2022 Presidents Cup teams: Trevor Immelman announces six captain’s picks for international team

International team captain Trevor Immelman had an unattainable activity in entrance of him as he made his 2022 Presidents Cup picks. He needed to refill spots that might have in any other case been taken by the No. 2 participant on this planet, Cameron Smith, in addition to one other prime 20 man in Joaquin Niemann after each left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf and have become ineligible for the competitors. 

On Tuesday, with two weeks to go till the Presidents Cup begins at Quail Hollow, Immelman made his choices.

Cameron Davis, Si Woo Kim, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Okay.H. Lee, Sebastian Munoz and Taylor Pendrith will be part of Adam Scott, Mito Pereira, Tom Kim, Corey Conners, Hideki Matsuyama and Sungjae Im — all of whom certified on factors — on the international team. Originally, Immelman was slated to have simply 4 picks, however the departures of Smith and Niemann gave him two extra openings.

None of those six captain’s picks are ranked among the many prime 40 golfers on this planet — Okay.H. Lee is the highest-ranked at No. 41 — however all are intriguing as abilities, which will likely be wanted towards a loaded United States team. Pendrith and Davis are monsters off the tee. Munoz and Lee are former PGA Tour champions. Bezuidenhout is arguably top-of-the-line putters on this planet, and Kim is an immense (if enigmatic) expertise who has received three occasions, together with a Players Championship, and misplaced three others in playoffs by the age of 26.

Kim is the one participant with any earlier Presidents Cup expertise.

One of the international team issues’s (amongst many) is Quail Hollow’s size and the way little of it the team possesses, which is one thing they clearly tried to unravel with these six captain’s picks.

“Quail Hollow is a golf course which rewards length,” mentioned Immelman in a press release. “And [Pendrith] is without doubt one of the longest drivers of the ball in our sport. The way he responded to the adversity of a serious injury in his rookie season, rejoined the PGA Tour and had five top-15 finishes in his last six events highlighted by a T2 at the Rocket Mortgage Classic, meant that he was someone we couldn’t look past.”

Immelman joined The First Cut Podcast final week to speak about a number of the gamers on his squad, and he was unsurprisingly excessive on each Im and Tom Kim, each of whom had terrific years. They will likely be among the many higher gamers on this team and checked out to hold a lot of the load towards the Americans.

2022 Presidents Cup groups

* Projected captain’s picks for the U.S. team on Wednesday

The international team is up towards each a tepid previous and an awesome current. Only six gamers routinely certified for U.S. captain Davis Love III, however he’s anticipated to choose Jordan Spieth, Max Homa, Billy Horschel, Cameron Young and Collin Morikawa for his captain’s picks. With Will Zalatoris’ damage, the twelfth is undetermined, however the U.S. depth is staggering in comparison with the international team.

Immelman will try to fight the immense U.S. expertise with all of the expertise he has at his disposal. He might have simply gone with another older gamers with extra expertise, however as an alternative, he selected 5 rookies who’re unproven but additionally not scarred. This is a technique that the U.S. team truly employed final yr towards the European Ryder Cup team, and it labored splendidly.

While I do not actually anticipate the international team to finally compete with the U.S. squad at Quail Hollow given the depth and energy of the latter over the previous, Immelman has no less than been clever with how he is gone about developing his team within the wake of the LIV departures and team anchor Smith not getting one other run. He’s no less than given himself and his team an opportunity.

The international team has not received a Presidents Cup since 1998 and has by no means received one contained in the United States.