Love installed as 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup captain with reformed system

Common sense prevailed.

The PGA of America revealed a new approach to the Ryder Cup at its Florida headquarters on Tuesday, fronted by a familiar face.

Davis Love III was formally introduced as the 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup captain, and he will complete his team with more time to find the hot hands that can help the Americans end a three-match losing streak in the biennial series.

Eight players will automatically qualify for the team based on a retooled points system which starts next week with the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Doral. Qualifying will end after the 2016 Barclays, the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs. With the 2016 PGA Championship moving to July to accommodate golf’s return to the Olympics that August, the typical cutoff of the season’s final major had to change. However, moving the late August date will continue to stand in non-Olympic years.

Love will then make three of his four captain’s picks after the BMW Championship, a week’s more time than recent captains. Finally, Love, who is the eighth man to be a multiple-time U.S. captain, will complete his team with a last pick after the Tour Championship so that he can grab the absolute hottest hand before the matches.

While the captain’s picks have been re-engineered to allow on-form players to make a last push, Love and future captains will have a support system rooted in experience. Going forward, Ryder Cup captains will field four vice-captains — two former captains and two players with significant Ryder Cup experience. Love has already courted 2006 captain Tom Lehman as a vice-captain. Lehman, like Love, was a member of the 11-man task force charged with creating this infrastructure after the 2014 loss at Gleneagles. There’s no indication that a future captain will need to have first served as a vice-captain.

The task force has been dissolved, too, but has been replaced with a permanent, smaller Ryder Cup committee. It’ll have six members: the PGA of America’s president, vice-president and CEO, as well Davis Love III, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods. This committee will handle future captain selections and other Ryder Cup decisions.

Whatever you think of Phil Mickelson’s post-defeat Scottish outburst, the task force or naming Love captain again, the U.S. appeared to put on a more unified, solidified front on Tuesday. How much influence that will ultimately have on the 12 men representing the U.S. at Hazeltine in 2016 is unclear. An even scarier unknown is what will happen next if the Americans lose again.

Ryan Ballengee is a Yahoo Sports contributor. Find him on Facebook and Twitter.

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