A Very Unlikely Pair Are Well on Their Way to Repping Red, White, and Blue at Bethpage

Ben Griffin joined some pretty great company on Sunday with his win at the Charles Schwab Challenge. He’s just the fourth player to win multiple PGA TOUR titles this season: Rory McIlroy (three), Scottie Scheffler (two), and Sepp Straka (two).

Pretty good stuff from the former mortgage loan officer.

But more importantly, his W at Colonial moved him up to 13th in the United States Ryder Cup standings. He’s done more than enough to this point of the year to garner serious attention from Captain Keegan Bradley.

And so has his buddy Andrew Novak.

Novak has played in 17 events, made 10 cuts, finished inside the top 25 eight times and the top 10 four times. He’s also won, and that W came alongside Mr. Griffin in New Orleans.

The two players joined forces back in April to win the Zurich Classic, the lone team event on the TOUR schedule. The two formats played at TPC Louisiana are best ball (four ball) and alternate shot (foursomes). Those just so happen to be the formats at the Ryder Cup.

Put it all together, and there’s a good chance Griffin and Novak could once again team up for the biennial bash at Bethpage Black in September.

If you had that on your bingo card for 2025, you should go to Vegas.

Captain Bradley will have some tough decisions to make. Does he take the normal names that usually fill out the Ryder Cup roster like Jordan Spieth (31st in the U.S. standings), Tony Finau (15th), Wyndham Clark (19th), Sam Burns (28th), Max Homa (35th), Rickie Fowler (54th), or Brooks Koepka (93rd)? Or does he go with the team-event unknowns in Griffin and Novak?

Tough call, but it’d be hard to sit the guys who have produced on the golf course this year. I wouldn’t want to be in Bradley’s shoes right about now. But there’s still a summer full of golf to play before anything is set in stone.