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Justin Thomas was left off an American team for the first time since 2016 when Presidents Cup captain Jim Furyk went with the next six players in the team standings, a list that included Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley.
International captain Mike Weir also faced tough choices to round out his 12-player roster on Tuesday, none greater than leaving two of his fellow Canadians, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin, off the team for the Sept. 27-30 matches at Royal Montreal.
Canada will have three players on the International team, made up of countries from everywhere outside Europe.
Thomas had the longest active streak among Americans playing the Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup. He relied on a captain’s pick for the Ryder Cup last year when he didn’t qualify for the PGA Tour’s postseason. This time, he reached the Tour Championship but was No. 19 in the U.S. standings.
Furyk took two players rated above him, former British Open champion Brian Harman and Max Homa, even though neither made it to the Tour Championship and both have been in pronounced slumps all summer.
His other picks were Sam Burns, Tony Finau and Russell Henley, who joins Sahith Theegala as the only American on the 12-man team who has never played in a Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup.
“There are a bunch of guys that I would want on this team. It was a difficult decision with JT, definitely a difficult call to make,” Furyk said. “But as a captain, you’re trying to make the best decision, put the best 12 guys together, fit the puzzle pieces together, the pairings together.”
Thomas has a 17-7-4 record in both cups dating to his debut in 2017 at the Presidents Cup.
Weir selected three Canadians — Corey Conners, Taylor Pendrith and Mackenzie Hughes — along with Si Woo Kim of South Korea, Min Woo Lee of Australia and Christiaan Bezuidenhout of South Africa.
Hughes was rated below Taylor and Hadwin and did not reach the BMW Championship. He was left off the last Presidents Cup team, even though Hughes is known for his putting and was a member at Quail Hollow, where it was held.
Weir began to choke up when talking about having to call Taylor and Hadwin with the bad news. Taylor etched his spot in Canadian lore when he won the Canadian Open last summer with an 80-foot eagle putt, and then followed that by winning the Phoenix Open in February.
“I respect those guys, I love those guys. They’re like brothers, they’re Canadians,” Weir said. “The toughest part of being a captain were those calls. I have a lot of respect for them and even have more respect for them now the way they handled it.”
The six qualifiers for the International team were Hideki Matsuyama, Jason Day, Tom Kim, Sungjae Im, Byeong Hun An and Adam Scott, the 44-year-old Australian who will be playing in his 11th straight Presidents Cup.
Scott has never been on a winning side. There was tie in his 2003 debut in South Africa, and the Americans have won the last nine in a row.
The six Americans who qualified were Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Patrick Cantlay and Theegala.
Bradley, appointed Ryder Cup captain in early July, already had agreed to be one of Furyk’s vice captains. But then he qualified for the FedEx Cup playoffs, narrowly made it to the second stage and then won the BMW Championship.
“A guy that grinded it out and came up in big moments here at the end of the season, and that’s what you want on your team,” Furyk said.
He said Bradley would be at Royal Montreal strictly as a player, and that he would announce another assistant captain later. Bradley has said he is trying to make the Ryder Cup team next year at Bethpage Black.
He will become the first active Ryder Cup captain to play in the Presidents Cup.
Bradley is the only American captain’s pick who won a tournament this year. Harman hasn’t contended since The Players Championship in March, Homa not since the Masters in April.
Furyk said it was just happenstance that his picks were Nos. 7-12 in the Presidents Cup standings; they also were the top six available in the world ranking. He said he looked at a body of work and other factors that went beyond just this summer.
“I definitely don’t want this to be about why one person was picked over another,” he said. “I look at Max’s attributes and look at how he’s played the last two years — undefeated record in Charlotte, our best record last year in Rome. … I also look at kind of the glue, a guy that pulls the team room together.”
The Americans return eight players who were part of the losing Ryder Cup team on the road at Marco Simone last year, and seven players on the winning Presidents Cup team from 2022 at Quail Hollow.
The International team returns eight players from the last Presidents Cup at Quail Hollow.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf