ORLANDO, Fla. – The Arnold Palmer Cup teams for both Europe and the United States were announced today during the opening round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lodge. The annual Ryder Cup-style competition will be played June 9-11 at Atlanta Athletic Club.
Texas Tech and Sweden’s Hannes Ronneblad and Fredrik Nilehn, Kristoffer Ventura of Oklahoma State (Norway), Jacksonville’s David Wicks (England) Harry Ellis of Florida State (England) and Missouri’s Rory Fransson (Scotland) qualified for Team Europe by finishing in the top six of the Arnold Palmer Cup Player Ranking. Committee selections were Maynooth’s Stuart Grehan (Ireland) and Viktor Hovland of Oklahoma State (Norway). Richard Mansell of Nova Southeastern (England) was David Inglis’ coach’s pick. The final member of the team will be the winner of The R&A Foundation Scholars Tournament, which will be contested April 3-4.
Grehan is the only returning member from Europe’s victorious squad last season. Wicks is the first Arnold Palmer Cup participant from Jacksonville while Fransson is the first representative from Missouri. Team Europe represents only five countries in 2017, the fewest since 2011.
The six United States players determined by the ranking included Sam Burns of LSU, Texas A&M’s Chandler Phillips, Collin Morikawa of California, Virginia’s Jimmy Stanger, Stanford’s Maverick McNealy and Oregon’s Norman Xiong. John Coultas of Florida Southern, Southern California’s Sean Crocker and Illinois’ Nick Hardy were committee selections. Coultas was the designated non-Division I player. Doug Ghim of Texas was John Fields' coach’s pick.
McNealy represented the United States in 2015 and was selected compete in 2016. When McNealy withdrew from the 2016 event, Doug Ghim was added to Team USA.