10 Thoughts on JT and the Ryder Cup

Edition No. 26 (special edition) | August 30, 2023

Hey,

A couple times a year in golf, something happens that I obsess over. Normally this takes place around the major championships. Sometimes it’s related to Tiger Woods. I’ll have a cascade of thoughts (sometimes connected to one another, often not) that I just need to get down on paper.

Today is one of those days.

As [gestures at the entire western world] everyone knows, Justin Thomas was one of Zach Johnson’s six picks for Rome on Tuesday. It was, off the top of my head and depending on how you feel about the waggle counter they hit Brian Harman with in the final round of the Open Championship, the second-most polarizing moment of the year behind the PGA Tour-PIF merger framework agreement.

For basically the last month, there have been capital-T Takes about what JT does or does not deserve. Obviously when a thing is as polarizing as this is, I’m going to have some thoughts on it, and I wanted to write them down for you to read/share/agree with/print out and use as toilet paper.

This is unusual Normal Sport content, and I’ll be back with the regular nonsense on Friday, but the JT news deserves a bit of special treatment. You can vote at the bottom of this post about whether this is the type of one-off thing you’d like to see in the future or if I should just stay in my Tuesday/Friday lane going forward.

Here are 10 thoughts on JT, Rome and the Ryder Cup. As always, thank you to Jason Page for the illustrations.

1. They’re not taking him because he’s been good! If one more person sends me Lucas Glover’s numbers since June compared to JT’s, I’m going to go full Tyrrell Hatton and just start flinging golf clubs through the windows of my office.

JT is ranked behind [checks notes] William Mouw, Kelly Kraft and [checks notes again] Zach Johnson in terms of strokes gained over the last three months. Nobody is arguing that he should be on the team because he’s flushing it.

But that’s the entire point.

The U.S. has been trotting out talent — more or less the 12 best players in a given year — in Europe for three decades and saying, Figure it out! In that sense, there has been an early 2000s Team USA basketball feel to this organization.

Perhaps this works domestically where they get the comfiest of setups and don’t feel the heat of an away crowd. It’s obviously not working across the Atlantic.

So if he’s not playing well or even close to it, then why is he there?

First, we have to come to grips with the truth that the Ryder Cup is almost a different sport than the one we’ve been watching for the last eight months. It is so other than the Memorial or the Players or Riviera that it should barely be put into the same broad category of “golf.”

Because that’s true, you can’t think about Rome like you think about Bay Hill. In Rome, you’re going to need a catalyzer, a galvanizer, a chest-thumper that everybody’s looking to when Rahm and Hatton go out in 30 on Saturday and the entire venue starts to spin.

Go up and down the U.S. roster. They don’t have that guy. If they did, if that guy existed, then I wouldn’t be arguing for J.T.

But man, for 30 years they’ve pretended like you don’t even have to like each other as long as you hit it 320 down the middle, and I just don’t think that’s how the Ryder Cup (or team golf) actually works (despite what Tom Watson continues to believe).

Here’s what I wrote on Twitter the other day.

The Ryder Cup is won with great play, sure, but great play is predicated in that week on tremendous waves of emotion. JT represents America’s core when it comes to that emotion, and without him they sort of lack a rudder. That’s very different than being in the cool kids club. He’s not being picked because of his name or because of his past record. He has an actual role to play on this team.

“He has without question been the heart and soul of team USA at Ryder Cups,” said ZJ. “Our emotional leader.”

As one person I was texting with on Tuesday said … Imagine not taking him.

2. Does that make it a boys club? That’s been a theme this week. ZJ took his boys. I mean, maybe. Maybe. But I’m not sure JT is proof of that. The way ZJ was talking about Lucas Glover, I wouldn’t necessarily say that ZJ is closer to 30-year-old JT than he is 43-year-old Glover and possibly others on the outskirts of the standings.

Also, is having a thoughtfully-constructed plan for the Ryder Cup the worst thing in the world? As someone on Twitter (that I cannot remember or find) said … when Europe does this we praise their “commitment to continuity,” but when the U.S. does it, we want to overthrow the establishment.

In 2008, Nick Faldo made a similar pick to this JT one. With Darren Clarke sitting out there ready to get the call, Faldo went with Poulter, who had one top 10 the entire year leading into Valhalla (two fewer than JT in 2023). Poulter of course then went 4-1-0 at the event. Europe got torched but he nearly won half their points.

To look at what Europe has done for the last 20 years and say, We should be doing that, and then the U.S. does it and everybody screams about it seems pretty bizarre to me.

3. Speaking of doing that: My good friend Deep Fried Egg pulled this Luke Donald quote from Paris.

“The Americans were amazingly strong on paper,” said Donald, one of Europe’s vice captains. “But Ryder Cups are just different than individual championships. They are about team chemistry, team bonding and finding the right partnerships. And we obviously had a lot of help being at home on a course we’re very familiar with.”

