Tiger Woods picks himself for 2019 Presidents Cup

In an interesting situation, Tiger Woods of Cypress, CA picked himself on Thursday for the 2019 Presidents Cup, which will take place from December 12-15, 2019. This prestigious international golf tournament has the best players from the United States facing the best golfers outside the United States and Europe.

This will be the ninth Preidents Cup Woods will participate in. To date, he has a record of 24 wins, 15 losses and one tie with a winning percentage of .613.

Woods, as team captain, needed to select four American golfers to participate in the event. He chose Tony Finau of Salt Lake City, UT, Gary Woodland of Delray Beach, FL and Patrick Reed of San Antonio, TX.

Interestingly, Woods and Woodland were both major champions, but were not among the top eight American golfers in the Official World Golf Ranking Points between August 27, 2018 and August 19, 2019. Woods won the Masters this year at Augusta and Woodland won the U.S. Open this past year at Pebble Beach. The top eight American golfers who were already selected prior to Woods’s selections were PGA Championship winner Brooks Koepka of West Palm Beach, FL; Justin Thomas of Louisville, KY; Dustin Johnson of Columbia, SC; Patrick Cantlay of Long Beach, CA; Xander Schauffele of San Diego, CA; Webb Simpson of Raleigh, NC; Matt Kuchar of Winter Park, FL and Bryson DeChambeau of Modesto, CA.

Woods chose himself over Rickie Fowler even though Fowler had more Official World Golf Ranking Points than him. Fowler had 4678 points, while Woods only had 3905 points. However, Woods is a 15-time major champion, while Fowler has zero majors next to his name.

The international team, who is captained by Ernie Els of South Africa, are represented by golfers from nine different countries. Host Australia is the only nation with multiple playing participants as they have Adam Scott, Cameron Smith, Jason Day and Marc Leishman. The other golfers on the international team are Adam Hadwin of Canada, Hideki Matsuyama of Japan, Louis Oosthuizen of South Africa, Abraham Ancer of Mexico, Haotong Li of China, Cheng-tsung Pan of Chinese Taipei, Sung-jae Im of South Korea and Joaquin Niemann of Chile. Two players not selected on the international team were Jazz Janewattananond of Thailand and Justin Harding of South Africa.