Love adds Fowler, Kuchar, Holmes with three Ryder Cup wild-card picks

If you were hoping the new Ryder Cup selection process would lead to some unpredictability and fireworks with the wild-card picks added to the team, then you were probably somewhat disappointed by the three players U.S. captain Davis Love III named to his team on Monday.

At Ryder Cup site Hazeltine National in Chaska, Minn., Love added J.B. Holmes, Rickie Fowler and Matt Kuchar to the eight players who automatically qualified for the team at the end of The Barclays. Those players were No. 10-12, in order, at the end of the qualifying process.

Fowler has never won a Ryder Cup match in two prior appearances, going 0-3-5. Holmes is on the U.S. team for the second time, being a part of the last American side to win the biennial matches against Europe in 2008. Kuchar is making his fourth consecutive Ryder Cup team, going 4-5-2 in his prior three appearances.

Notably left off the team — at least so far — was world No. 7 Bubba Watson, who finished ninth in the points standings.

“I want to play on the Ryder Cup. My whole goal this year was the Ryder Cup and the Olympics,” Watson said Friday at the BMW Championship. “That’s all I cared about the whole year was making those two events. I didn’t care how I did it, as long as I made those events.”

Watson isn’t the only player who may well warrant a pick. There are the likes of Ryan Moore, Daniel Berger, Kevin Na and Kevin Chappell, all of which made the 30-player field for next week’s Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta. Then there are several players, Love said, who didn’t make the Tour Championship field that could still earn a pick, including Jim Furyk, who is also an assistant captain to Love along with Tiger Woods, Steve Stricker and Tom Lehman.

Love said the Americans competing in the playoff finale shouldn’t necessarily equate the PGA Tour’s season finale to a one-event tryout.

“I’d say the players that are playing in the Tour Championship need to try to win the Tour Championship and not think about Ryder Cup points,” he said. “I think that’s the biggest thing I’ve told several players is it’s not a scoring contest at the Tour Championship for who gets the Ryder Cup pick.”

Then Kuchar decided to fan the flames of golf conspiracy theorists — whatever size that niche is — by suggesting — facetiously — that Woods could still land the final pick.

“I heard, even possibly, this is hearsay, but I heard maybe even Tiger Woods could potentially be a pick. That would be legend-ary,” Kuchar said. “That’s just hearsay. It could strictly be rumor.”

Regardless of who the last pick is, Love will reveal it on Sept. 25 during halftime of the Sunday Night Football game on NBC. The Ryder Cup will start five days later on Sept. 30 and run through Oct. 2.