Qualifying for the U.S. Ryder Cup Team as a LIV Golfer Isn't Easy, but Brooks Koepka Did It

A win at the PGA Championship made Koepka impossible to ignore, but he said the same opportunity was there for other LIV players.

ROME — "Play better" is the familiar response when someone is upset about not qualifying for a certain event or team.

In the case of the Ryder Cup and Cameron Young, Keegan Bradley, Lucas Glover and Denny McCarthy, to name a few, they just needed better finishes in events to improve their chances of appearing at this week's Ryder Cup.

For LIV golfers, the "play better" statement was a little more complicated, as the only way to get onto the U.S. team was through the hardest tournaments to win and compete: the majors.

Brooks Koepka is playing his fourth Ryder Cup :: Alessandra Tarantino/AP

Brooks Koepka is the only LIV golfer who essentially forced captain Zach Johnson to select him, as Koepka won the PGA Championship in May to jump into the top six of the Ryder Cup points list. He was securely there until the last week of the counting period, when he fell to seventh after the PGA Tour's BMW Championship.

“I knew it would be tougher, but I think after Augusta I kind of had my eyes on it," said Koepka, who finished T2 at the Masters. “I realized, I think, after Augusta I went to maybe 20th, somewhere around there on the points list, and then from there it was just motivation to get on the team.”

Koepka, a three-time Ryder Cupper, has a 6-5-1 record in the event. He's experienced the humiliation of a 17½ to 10½ loss at Le Golf National, which was sandwiched in between two huge U.S. wins, in 2016 at Hazeltine (17–11) and 2021 at Whistling Straits (19–9).

Once the calendar turned from May to June and then to July, Koepka's desire for playing in his fourth Ryder Cup was solidified, even as his place on the points list was compromised after Wyndham Clark won the U.S. Open and Brian Harman won the British Open. The 33-year-old knew he’d be close to an automatic selection, but he did all he could since none of the LIV events he played after the Open awarded the world ranking points that produce Ryder Cup points.

This week Koepka has crashed the glass ceiling of LIV golfers and come Friday he'll look to help overcome a 30-year-old U.S. drought in opponents' territory.

“I feel like I'm representing the U.S., that's what I've got on the front of my hat this week, so that's what I'm representing,” Koepka said. “It's not a group of individuals in that locker room. We're just all one team, and that's the way we think. That's what I believe, and I'm pretty sure everybody else there thinks that.”

Even though Koepka made the team, the difficulty of the feat as a LIV golfer would appear to be considerable.

But Koepka disagrees.

“Everybody had an opportunity to get there,” Koepka said. “I mean, I had the same opportunity as every other LIV player, and I'm here. Play better. That's always the answer. “