Pavin said he talked about the choice a lot with his four assistant captains. “It just came down to feelings,” he said. “I had a gut feeling about Rickie.”

Johnson, who won at the Colonial this year, is the lone 2010 tournament winner among the picks, but Pavin was looking for more than wins on the tour. His measure, he has said all along, was whether the choice would be able to stand up to the pressure of playing the Ryder Cup on foreign soil.

The Ryder Cup, which every two years pits a team of top European golfers against a team from the United States, will be played Oct. 1 to 3 in Newport, Wales.

Woods, who has clearly been getting reacquainted with his game in the last few weeks, has played in five Ryder Cups, three of them in Europe. Cink, a three-time captain’s pick in his fifth Ryder Cup, has played in two Cups abroad, and Johnson played in his first in Ireland.

Fowler’s only team experience came in two Walker Cups, playing in England and Northern Ireland and compiling a 7-1 record. Does he bring youthful enthusiasm and a certain amount of confident swagger to the team?

“I thought Anthony Kim did a great job of that the last Ryder Cup,” he said, “but I do think I could bring some energy, and that’s one thing I would like to do, is help out the team, obviously playing well, stuff like that, but keeping the guys fired up and keeping that main goal in mind.”

Pavin insisted that the selection of Woods was never a fait accompli, that he continued to evaluate his play right up to Monday’s final round of the Deutsche Bank and that Woods’s improved performance in the weeks leading to it were the final factors.