those different individual talents and playing styles in the short ti

RIO DE JANEIRO -- In an effort to try to earn more Ryder Cup points, Rickie Fowler on Friday committed to next weeks Wyndham Championship, the final regular-season event on the PGA Tour schedule before the FedEx Cup playoffs.Fowler has been struggling of late and has fallen to 12th place in the Ryder Cup standings. The top eight players in the points standings after the Barclays will automatically qualify for the 12-member team that plays at Hazeltine against Europe from Sept. 30 through Oct. 2.Obviously it would be nice to get some more FedEx Cup points, but my commitment to the Ryder Cup and wanting to be a part of that team ... the Ryder Cup and the experiences Ive had there, its the best team event there is in golf, Fowler said after the second round of the Olympic golf tournament. I dont want to be left off that team, so I want to go there and try to get some points.Obviously not playing well in the majors and the double-points events has put me down the list quite a bit. So thats the reason Im going there, to show the commitment to the Ryder Cup and how much it means to me.After a strong start to the year that saw Fowler win a European Tour event in Abu Dhabi and lose in a playoff at the Waste Management Phoenix Open, he has cooled off considerably. He missed the cut at the Masters and the Players Championship and was not in contention at the U.S. Open, The Open or the PGA Championship.His lone bright spot of late was a tie for 10th at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.Fowler is also not having a good Olympics, following up his opening-round 75 with a 71 on Friday. He is in a tie for 50th in the 60-player field.U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III will make three at-large picks after the BMW Championship in mid-September and a final choice on the Sunday night after the Tour Championship.I dont want to assume anything, Fowler said. I would want Davis to pick me because he thinks I deserve a pick. I want to go and go there and play well and earn some points. Yeah, I dont want him to think Im just assuming Im getting a pick, and Im not assuming that Im getting one, either. I want to go earn my spot.Fowler is 0-3-5 in his two Ryder Cup appearances. Air Max 270 Moins Cher . Once again Jordan Cieciwa (@FitCityJordan) and I (@LynchOnSports) go head to head in our picks. Last weekend at UFC Fight Night 32 my #TeamLynch got the best of #TeamJC by a score of 9-6. Let us know which side youre on for UFC 167 use the hashtag #TeamLynch or #TeamJC on Twitter. Air Max 97 Moins Cher . -- Josh Sterk scored once and set up two more as the Oshawa Generals edged the visiting Belleville Bulls 3-2 on Friday in Ontario Hockey League action. http://www.airmaxpaschersite.fr/basket-air-max-720-outlet.html .com) - The game was all punts and field goals before Kodi Whitfields catch. Air Max Pas Cher Chine . Nathan MacKinnon, Jamie McGinn and Jan Hejda also scored for the Avalanche, who won despite being outshot 38-23. MacKinnons goal, also on the power play, came with just over a minute remaining. Basket Air Max 90 Pas Cher . Los Angeles star goalie survived those perilous gymnastics with no problem, and he eventually backstopped the Kings to a skid-snapping win. Quick stopped 27 shots in his return from a 24-game injury absence, Jeff Carter scored the tiebreaking goal with 7:55 to play, and the Kings snapped their five-game losing streak with a 3-1 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Saturday night. Jurgen Klinsmanns hiring five years ago was supposed to make America a great soccer nation.Didnt happen.Worse, its not going to change anytime soon.Klinsmann talked a great game. He promised skilled, ambitious, attack-minded teams instead of relying on the tried-and-true formula of athleticism, luck and overworked goalkeepers that marked the nations modest climb in the world rankings up to that point. And he smartly looked back to his native Germany for a plan to make soccer sexy in his adopted homeland.He vowed the U.S. teams youth programs would leave no gem undiscovered or community overlooked in its search for talent. He urged fans to hold him and his players accountable. He made clear that anyone with a valid U.S. passport would be welcomed on-board to develop a uniquely American style of playing the worlds game.What Klinsmann left behind, though, is a team with no discernible style that is even less American -- measured by home-grown-or-developed players -- and hardly more competitive than the one he inherited. Dont expect that to change under Bruce Arena, who is even more of a pragmatist than he was during his first stint (1998-2006) in charge.U.S. soccers best hope, at least for the foreseeable future, remains the Immigration and Naturalization Service.Theres no reason to blame either Klinsmann or Arena for that. The problem with soccer in America is much bigger than either man. For all the initiatives and money thats been poured into the game over the last three decades, from kids recreational programs to colleges to Major League Soccer, we still havent produced even one field player good enough to crack the starting lineup for traditional powers like Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Argentina and Brazil.Nothing will change until that does.America still hasnt developed a real soccer culture. It was supposed to happen after the 1994 World Cup was played here, or after the launch of the MLS, or after the U.S. team under Arena reached the quarterfinals in 2002, even after millions began tuning in each season to watch the matches in the Premier League and Bundesliga, and turning out in droves for World Cup viewing parties every four years.But having dedicated fans doesnt necessarily translate into developing great players. Predictions of a soccer boom has done more to hamstring the real development of the game here than all those well-organized, well-meaning parents who became youth coaches with no more than a vague idea of how its played.dddddddddddd If you want to know how great a deficit that puts youngsters growing up here, think of it this way.If you gathered a handful of 10-year-olds from the remote corners of Brazil and dropped a ball at their feet in a 10-by-10-foot room, theyd position themselves quickly enough to pass the ball three times before rolling it through the doorway without a hitch. Hand a basketball to a similarly selected group of American kids and make the hoop the target and youd see much the same organization.Whether soccer will ever be on an equal footing with the big American sports is anyones guess. The best athletes in this nation of 300-million plus are still headed to the NBA or NFL first. Soccer is finally competing with the NHL, Major League Baseball and a few other sports for talented youngsters.But the most promising prospects -- like Christian Pulisic, only 18 and arguably already the most skilled player in the U.S. program, and a regular for Borussia Dortmund in Germanys Bundesliga -- only develop by going outside the U.S. national teams grasp.Both Klinsmann and Arena understood that long ago. Ever the optimist, Klinsmann believed he could meld all those different individual talents and playing styles in the short time the team was called in for national team duty, the way the other world powers have always done. He even doubled down on the idea by importing as many German-Americans as he could find, ruffling plenty of feathers in both the squad and the U.S. federation.Arena wont repeat that mistake. Instead of a grand plan to make America great, hell quickly cobble together a team that is long on veterans and will cut down on mistakes. Hell pack the defense, count on good-to-great goalkeeping every time out and take his chances in a sudden counterattack.It wont make anyones heart race, but it may be enough to turn around Klinsmanns disastrous 0-2 start in qualifying for the 2018 World Cup and produce the occasional upset, much as the 2002 team did.Toward the end of his re-introduction to the U.S. media on a conference call Tuesday, Arena was asked whether there was an American style of playing.You style is dictated by the qualities of your players, he replied. We are who we are.---Jim Litke is a sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke(at)ap.org and https://Twitter.com/JimLitke . ' ' '