Snedeker feels Peterson's Walker Cup pain

• By Rex Hoggard
• Sep 1, 2011 3:07 PM ET

NORTON, Mass. – Brandt Snedeker has never met John Peterson but, as the politicians like to say, he can feel his pain.

Like Peterson, the NCAA individual champion and seventh-ranked amateur, Snedeker has felt the sting of a surprisingly-guarded Walker Cup system. Eight years ago Snedeker was fresh from his victory at the U.S. Amateur Public Links, was a first-team All-America selection at Vanderbilt and seemed a lock to make the U.S. Walker Cup team. Like Peterson, the call from the U.S. Golf Association selection committee never came.

“I’m still hot about it and he’ll be hot about it for a long time too,” Snedeker said on Thursday at TPC Boston.

At issue is an uber-secretive selection process that, unlike teams on the professional level that utilize a points-based system and include automatic qualifiers as well as captain’s picks, is at times as capricious as it is mysterious.

Various sources have suggested that Peterson, an obvious choice for this year’s team that will travel to Scotland next week for the biennial matches, was passed over because of chemistry concerns and his omission from the squad has drawn the ire of many in the golf media.

For Snedeker the fix is an easy one.

“I’m a proponent of a points system. I feel like there are some politics involved, that’s not fair to an 18, 19, 20 year old kid. It’s hard to take,” Snedeker said. “They say (Peterson) was kind of outspoken, but we’ve all said stuff we didn’t mean at 18, 19, 20 years old. It just doesn’t seem fair.”