Justin Thomas has joked about what he thought after watching the Full Swing episode which showed the moment he received a captain’s pick for the 2023 Ryder Cup ahead of Keegan Bradley.
When it came to the American points list, no pick Zach Johnson made for Rome was more contentious than the decision to select Justin Thomas for his team.
Thomas had an extremely poor 2023 by his standards, missing five of the eight cuts before Johnson made his captain’s picks for the Ryder Cup. The two-time major champion missed out on making the FedEx Cup play-offs.
Cameron Young, Keegan Bradley and Denny McCarthy were the three players above Thomas on the points list who did not feature at Marco Simone. And Bradley’s omission was part of one of the episodes of Full Swing, the Netflix series which has taken golf fans behind the scenes over the last couple of years.
Justin Thomas jokes what he thought watching Full Swing episode on his Ryder Cup selection
Sam Burns and Rickie Fowler also made the team from lower on the points list than Bradley, and thus, Thomas admitted on the No Laying Up Podcast that he was not entirely happy with how the decision was portrayed – especially as he found himself questioning his own selection.
“I definitely wasn’t campaigning for a spot. I joked, we got done, I watched it with Jill and I kind of find myself rooting for Keegan after watching this. It’s tough, but it’s the reality. Keegan, if you put our years against each other, he deserved to be on that team more than I did, and I think it’s not a secret or it’s not hidden why I probably ended up getting a pick and he didn’t. That was probably the biggest thing to me, it made it seem to me like it was the only captain’s pick. There’s six captain picks here, and obviously I would say three or four of those were shoo-ins and obvious, but I feel like that last spot if you will, three or four names could have been thrown around,” he said.
“But jokingly, I was like, watching this, I don’t really feel like I should have made this team, and I was kind of rooting for Keegan to get this pick.”
Low bar, but two-time major champion was better than some in Rome
In fairness to Thomas, his record in the Ryder Cup arguably showed why Johnson felt compelled to pick him. None of the players who automatically qualified had more than one Ryder Cup appearance under their belt.
Meanwhile, Thomas had won six of his nine matches in his Ryder Cup career. Obviously, his partnership with Jordan Spieth had been successful in the past, so it made sense to keep the door open to using that pairing again.
It should also be noted that Luke Donald took real gambles with a couple of his picks, with Nicolai Hojgaard and Ludvig Aberg making the team.
Ultimately, just three American players won more points from a pretty shambolic showing in the Italian capital than Thomas, so Johnson’s decision was somewhat vindicated in some ways.
Thomas will hope that he manages to qualify for Bradley’s team in 2025 automatically so he is not at the centre of any potential drama.
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