U.S. Ryder Cup captain Zach Johnson will make six selections to fill out his 12-man roster after this week's TOUR Championship. If the decisions were up to us, here's what we would do and why (using both data and personal judgment):

As a refresher, these are the six auto-qualifiers:

Scottie Scheffler
Wyndham Clark
Brian Harman
Patrick Cantlay
Max Homa
Xander Schauffele

We think the following players are locks given their 2023 performances and histories within the U.S. team ecosystem:

Collin Morikawa
Jordan Spieth
Rickie Fowler

Now the decision-making starts. There are 3 spots left on the plane to Italy and 8 realistic options to choose from.

We are giving the 4th pick to Cameron Young. Young is 9th in the U.S. Ryder Cup standings, and the 12th-best American (at 23rd) according to our rankings. While he went through a summer slump, Young remains one of the best drivers in the world—a skill we expect to be important around Marco Simone. In our more predictive skill ratings, which account for SG category performance among other things, Young ranks as the 8th-best American.

To help us decide the final two spots we’ve plotted each player's skill—how good our model thinks they are in strokes-gained per round—since January 2021.

An argument could be made for any one of the seven players above (and perhaps a couple more). However, we think it’s too late for Glover to get selected—his recent success may be fleeting and there are too many reliable options we currently rank above him. Tony Finau was in a very strong position this spring but his recent performances, alongside a lackluster major championship season, has him on the outside looking in for us.

Going off the SG data alone, Russell Henley should be on this team. He’s our 5th pick. For the final spot, our gut says Thomas: he’s a proven Ryder Cup performer and has been one of the best players in the world for the last 5 years. Koepka likely deserves it more given he almost auto-qualified while playing in only 4 points-eligible events, but if we are solely making picks based on who gives the U.S. the best chance to win, we are going with Thomas as the 6th and final pick. As for Bradley and Burns, there isn’t a great reason to keep them off this team, but unfortunately there are only 12 spots.

FedExCup Update

Scheffler, McIlroy, and Rahm—whose position in the Big 3 could be questioned, as he fell to 4th in our rankings last week—enter the final week of the FedExCup with a 70% share of the win probability, pretty much exactly what they started the playoffs at two weeks ago. The probability that the FEC winner comes from outside the current top 10 is 8.6%, with Xander Schauffele holding the highest win probability (2.5%) among those players.

There will be $57.9M paid out at East Lake, with $18M going to the winner and $500K going to last place. We’ll have projected earnings on the live model this week because we have nothing better to predict. Scheffler has the current highest projected earnings at $10.6M, while Taylor Moore has the lowest at $650K.

Rankings Update

Top 10 (see all)
Player	DG		OWGR
Rory McIlroy	1	—	2	—
Scottie Scheffler	2	—	1	—
Patrick Cantlay	3	1	4	—
Jon Rahm	4	1	3	—
Viktor Hovland	5	1	5	—
Xander Schauffele	6	1	6	—
Cameron Smith	7	1	10	1
Tommy Fleetwood	8	1	15	—
Max Homa	9	4	7	—
Collin Morikawa	10	—	20	—
Notables
Russell Henley	11	—	28	1
Matt Fitzpatrick	19	14	8	2
Brooks Koepka	39	2	13	—
Lucas Glover	44	7	30	—
Justin Thomas	57	3	26	2
Andy Ogletree	169	109	214	167
Alex Fitzpatrick	184	59	177	62
Daniel Brown	185	106	236	148
Chan Kim	254	129	164	128
Guido Migliozzi	338	7	234	10
Lee Westwood	352	19	470	16

Player Feature

Collin Morikawa

age 26 yrs, 6 months

dg rank 10th — owgr rank 20th

weeks in dg top 100 227

dg skill +1.64 strokes-gained / round¹

style accurate driver, elite iron player

career wins
PGA Tour: 5
European Tour: 1
Amateur: 9

player comps
2022 Scottie Scheffler (similarity score²: 71.0)
2018 Hideki Matsuyama (68.4)
2006 Justin Rose (60.6)

Letzig's Insight
The relatively low similarity scores of Morikawa’s top comps indicate how rare it is to find a top player with his combination of elite accuracy and iron play. Despite the lack of a win in 2023, it has statistically been the best year of Morikawa’s career. He’s averaged +1.7 True SG per round (his previous best season was 2020 at +1.6), and continues to be one of the best approach players in the game (+1.1 SG:APP/round, ranks 2nd in 2023).

1 Relative to an average PGA Tour field.

2 Similarity scores are uniformly distributed from 0 (least similar) to 100 (most similar). Similarity is based on overall skill and playing style over the previous 3 seasons and a measure of career-long performance. Comps are restricted to players of the same age.

Week That Was

Winner	Event	True SG	xWin
V. Hovland	PGA — BMW Champ	+4.79	0.984
D. Brown	DPT — ISPS Handa	+3.79	0.562
A. Ogletree	ASA — Int'l Series England	+3.64	0.421
C. Kim	KFT — Magnit Champ	+3.48	0.28
L. Ruuska	CHA — Finnish Challenge	+2.64	0.015
M. Mitchell	AFR — SunBet Challenge	+2.05	0.001
K. Akbar	ADT — The Indonesia	+1.23	0.0
K. Duke	SNR — Shaw Charity	+0.39	0.0

Explainers: True SG, xWins

Andy Ogletree won in impressive fashion on the Asian Tour last week, winning by 7 strokes over a slew of LIV regulars. This is Ogletree’s 3rd International Series win of 2023, making him a #lock for LIV promotion next season (assuming it still exists in a similar form).