NAPA, Calif. (AP) — Troy Merritt didn’t get into the Procore Championship until Monday, only his sixth start this year on the PGA Tour. Just don’t get the idea that he’s had a lot of idle time.
Most of that time is spent in the air.
Merritt played the Omega European Masters in Switzerland and the Irish Open before heading to Napa. He left Sunday night for Paris to play in the French Open. Still to come are tournaments in Scotland, India and South Korea.
This was the best way to get in a full schedule
for someone who finished at No. 143 in the FedEx Cup last year.
Merritt, Brandon Wu and Martin Trainer have taken advantage of a category on the European tour that provides up to five spots for players who finished between No. 126 and 200 in the FedEx Cup the previous year. They had until Dec. 19 to sign up.
“It’s been nice,” Merritt said at the Procore Championship, where he closed with a 76 and tied for 53rd. “I’ve played 14 years over here. I’ve seen all these courses. I figured I might as well go play over there and see those.”
He had a tie for fourth at the Soudal Open in Belgium, his lone top-10 finish. He has missed seven cuts in the 15 European tour events he has played.
Most surprising is the 39-year-old from Boise, Idaho, hasn’t found the travel to be that bad. He did Bahrain and Qatar early in the year, came home for a week and then went to Kenya and Johannesburg. His biggest trip was going to Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands in one trip.
The food has been the best part of adventures.
“So much better than over here. It's fresher and healthier,” Merritt said. “The portion sizes are better. You feel like you’re eating all the time because of the small portions. I come home and I've lost four pounds.”
Merritt says he’s spent a fair bit of time with Kristoffer Reitan of Norway, Dan Brown and Dan Bradbury of England, and a few other players he has known over the years.
“It’s been a fun. It’s a new experience,” he said. “The guys are a lot more social and laid back.”
The only question is what to do next year if he has no access to that category. The two-time PGA Tour winner doesn’t seem too uptight about it.
“I’ll see what I have,” Merritt said. “I’ll be 40 next month. I wouldn’t mind semi-retiring. My oldest starts high school next year, so go home for six years and play every now and then. If I have full status, I’ll play a bit. If I have half-status, I’ll play a little. If not, I’ll be home. There’s no bad choice.”
Ryder Cup players were in full swing on their own sides of the Atlantic Ocean last week with eerily similar results.
Team Europe had 11 players in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth. They combined to go 101-under par with three players in the top 10 and six among the top 20.
The Americans had 10 players in the Procore Championship at Silverado. They combined to go 99-under par with four players in the top 10 and six among the top 20.
In both tournaments, the winning score was 19-under 269.
Both winners, Alex Noren and Scottie Scheffler, will be at Bethpage Black on New York’s Long Island. Only one of them will be winning.
The public didn’t know Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley had decided not to pick himself for the U.S. team until he announced his six selections. He said that day he had known “for a while” he wasn’t going to be a playing captain.
How long was that? Bradley was vague. And so were some of his players.
Collin Morikawa was invited to the dinner during the Tour Championship with the six qualifiers, so his selection was not a surprise. He was asked last week when he knew Bradley was not going to take himself.
He smiled twice before speaking, an indication that a straight answer would not be forthcoming.
“I never knew for sure, how about that?” Morikawa said, still smiling. “I think there was always, you know, tip of the iceberg. It could have fell this way, it could have fell that way. I think I knew directionally ... at a certain point I knew when, but there was no certainty until we heard, yeah.”
So we’re not getting a straight answer.
“You’re not,” Morikawa said, stifling a laugh. “That was really around and under.”
The European tour has announced a 42-tournament schedule for 2025-26. It starts Nov. 27 with the BMW Australian PGA — just two weeks after the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in Dubai — and hits 25 countries on five continents.
New to the schedule is the Estrella Damm Catalunya Championship in Barcelona, Spain, and the Irish Open going to Trump International in Doonbeg, Ireland, a course designed by Greg Norman.
Otherwise, it’s similar to this year’s schedule. The Dubai Invitational returns in January, replacing the Team Cup that gets played in Ryder Cup years. That gives the European tour three stops in Dubai.
Fans tuning into the Ryder Cup at home or trying to watch from Bethpage Black will have access to real-time generative AI insights from every match and every hole using data from the shots, the hole, the pairings and the players’ profile.
Paris-based Capgemini, one of the main Ryder Cup sponsors, rolled out its AI work in Rome for the 2025 matches by tracking more than 4,000 shots from the 28 matches over three days.
Upgrades for Bethpage Black include processing up to 360 insights simultaneously to deliver near real-time probabilities for commentary. It will be available on the Ryder Cup app, social media channels, the broadcast and video boards across the course. New this year is “what if” scenarios that simulate potential outcomes based on live shots.
Pascal Brier, the chief innovation officer at Capgemini, said putting together a scorecard for match play involves more than 170 million possibilities. He said the AI system would analyze data every time the golf ball stops rolling.
He said the “what if” scenarios would “help fans understand not just what’s happening, but what could happen next. It is then presented in a user-friendly format to enhance their connection to the game.”
Scottie Scheffler and Cameron Young were both at Bethpage Black during the 2002 U.S. Open. They were 5 years old. ... Harry Hall of England has cracked the top 50 in the world ranking for the first time in his career, moving to No. 49 after his tie for 13th in the BMW PGA Championship. He is already in the Masters from reaching the Tour Championship. ... John McEnroe, Eli Manning and Michael Strahan are part of the U.S. team that will play a celebrity match during Ryder Cup week at Bethpage Black. Europe counters with the likes of Pau Gasol, Teemu Selänne and Catherine Zeta-Jones. ... Scottie Scheffler's average proximity to the hole in Napa was 24 feet, 11 inches, the lowest of his PGA Tour career. ... Jim Furyk, Darren Clarke and Mike Weir will be captains for the World Champions Cup, a tri-match on the PGA Tour Champions in December.
Scottie Scheffler won $1.08 million for his victory in the Procore Championship, the smallest first-place check of his PGA Tour career.
“Finishing 15th is not really all that interesting at times.” — Scottie Scheffler.
“How would you know?” — Follow-up question to Scheffler, who hasn’t finished outside the top 10 in six months.
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