ORIG / 09-15-14 / Joe Kline / The Bulletin Lost Tracks Golf Course owner Brian Whitcomb is heading to Scotland to captain the U.S.A. Junior Ryder Cup team.

Brian Whitcomb has spent a lifetime successfully climbing the PGA of America ladder.

That ascent reached its pinnacle in 2007-08, when the Prineville native and longtime Bend resident served as the golf organization’s president.

Now Whitcomb, the 59-year-old designer and owner of Lost Tracks Golf Club in Bend, has just one last official PGA task left.

That duty, though, just may be the most enjoyable yet.

Whitcomb is traveling to Scotland this week to captain six boys and six girls on the U.S. team for the 2014 Junior Ryder Cup, which will be played Monday and Tuesday at Blairgowrie Golf Club in Perthshire.

And even for a man who stood at captain Paul Azinger’s side when the U.S. team reclaimed the Ryder Cup in 2008, and who handed Tiger Woods the Wanamaker Trophy after the PGA Tour star won the 2007 PGA Championship, the Junior Ryder Cup opportunity “is an absolute thrill,” he says.

“It’s a fitting end for me in my last official role to watch and lead 12 of the best juniors in America to compete,” says Whitcomb, who is among a long line of former PGA presidents who have captained the U.S. Junior Ryder Cup squad.

“It’s a privilege and a perfect wind-down opportunity,” he adds. “Sort of out with the old and in with the new. And I’m good with that. There is just a whole bunch of pride there.”

But this week will be different.

The Junior Ryder Cup is a coed tournament patterned after its namesake, the Ryder Cup, which is arguably the PGA of America’s preeminent event, eclipsing even the PGA Championship.

The team format for the junior event is nearly identical to that of the Ryder Cup, the 2014 edition of which is scheduled to be played next weekend at Gleneagles Resort in Scotland. Like the regular event, teams from the U.S. and Europe will be pitted against one another in a biennial grudge match. And the players who make up the Junior Ryder Cup teams are the absolute best both Europe and the U.S. can muster.

The Junior Ryder Cup offers Whitcomb one major difference from Tom Watson’s job as captain of the 2014 Ryder Cup team: Every player in the Junior Ryder Cup plays every event, eliminating what is often the most controversial decision that a Ryder Cup captain must make: when to sit whom.

“In some cases you’ve got 12 guys itching to go play, and your job is to tell four of them they’re not playing this afternoon or this morning,” says Whitcomb of the Ryder Cup, which he plans to attend after the Junior Ryder Cup has finished. “That’s a very, very tough call when you start dealing with players at that level. I don’t have that problem and I am grateful for that.”

With so much talent on his team, Whitcomb has reason to be thankful.

Five members of the team were automatic qualifiers and seven were captain’s picks. Whitcomb this year has traveled to events such as the Junior PGA and the U.S. Junior Amateur to scout talent and make informed decisions on his captain’s selections.

The result is a 2014 U.S. Team — all but two of whose members are 17 (one is 16, the other 18) — teeming with promising talent that could be the future of golf in America.

The team will be led by 2014 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Kristen Gillman, of Austin, Texas. But Gillman is just the start. Sam Burns, of Shreveport, Louisiana, won the 2014 Junior PGA Championship, and Andrea Lee, of Hermosa Beach, California, is the top-ranked girls junior golfer in the world.

Those players are following in the footsteps of golfers such as Hunter Mahan, Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Lexi Thompson, recent Junior Ryder Cup competitors who have become some of professional golf’s most promising stars.

Whitcomb said that trail of golf prodigies has “really heightened my appreciation for how unbelievably gifted and skilled these boys and girls are,” Whitcomb says.

For a time, Whitcomb, who has multiple sclerosis, was not certain he would be able to captain the team.

Earlier this year, he was hospitalized because of complications from multiple sclerosis, a disease of the central nervous system. And he has physical limitations that make it challenging to get around on a golf course.

But with some help, Whitcomb says, MS should not be a problem for him at the Junior Ryder Cup.

“It’s been certainly heavy on my mind,” Whitcomb says. “I’ve been blessed with a couple of assistant captains that are going to help me. I feel as good today as I did a year ago. So I am going to get around just fine.”

In a long golf career that has included service at the sport’s highest levels, Whitcomb has had help. Some of that assistance, Whitcomb says, has come from his friend, Azinger, who was the last to captain a winning U.S. team in the Ryder Cup.

That is not to say that Whitcomb will adopt the same team leadership approach as Azinger’s.

After all, the Junior Ryder Cup is different from the pros’ Ryder Cup in another significant way.

“Winning it is probably second to the experience and what they (the players) will remember the rest of their life,” Whitcomb says.

And he wants to embrace that.

“Really, that’s the PGA of America’s as well as my role, is to ensure they have an experience that they’ll never forget.” Whitcomb says. “Then my role after I have made my pairings on Monday morning is to just get the heck out of the way, turn ’em loose and let ’em run.”

— Reporter: 541-617-7868, zhall@bendbulletin.com.