Brandel Chamblee - September 3, 2012

• By Morning Drive Team
• Sep 3, 2012 9:27 AM ET

The only thing that is keeping Louis Oosthuizen from being mentioned in the same breath as Rory McIlroy on a regular basis is consistency. While both are young and have won Majors, Oosthuizen has been either great or awful in the Majors as seen by the fact that he has missed the cut in over 60% of his Major Championship starts. But Oosthuizen has such a great swing and when he is playing well, there are not many players who can compete with him. McIlroy is one of those players so the final pairing today is going to be very exciting.

Tiger Woods is 6 strokes back entering the final round and along with the fact that he has played well, he has a great history at TPC Boston. He is hitting a lot of great drives and a lot of great irons this week but all greens in regulation are not equal. While he is hitting some good shots with his wedges, he is not as good with those clubs as he used to be and a lot of players are performing much better than he is in the key scoring categories.

While Steve Stricker would be a great partner for Tiger Woods in Four-Ball, Hunter Mahan would be a great partner for Tiger in Foursomes. Chamblee thinks that the fourth pick comes down to Mahan and Bo Van Pelt and he said that he would lean towards Van Pelt because he feels Van Pelt is a player that could compete in both Foursomes and Four-Ball while Mahan would be valuable in Foursomes. While Mahan is #1 in Ball Striking on the 2012 PGA TOUR and has won twice this year, his recent play may be the thing that keeps him off the team. The most important thing that Love III can do is pick the best team for 2012 and to do that, he needs to pick players who are versatile. Bo Van Pelt does not get nearly enough attention for his consistent play and a big reason for that is the fact that he has won just once on the PGA TOUR and that win came in 2009.

If he could make the four U.S. Captain’s Picks, Chamblee said he would pick Stricker, Snedeker, D. Johnson, and Van Pelt. When he was considering the picks, he said that he looks at Major Championships as good parameters of how a player would handle Ryder Cup pressure. Mahan has not had great performances in Majors and while he has 2 wins on the 2012 PGA TOUR, his performances in the Major suggest that he may not be as good of a pick for the team as other players who are in contention for those Captain’s Picks.