Davis Love III still has a few days before he announces his six captain’s picks to the 2022 U.S. Presidents Cup team, but he has already made one decision: he’s going to take a page out of the Steve Stricker Ryder Cup playbook and organize a team-bonding reconnaissance mission to Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte ahead of the Presidents Cup, which begins September 22.
“It’s hard to pin 12 PGA Tour pros down, but we’re going to try to play a practice round or two before,” Love said. “We want to get Cam Young and Billy Horschel – the guys who haven’t played a Presidents Cup or Ryder Cup – to see it. I think that really helped us at Whistling Straits (last year’s Ryder Cup site). You get over the grandeur of it. Jack Nicklaus gave us a great speech before the 2016 Ryder Cup. He said he’d go to the Masters and play three or four rounds the week before and keep score and then go home and relax and when he’d come back on Monday he was ready to go. I think that philosophy helps guys get over the shock of it rather than walking out there Monday afternoon and it’s wham.”
Love recalled his own personal experience playing at the 1995 Ryder Cup at Oak Hill.
“I was like Holy cow, this feels like the U.S. Open with a lot more tents,” he said.
While most of the 24 players in the biennial competition likely have some experience playing at Quail Hollow from competing in the Tour’s annual Wells Fargo Championship – it took a one-year hiatus and was held at TPC Avenel Farms this year – or the 2017 PGA Championship, Love still wanted to avoid a mistake the U.S. side made at the 2018 Ryder Cup.
“That’s what got us in Paris,” he said. “They knew the course so much better than us.”
Love noted one potential obstacle for assembling all the newcomers to the team let alone his full squad for a field trip ahead of the Presidents Cup. Max Homa, who is a likely selection after winning twice last season and finishing tied for fifth in the Tour Championship, is the defending champion at the Fortinet Championship in Napa, California, which is being held the week before the biennial competition, and scheduled to play.
“He knows the golf course but he doesn’t want to miss the hang out,” Love said.
Homa actually knows Quail Hollow well enough that he claimed his first Tour title there in 2019.
