Brooks Koepka’s automatic spot in the USA Ryder Cup squad is looking decidedly shaky with just one USA team qualifying event remaining this week on the PGA Tour.
Koepka currently lies fifth among the leading six on the USA Team standings that at the close of this week’s BMW Championship at Olympia Fields will earn a place in Zach Johnson’s Rome side.
Johnson will then announce his six ‘wildcard’ picks the Sunday after next following the PGA Tour season-ending Tour Championship in Atlanta.
Brooks Koepka with a third Rodman Wanamaker trophy, and hopefully now looking for a fourth Ryder Cup cap
The 33-year-old Koepka is a veteran of the past three Ryder Cup’s and brilliantly put himself in frame for a fourth USA team cap in finishing runner-up earlier this year at the Masters and then capturing a third PGA Championship a month later at Oak Hill.
Of course, it is the PGA of America who looks after the Ryder Cup in the US and not the PGA Tour, so it was their decision to allow LIV players to qualify automatically for the 2023 USA Team that will head to the Italian capital later this month.
After adding a third PGA Championship to his golfing CV, Koepka moved from 22nd on the USA team points table to second. Since then, Koepka has slipped to his current fifth place standing.
As well, not contesting the PGA Tour’s Play-Off Series has seen Koepka slip to fifth place with 9,421.145 points and just 572,381 qualifying points clear of Max Homa in sixth place.
Xander Schauffler, and lying in seventh spot, has 8,830.260 points while Jordan Speith, who was very much in contention last week in Memphis, is lying eighth with 8,066.332 points.
Then there’s Cameron Young lying ninth with 7,795.308 and Collin Morikawa at 10th with 7,503.480 Ryder Cup points.
Homa, Schauffler and or Speith could very well drive off with victory in the BMW Championship and, if so, find themselves on the charter flight later next month to Rome.
There’s nothing Koepka can do but bite his nails and cross everything that he won’t be overtaken on the USA Team qualifying table and bumped outside the leading six.
If not, Koepka will qualify for an automatic pick but should it happen then Koepka is going to have to rely on a Johnson wildcard pick.
“The PGA of America does a really good job in easing it for Johnson, and just kind of talking about the preparation for it, what our team is going to do, where are we going to be, and just a little bit more about the shuffle of guys and the stuff they have kind of behind the scenes—stats, stuff like that,” said Koepka a little while ago.
“It’s quite interesting just hearing about it all. I guess when you look at the standings, where guys are, versus I guess some events don’t count at the end of last year and—I think everybody knows.
“But if you just equate all that as equal, where everybody would stand.”
Should Koepka be knocked out of the leading six come Sunday night US time in Illinois you would surely think that given he’s won three PGA Championships and with the Ryder Cup in the US being administered by the same body, that Johnson is not going to leave Koepka out of the 2023 USA Ryder Cup.
Koepka will be headed to Rome and very well could be the only LIV golfer competing in Rome.