The U.S. has been trying to win Ryder Cups in Europe on paper for a long time. With this team, they’re trying to win one in reality.

And guess what? It might not work. It might go poorly. JT and Spieth might get Amesed in the first match, and the Euros might make Whistling Straits look like it was Celtic Manor. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right call when the call was made.

4. It should be a meritocracy! There has been so much outrage over the Glover/Keegan/Young/Henley snubs by people who either 1. Hate JT or 2. Just want to yell about something or I guess 3. Both.

I’ve seen and heard a lot of "I guess I thought golf was a meritocracy!” Here’s the deal: You can make it a total meritocracy and have 12 automatic qualifiers … or you can try to win.

It’s certainly not a monarchy. If it was, Brian Harman and Wyndham Clark wouldn’t be on the team. However, if your opponent has options and you do not have options (if instead you have, say, 12 automatic qualifiers) you’re unnecessarily disadvantaging yourself.

The U.S. has implicitly been doing this for years by limiting itself to three captain’s picks. It has always been difficult for them to go way off the board because it always felt like the first three out “deserved” a pick. Now it still feels like that, but you still have three picks to play with after that. In some ways, the freedom to take JT is the entire point of having six captain’s picks.

5. Outcome bias is real: One thing we should remember: Someone is not a good or bad pick retrospective of how they played a month from now. If you believe JT is a good pick today, him going 0-2-1 should not change that. If you believe JT is a bad pick today, him going 3-0-0 should not change that.

If you don’t believe me here, play it out with Brooks. If Brooks goes 0-3-1 in Rome, does that make him a bad captain’s pick? Or is he a good captain’s pick because he’s a five-time major winner who won a major this year who simply had a tough week in Rome?

Obviously nobody (probably myself included) will remember this.

6. I feel for Keegan: He put himself out there over and over again. And honestly, if this event was at Bethpage, I might have advocated for him. The reality for him, though, is that he has one top 10 since the Masters (a win) and he did not do enough (nor did anyone else) to unseat the value JT brings to the table as The Captain.

And while I think ZJ made the correct decision, I still respect how openly Keegan talked about his desire to be in Rome. His vulnerability has been admirable. The difficult part about vulnerability, though, and the reason so few people swim in those waters, is that it really only has two outcomes: Deep satisfaction or tremendous heartbreak.

7. Nobody else gets this treatment: If Spieth is playing like JT, leave him home. If Scheffler is playing like JT, that’s a no. If basically anyone but JT is playing like JT, I’m not even sure you have the conversation.

But again, it’s not necessarily about how he’s playing. Instead, imagine the Warriors without Draymond. You still have all the talent, but without the guy who conducts the orchestra.

The obvious response is that basketball is a completely different sport than golf, an individual game. And while that is true, it is also true — as I noted above — that the Ryder Cup (and really any version of team golf) resembles PGA Tour golf in the same way that my long iron play resembles Viktor Hovland’s.

8. Europe doesn’t want him: I can promise you — and this is not conjecture — the European team room wants JT sitting in Jupiter, not chugging cabernet on the first tee. That has to mean something.

9. Can’t even spit: I loved this point from Porath. What’s wild is that there might be guys who play twice as much as JT, and he’ll experience five times the scrutiny. It’s going to be engrossing drama. Every shot of it.

10. JT loves the arena: It’s reductive, and it’s certainly not everything, but there’s going to be a moment or a few of them when Europe feels inevitable. Where Rahm is roaring and Hovland is rolling and Lowry is flinging baskets of pastries to the masses while Tommy is busy baptizing Jordan.

In other words, a nightmare.

And when that scenario — or a version of it — starts to unfold, you have to have someone who has something that nobody else has.

I think about the 2008 gold medal basketball game more often than I should. The U.S. played Spain in Beijing, and it got close late. Nobody wanted it. Like, nobody really wanted it. So Kobe asked for it, and he put it away.

There’s not a Kobe on the U.S. roster. Or there wasn’t. Plenty of great players. A lot of major champions. Loads of talent. But nobody who truly wants to be in the arena when the arena is closing in and they’re chanting Rory’s name from the rafters of the venue. When it gets uncomfortable and the radios go silent and you start to get dizzy about what’s taking place.

This happens every Ryder Cup, sometimes several times. And you have to have a Kobe. Somebody screaming for the ball. That doesn’t mean it will work. It doesn’t mean you’ll win. But it’s what constructing a true team looks like.

You know what matters on a Sunday when Rahm and Rory can see water beading on the champagne? Not what you did at the 3M Open in July. You’re not even playing golf anymore. You’re chasing chaos and leveraging all the emotion you have at your disposal.

In that moment, you need somebody who craves the thrill of desperation.

And that — all of that — is the reason JT is there.