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Tiger vaults in Ryder Cup standings, but Furyk noncommital

[July 24, 2018] Tiger Woods used his top-10 finish at The Open Championship to vault 11 spots to No. 20 in the United States Ryder Cup points race.

However, captain Jim Furyk remains uncertain whether Woods, already a vice-captain on the team, will also be playing in the 42nd Ryder Cup to be held at Le Golf National in Paris this September.

''I'm going to handle him the way I do everyone else,'' Furyk said Monday, per the Golf Channel. ''I'll ask my top eight guys. The way he's playing, he might be one of them. I'll ask the vice captains, collectively, and I think we'll do the best we can to round out the team. We want the guys playing the best.''

Woods tied for sixth place at 5-under at The Open, taking advantage of the heavily-weighted major event to earn 490.5 Ryder Cup team points. With 2,350.044 points, Woods is still 1,937.764 behind Webb Simpson for the eighth and final automatic spot on the U.S. team with only a handful of events remaining.

Woods has repeatedly said his goal is to play his way onto the team.

''We had a lot of guys in pretty good form,'' Furyk said. ''Flip over to Tiger, you look at him because he's Tiger, and he's earned a lot of attention. ... I loved seeing him play well. I loved seeing him jump to 20th. It's fun to watch. But we'll handle him like everyone else.''

Brooks Koepka earned 62.063 points at The Open to pad his lead over Dustin Johnson, who failed to make the cut at Carnoustie. They are followed by Patrick Reed, Justin Thomas, Bubba Watson, Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler, as the top seven positions remained unchanged in updated standings released Monday.

Simpson earned 231.750 points with his T-12 finish to leap past Bryson DeChambeau for the eighth spot.

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Phil Mickelson is No. 10, followed by Xander Schauffele, who climbed four spots with his tie for second. Matt Kuchar, Kevin Kisner, Tony Finau and Brian Harman round out the top 15.

Kevin Chappell was another big mover Monday, rising 13 spots to No. 20 as part of the three-way tie for sixth with Woods and England's Eddie Pepperell.

Woods also rose 21 spots to number 50 in the official world golf rankings, while Open winner Francesco Molinari climbed to a career-high No. 6 and Justin Rose took over No. 2 from Justin Thomas.

The top eight spots on the U.S. Ryder Cup team will be determined based on points following the 100th PGA Championship, scheduled to conclude Aug. 12. Three additional spots will be named by Furyk following the Dell Technologies Championship, scheduled to finish on Sept. 3, with the final spot scheduled to be announced after the BMW Championship, slated to be completed on Sept. 9.

The four majors in 2018 are weighted heavily in the U.S. Ryder Cup team points race, with winners receiving two points per $1,000 earned at the Masters, U.S. Open, Open Championship and PGA Championship, and all other players receiving 1.5 points per $1,000 earned. That's compared to one point per every $1,000 earned in regular PGA Tour events in 2018 leading up to the Aug. 12 cutoff.

--Field Level Media

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