Tour won’t pressure Tiger Woods to pick himself for Presidents Cup team

Tiger Woods will be the captain of the U.S. Presidents Cup team this December in Australia. The bigger question, though, is whether Tiger will pick himself to play on the team. If he does, it won’t be as a result of pressure from the PGA Tour, at least according to Tour commissioner Jay Monahan.

Tiger completed an unceremonious end to his 2019 season on Sunday. Woods finished the BMW Championship in 42nd place in the FedEx Cup standings. With only the Top 30 making it to this week’s Tour Championship, Woods is on the outside looking in.

The same goes for his spot on the Presidents Cup team.

Woods failed to earn an automatic bid to play on the team he will captain in a couple months. Only the Top 8 earn automatic spots on the team, and Tiger finished in 13th. Woods still has four captain’s picks to make to fill out the team, which begs the question: will he pick himself for the team?

While Woods explained how he’d go about making that decision on Sunday, a lot of pressure will be on him to pick himself (think: TV ratings, fan attendance, etc.) But when asked about it on Tuesday before the Tour Championship, Monahan made it clear none of that pressure would be coming from him or the PGA Tour.

“I will not express that to him,” Monahan told Golf Channel on Tuesday. “I want Tiger to do what he thinks is right for his team and for himself, and I think he’s talked to you guys about the process that he’s going to undertake,” however, he continued, “I think everybody would love to see him play.”

Woods’ plan all along, as he repeated whenever asked, was to play his way onto the team via an automatic bid. Now that the auto-bids are finalized, Woods says whether to use a captain’s pick on himself will be a full team decision.

“I’ve gotta talk to the vice-captains and the top eight guys and whether or not they want me to play in Australia,” Woods told GOLFTV on Sunday. Ultimately though, he says the final decision will be up to him.

The 2019 Presidents Cup will take place December 12-15. Woods’ next and only scheduled event between now and then is the Zozo Championship in Japan in late October. The captain’s picks will be announced on November 4.

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