Sports

Love picks veterans for U.S. Ryder Cup team

There was little mystery to what Davis Love III was seeking in his four Ryder Cup captain’s picks. He wanted the best putters and the hottest players.

That’s exactly what he added yesterday when he announced his picks were Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk, Brandt Snedeker and Dustin Johnson, all of whom share those common denominators Love sought.

The U.S. Ryder Cup team will try to wrest the chalice from the Europeans Sept. 28-30 at Medinah Country Club, outside of Chicago.

Stricker, Snedeker and Furyk are known as some of the best putters in the world. Johnson is scary long off the tee — a good fit for the brute length Medinah presents — and he’s been putting very well this year. He and Snedeker have been among the hottest players on tour the past few months.

“I was delaying the inevitable, like waiting to the last minute to study for the test,’’ Love said yesterday from the NASDAQ headquarters in Times Square, where he made the announcement. “I laid it out early on what I thought we needed and we stuck with it. I need Jim Furyk. I need Steve Stricker. The team will benefit from those guys being in the locker room, being in the team room.

“Then you can’t argue with the golf that Brandt and Dustin have been playing. I think they matched up well, and it really did kind of lay right out there for us.”

The Stricker and Furyk picks were all about experience. In particular, Stricker has had success as Tiger Woods’ partner in recent team competitions, which was a huge reason for his selection.

Snedeker joins Jason Dufner, Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson as Ryder Cup rookies on the American team while the Europeans have only one first-timer.

“I look forward to getting to Medinah and trying to make Davis look like a genius,” Snedeker said yesterday.

Woods, Masters champion Bubba Watson, Dufner, Bradley, Simpson (the U.S. Open champ), Zach Johnson, Matt Kuchar and Phil Mickelson qualified for the team on points before Love made his picks.

“I think we’re deeper than we’ve ever been,’’ Love said. “There were a lot of guys that played a lot of really good golf. It was tough to leave really anybody off.”

The Ryder Cup will feature 24 of the top 36 players in the world rankings with the Americans having 10 from the top 20. The most glaring omission was Hunter Mahan, who has won twice this year, including his dusting of European star Rory McIlroy in the final of the Match Play. Though he is ranked 19th in the world, Mahan’s form since those two wins has sagged.

Mahan has posted only one top-10 finish since winning the Houston Open the week before the Masters, sending him plummeting from a post-Augusta lead in the Ryder Cup point standings.

Rickie Fowler, a young spark on the 2010 U.S. team as the first PGA Tour rookie ever selected, also was passed over, as was Nick Watney, who catapulted himself into consideration with his win at The Barclays at Bethpage two weeks ago but fizzled this past week in Boston.

Europe has dominated the competition since 1995, winning six of the past eight including two years ago in Wales, but has won on U.S. soil just twice in the past 20 years.