Late on Saturday night at the 1997 British Open, Justin Leonard was eating dinner alone and lamenting that he had kicked away a golden opportunity to win the Claret Jug, falling five strokes behind the lead. That’s when Barbara Nicklaus, the better half of Jack, who had watched her share of majors shake out in all sorts of fashion on Sundays for more than three decades, walked over and with a warm smile on her face said, “You can still win this tournament tomorrow.”
Leonard, 25 at the time, did just that thanks to a spectacular 6-under 65 at Royal Troon that earned him his first and only major title.
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Perhaps it is time for Barbara, the first lady of golf, to reach out to Leonard again all these years later and remind him of something else: he can still lead the U.S. Ryder Cup team to victory (and on foreign soil).
Justin Leonard of the U.S. celebrates after holing a long birdie putt on the 17th green during the final day of the 33rd Ryder Cup at Brookline Country Club in 1999.
With Tiger Woods having pulled out of consideration to captain the 2027 team in Ireland after his recent car accident, the PGA of America is left scrambling to select a leader to square off with Europe’s Luke Donald, who is seeking to captain a winner for a third straight time. Donald has been playing chess while America’s back room leadership of Zach Johnson in Rome and Keegan Bradley at Bethpage have been playing checkers. Leonard should be the logical choice given that the American version of Donald is none other than Leonard. Both players weren’t long off the tee and relied on precision, a tidy short game and wonderful touch with the short stick to squeeze everything out of their talents. Leonard won at every level: A U.S. Amateur, an NCAA team title at Texas, a major and, had things gone differently in multiple playoffs, could have added several more. Donald never got his hands on a major but made it to world No. 1. Both are meticulous, fastidious, detail-oriented by nature. If it’s still a popularity contest, Leonard will be passed over again. But if the PGA and the selection committee, which includes the likes of Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and the most recent skipper, Keegan Bradley, look at the model that’s worked for Europe, they will realize Leonard is cut from the same mold as Donald and just might be Team Europe’s kryptonite.
“In my mind there is nobody who is more deserving to be the next captain for the USA than Justin Leonard,” Golf Channel analyst Brandel Chamblee tells Golfweek. “He’s smart, organized, media savvy, has a great sense of humor and is a natural leader … which is to say, he’d surround himself with smart people and they would endeavor to get at the real reason the USA is so bad in the Ryder Cup. He’s his own man but would engage a great many people in getting his plan together.”
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Chamblee added this exclamation point: “If the PGA of America goes elsewhere, they are not paying attention.”
Leonard’s place in Ryder Cup history already is cemented. He represented the U.S. three times: in 1997, 1999 and 2008. In 1999, he sank a 45-foot putt for birdie on the 17th hole at The Country Club to complete a remarkable comeback by the U.S. team on the final day when Ben Crenshaw had a feeling. It’s one of the greatest moments in Ryder Cup history.
Leonard, 53, won 12 times on the PGA Tour and last played a full schedule in 2015. He’s won twice on the Champions Tour since turning 50. Working against him is his age and that he only knows the current players from his TV role. Moreover, he’d have to sacrifice what could be the last fertile stretch of his playing career to assume a volunteer job for the better part of the next 18 months.
“I do think my ship has probably sailed,” Leonard told Chamblee when he appeared on his podcast, “The Favorite Chamblee,” in September. “I think it is important for a captain to understand their personalities. You don’t have to be friends with the guys, but you certainly need to know them. And part of knowing them is, is playing golf, seeing, you know, watching them practice a little bit, playing with them in tournaments, you know, all those things. I think all that does make a difference when you’re trying to put a team together.”
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Chamblee proposed a hypothetical: “Let’s just say they named you the captain. Don’t you think in two years, you could get to know all of them? You’d go to tour events, you’d hang out.”
Leonard didn’t hesitate with his answer: “I would do it, yeah, absolutely. And I would.”
While Leonard hasn’t been part of the ‘cool kids club’ that rotated from assistant to captain and back again with limited success for much of the last two decades, Leonard did get a taste of the captain’s role serving as an assistant captain to Jim Furyk at the 2024 Presidents Cup in Montreal. But, as Leonard explained to Chamblee, he passed up a couple of opportunities to serve in the Team USA backroom before.
“I didn’t feel like the timing was right for me. And I think when I, looking back on it, turning that opportunity down, unfortunately, I think it told too many people that make those decisions that the Ryder Cup wasn’t important enough to me, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” Leonard explained. “I just didn’t feel like it was a right time to take that role and kind of pulled myself out of it at that point. And, you know, looking back, I think if I had known, I would have taken on those roles or those opportunities that I had. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking, well, this could affect my possibly being a captain someday.”
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That may explain why he was overlooked in the past. But it’s never too late to do the right thing.
The clock is ticking for the U.S. side. It could go even younger than Bradley with Rickie Fowler, a five-time Ryder Cupper, who is 37, or think outside the box with 32-year-old Jordan Spieth, who will be brilliant at the job when he’s willing to make the sacrifices but still likely has ambitions of making more teams.
Among the 40-somethings there are Webb Simpson and Gary Woodland, who both have served as assistants, Brandt Snedeker, the current Presidents Cup captain would provide continuity, and Lucas Glover, who would be inexperienced but could be masterful in the role and has the ear of the players as the chairman of the Player Advisory Council. Other than Leonard, the leading 50-somethings include Stewart Cink, but he may be too busy cleaning up on the Champions Tour; Jim Furyk, who is 55, but he’s been active doing TV on the PGA Tour this season, won an away Presidents Cup just two years ago, and captained the losing side in France in 2018; and 59-year-old Steve Stricker, who was the last victorious U.S. captain in 2021, has even thrown his hat in the ring.
Bradley tells Golfweek a decision will be coming “soon,” so, here’s one final comparison between Leonard and Donald for the selection committee to ponder: the Euros nearly never gave Donald a chance. He was the bridesmaid for Rome in 2023 to Henrik Stenson and it was believed that if LIV hadn’t thrown a wrench in best laid plans, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia, would have followed and Team Europe would never have known the genius that is Captain Donald for one let alone three tours of duty. With Tiger out of the mix for ‘27, perhaps it is time to unleash a Ryder Cup hero and the American version of Donald in Leonard.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Justin Leonard for 2027 U.S. Ryder Cup captain after Tiger’s exit
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