American Ryder Cup team gets boost as Patrick Reed is back in contention after recovering from pneumonia… but Brooks Koepka is a doubt after wrist injury at Tour Championship
- Patrick Reed said he is back fit for selection for America’s Ryder Cup team
- Reed recovered from pneumonia to finish 72 holes at the Tour Championship
- But fellow American Brooks Koepka is a major doubt after another wrist injury
The good news for America’s Ryder Cup team is that Patrick Reed has declared himself fit after 72 holes at the Tour Championship and available for a captain’s wildcard when Steve Stricker announces his six picks on Wednesday.
The bad news is that injury-prone Brooks Koepka is back in the wars with wrist trouble that, to the player, felt uncomfortably like a recurrence of the problem that kept him out of golf for four months and saw him miss the Masters in 2018.
It was sad to see Koepka gamely struggle on for two holes on Saturday but clearly in too much pain to continue after playing a shot from the rough and coming up against a hidden tree root.
Patrick Reed has declared himself fit for Ryder Cup selection after overcoming pneumonia
But fellow American Brooks Koepka is a doubt after injuring his wrist at the Tour Championship
One of the six Americans to qualify automatically for the match at Whistling Straits in three weeks, Koepka was due to have an X-ray yesterday that might well determine his fate.
As for Reed, is it time to change his Captain America moniker to Lazarus? Less than three weeks ago he was wondering if he was going to survive a nasty bout of bilateral pneumonia.
In hot, stifling conditions here, the 31-year-old shot 72, 69, 66 and 71 yesterday to make a persuasive case for selection.
Koepka was awarded the last-place prize money, a mere $395,000. For the 29 players who remained, it was certainly worth getting out of bed for the final 18 holes of the PGA Tour season, even if they were not in contention for the headline first prize of $15million.
Rory McIlroy continued to suffer from the stark inconsistency that has plagued his season
Moving up just a half-dozen places from 12th to sixth, for example, would see someone go from a $705,000 payday to $1.9m.
Rory McIlroy collected a far more modest payday after an inconsistent round of 67. It has been the story of his erratic season that while he’s made the requisite number of birdies and eagles, there have been way too many mistakes, and here was another such round, his last before the Ryder Cup.
At the top of the leaderboard, Patrick Cantlay held a one-stroke lead after nine holes over world No 1 Jon Rahm, with a difference of $10m at stake between finishing first and second.
Patrick Cantlay pipped Jon Rahm to the top of the leaderboard for the event’s $15million prize
There’s never been a Europe Ryder Cup team with more than one Dane but how about a pair of identical twins from Billund — home of Legoland — making it for the next home match in Rome?
At the scene of the 2023 venue, Nicolai Hojgaard completed a one-stroke victory over Tommy Fleetwood to claim the Italian Open in Rome and follow the triumph of his sibling Rasmus at the European Masters in Switzerland the previous week.
It is the first time that brothers have won back-to-back titles on the European Tour, let alone twins. The pair, would you believe, are aged only 20, and Nicolai is now the youngest winner of the Italian Open.
For Fleetwood, it was his first top-three finish in over a year.