Chaska: Tiger Woods has raised the prospect of him captaining the United States, although the 14-time major winner insisted his priority was to make it in to the next team as a player.
Woods, 40, is due to return next week at the Safeway Open on the PGA Tour after more than a year on the sidelines recovering from multiple back operations.
It will be intriguing to see how he fares in Napa and indeed in his scheduled events for 2016 thereafter, on the European Tour in Turkey next month and in his own tournament in the Bahamas at the start of December.
And the US Ryder Cup selection committee may be one of the most interested parties as they prepare to choose Davis Love III’s successor. Woods is actually part of that six-man panel, joining Phil Mickelson, Love and three members of the PGA of America executive.
They might delay making their decision until next year. For his part, Woods has always remained tight-lipped about his captaincy ambitions, saying all his concentration was taken up with being a player.
But after serving as one of Love’s five assistant, Woods revealed he saw himself in the hot seat at some time.
“Seeing what our captain went through, that’s hard,” he said. “I would be honoured to do it in the future, if asked.”
Woods clearly embraced assistant captaincy and did have a significant influence. In the run-up, Love declared Woods to be the team’s “tactician” and on Saturday afternoon the captain listened to his urgings to play Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed for the fourth successive time.
After being pegged back from four up for a half against Sergio Garcia and Rafael Cabrera Bello in the morning foursomes, they responded to the faith of Woods and Love by beating Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose in the fourballs.
“To be on the vice-captaincy side of it has meant so much to me, to get to know these guys on a different level and to know how hard a job it is to do this,” Woods said.
“It’s very complicated. There’s a lot of things that I didn’t realise that went on. It was very eye-opening. But from the player standpoint of it, I like playing. I love being out there, in the fight with these guys.”
Jim Furyk is the favourite to be the captain at Le Golf National, with Steve Stricker also in the running, despite being the President’s Cup captain.
Mickelson will also be mentioned as he will be 48 by 2018. However, the left-hander performed with such distinction, he will probably rule himself out.
