Theegala won for the first time at the Fortinet Championship in September. Since then, he’s continued to blossom into one of the top players on Tour, recording seven top 10-finishes this season. Nursing a sore wrist that kept him out of the pro-am, Theegala struggled at the BMW Championship, including a 79 on Saturday, but he hung on to the sixth and final automatic qualifying spot and is set to make his debut in team competition.
“It feels great. I was kind of close to the last two teams but not really. On both lists I was probably somewhere between 14 and 18. So I knew the feeling of having been close but not quite doing enough to even deserve a pick or anything like that,” Theegala said. “That just fueled me a little bit more to not only get in the top 12 but really the top 6 and lock it up.”
Theegala’s only prior experience in international team competition? At the 2018 Arnold Palmer Cup in France, where he represented the United States while playing for Pepperdine University.