While the preparation has been far from ideal once again, the American Ryder Cup team can finally start to look ahead to Adare Manor after Jim Furyk’s appointment as captain.
In truth, appointing Jim Furyk looks to be a smart choice from the PGA of America. While the 55-year-old oversaw an emphatic loss at Le Golf National at the 2018 Ryder Cup, he probably ticks more boxes than anyone else in the frame for the role.
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Nothing about a Ryder Cup on European soil should surprise Furyk. Meanwhile, he has led the American team to victory – albeit at the Presidents Cup.
This should, therefore, be a new starting point for Team USA.
Rickie Fowler should be Jim Furyk’s first assistant captain for the 2027 Ryder Cup
Furyk’s backroom team should largely be made up of PGA Tour players who could theoretically take on the captaincy for the 2029 event at Hazeltine or two years later in Spain.
With that, one of the first calls he should make is to Rickie Fowler.
Fowler is having a good year on the PGA Tour. He is currently 36th in the FedEx Cup, while he finished inside the top 10 at the RBC Heritage.
However, the 37-year-old appears to be edging towards the end of his career at the very highest level. He has played in just one of the last six Masters, while he has just one top 10 in a major since the start of the 2022 season.
Fowler has played on five Ryder Cup teams previously. Only Brian Harman was older than Fowler on the American side when he received a pick for the 2023 event in Rome.
So he is arguably a perfect choice for the vice-captaincy in 2027.
Team USA need to finally copy Europe and put much stronger foundations in place at the Ryder Cup
Nine of the 2025 team were aged between 28 and 33. So it is unlikely that any of those players will be ready to think about being an assistant captain as early as 2027.
But it seems to be imperative that the American team starts to put those foundations in place that ensure that they do not need to rip everything up and start again every two years.
Furyk is arguably the ideal captain to kick off that process. It was asking too much of Keegan Bradley to expect him to mentor the likes of Brandt Snedeker and Webb Simpson when Bradley had not been involved in a Ryder Cup for more than a decade.
As much as the Americans may not want to hear it, Europe’s dedication to keeping one eye on the future at each event has reaped huge rewards since the turn of the century.
Team USA needs to put together something similar if they hope to close the gap. And bringing Fowler in as an assistant captain for 2027 feels like a very good start.
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