2023 Ryder Cup: A New Era for Team United States | No Laying Up

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Things will be different this time for the United States Ryder Cup team when they tee it up in Europe this week.

Don’t misunderstand me, or send a note to Jon Rahm or Rory McIlroy that they can use as bulletin board material. I do not mean to say that the result is going to necessarily be different. That’s something that I go back and forth on daily. I’ll probably flip another 50 times before the first shots are hit on Friday.

What will be different, without any shadow of a doubt, is the makeup of the team the United States is bringing to Italy, and their process for trying to win the Ryder Cup. This American squad has learned from past mistakes and has a plan that wasn’t sketched on the back of a napkin the week of the event. It doesn’t mean the United States is going to win, but for the first time in forever, it feels like the two teams will be on equal footing in terms of strategy.

That, in and of itself, gives me hope America can end its Ryder Cup road drought.

• • •

Let’s begin with a number.

Raymond Floyd is 81 years old.

He was a captain’s pick on the last U.S. Ryder Cup team to win on European soil. Floyd went 3-1 en route to a 15-13 victory at The Belfry.

An entire generation of American players has come and gone since then, with none of them able to do what that 1993 team was able to do: bring the cup back to America.

The turmoil began in 1997, as the team welcomed 21-year-old Ryder Cup rookie Tiger Woods to the team. Jim Furyk was also a first-timer. 27-year-old Phil Mickelson, who had played on the 1995 team at Oak Hill, was playing in his first European Ryder Cup. Together, those three men seemed poised to buoy American golf for a generation.

Despite being heavily favored, the U.S. team lost a nail-biter in Spain, 14.5-13.5.

Five years later, they would lose again at the Belfry.

They would then go on to lose the next European Ryder Cup at the K Club.

And the next one at Celtic Manor.

And the next one at Gleneagles.

And the next one at Le Golf National.

No matter how hot the individual players were, no matter how many times they were favored, and no matter how many times they convinced us that this time it would be different, it just never was. When it was over, the Europeans were dousing themselves in champagne and the Americans were left pointing fingers.

So what happened?

Each Ryder Cup seems to have its own set of blunders. Including, but not limited to: leaky rainsuits, pairings drawn out of a hat (not literally), whining about said pairings, teammates brawling, chunked chips, all brown outfits, and Brett Wetterich. (If interested, KVV and I dove into these mistakes in detail over the course of this three hour podcast.) It’s difficult to paint them all with the same brush, but if I had to nail it down, I would say:

1. The U.S. had a talented group of players that failed repeatedly in this format
2. The U.S. did not have a cohesive process of forming a team and making decisions.
   

On the first point, while there’s plenty of blame to be shared, I’m going to pick on the three names above: Woods, Mickelson, and Furyk.

Specifically, I’m going to pick on their playing records.

Tiger played on five of these six teams (missing 2014 due to injury), Phil played on all six, and Furyk played on the first five and captained the sixth. They’ve been the biggest constants on the U.S. Ryder Cup over the last two decades, and as you might guess, they were anchors.

Tiger and Phil, the two best players of their generation, combined to go 15-25-6 in European Ryder Cups. Add in Furyk and the record goes to 20-37-9.

For all of their accomplishments in individual stroke play events, they just could not figure this format out. Once that narrative began, the pressure mounted. Things seemingly got worse as their careers went along.

For Furyk, it ended in 2014 after going 1-3 en route to a 16.5-11.5 defeat at Gleneagles.

For Tiger and Phil, it ended with them going a combined 0-6 as the US was embarrassed 17.5-10.5 at Le Golf National in France in 2018.

I refuse to believe the narrative that these guys didn’t care. If anything, I’d venture to say that some of them cared too much. Jim Furyk intimated such on our podcast six years ago:

“My biggest regret, really in my whole career, is… the Ryder Cup is my favorite event,” Furyk said. “It’s the greatest sporting event in golf, in my opinion. And so for me to go into nine of those as a player and have those teams come out 2-7. Losing seven times is my biggest regret.”

For years, I wrestled with trying to understand why the Ryder Cup tormented those three. At first, it seemed like a sample size. A run of bad luck. They just needed more chances. At times, I blamed their partners. I questioned their decision-making, but never their talent. And while I do still believe that the lack of a U.S. process contributed in some way to their failures, in the end, one conclusion seemed inevitable.

Some people were made for this event, and some simply aren’t.

• • •

The first rehaul

The first attempt at a process overhaul — in 2014 — went as poorly as it possibly could have.

Seriously.

Ted Bishop, the PGA of America President, went with his gut and picked Tom Watson as captain, despite the fact that Watson had almost no connection with the current generation of players. Watson, who was the captain of the last Ryder Cup team to win in Europe in 1993, had no serious plan for the event other than to also go with his gut. Bishop, one of Watson’s good friends, wanted someone who wouldn’t coddle the players. And who better to lead the team than the greatest American links player of all time?

What ensued wasn’t really Watson’s fault. He was brought in to be Tom Watson. The problem was with the U.S.’s process, or lack thereof. It was a gamble, and the man in charge admitted it himself. It was apparent very early on just how reckless that gamble was.

Watson’s follies include but are not limited to:

• Sitting a scorching Patrick Reed and Jordan Spieth (after initially trying not to pair them together)
• Not remembering who he subbed in for Spieth and Reed (after telling them their play would dictate their afternoon standing)
• Running a 44-year-old Phil Mickelson back out for a second 18 on Friday
• Sitting the Mickelson/Keegan Bradley team the entire following day
• Pairing Jim Furyk and Hunter Mahan together in foursomes at the last second, sending them to the range to figure out what golf ball they were going to play
• Verbally harassing the U.S. players for their poor play
• Mocking the European team
• Harassing his own team more
• Mocking a gift the U.S. team got for him

A lack of communication led to confusion among the players. A lack of scenario planning led to panicked decision-making.

The U.S. side was throwing darts at the board with a blindfold on, hoping for a miracle. The players were fed up, and Phil took the mic and changed everything:

“We had a great formula in ’08. I don’t know why we strayed,” Mickelson said. “I don’t know why we don’t go back. What Zinger did was great. There were two things that allow us to play our best I think that Paul Azinger did, and one was he got everybody invested in the process. He got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their (practice session) pod, when they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod.

“In my case, we had Ray Floyd, and we hung out together and we were all invested in each other’s play. We were invested in picking Hunter Mahan that week; Anthony Kim and myself and Justin Leonard were in a pod, and we were involved in having Hunter be our guy to fill our pod. So we were invested in the process.

“The other thing that Paul did really well was he had a great game plan for us, you know, how we were going to go about doing this. How we were going to go about playing together; golf ball, format, what we were going

Source: https://nolayingup.com/blog/2023-ryder-cup-a-new-era-team-united-states