p>\n
The six automatic qualifiers for Europe will be determined following the British Masters, Aug. 21-24, with Luke Donald\u2019s captain\u2019s picks to come a week later.<\/p>\n
The U.S. automatic six will be decided after the BMW Championship next week, with Bradley making his picks on Aug. 27 following the Tour Championship.<\/p>\n
Bradley, who is the defending champion next week, is the 10th-ranked player in the Official World Golf Ranking and is also 10th\u00a0in the U.S. Ryder Cup team standings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Given the lengthy period of time between the conclusion of the Tour Championship and the start of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-64228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}