Phil’s spin
PHIL MICKELSON is a great golfer, but one with all the loyalty of Michael Gove.
Yesterday, in seeking to explain Europe’s domination of a contest in which he has tasted defeat in eight of his 10 Ryder Cups, the man who savaged Tom Watson at Gleneagles turned his fire on another of his old captains.
It has always been a bone of contention over just how much influence a captain really has. He does not play a shot, after all.
But in Mickelson’s view the man at the top makes an “unbelievable” difference to the outcome. Ahead of tomorrow’s contest, there was a pat on the back for Davis Love – and a stab in the back for Hal Sutton, who infamously paired him with Tiger Woods.
“It all starts with the captain,” he said. “He’s the guy who has to bring together 12 strong individuals, bring out their best and allow them on a platform to play their best. That’s the whole foundation of the team.
“You play how you prepare and in a Ryder Cup you have to IN HAZELTINE prepare properly for the event. Let me give you an example. In 2004, Tiger and I were paired together and we ended up not playing well. Was that the problem? Maybe. But we were told two days before that we were playing together. And that gave us no time to work together and prepare.
“Tiger found out the year before when we played at the Presidents Cup that the golf ball I was playing was not going to work for him. He plays a very high-spin ball and I play a very low-spin ball, and we had two days to come up with a solution.
“So I grabbed a couple of dozen of his balls, I went off to the side, and tried to learn his golf ball in a four or five-hour session. It forced me to stop my preparation for the tournament, to stop chipping and stop putting and stop sharpening my game and stop learning the golf course, in an effort to crashcourse and learn a whole different golf ball.
“Had we known a month in advance, we might have been able to make it work – we probably would have made it work – but we didn’t. That’s an example of, starting with the captain, being put in a position to fail and we failed monumentally.
“I’ve had to be accountable for that decision 12 years ago of which I was not part of. That’s a very frustrating thing.
“I don’t know if you can imagine how frustrating it would be, to care so much about something like I do about the Ryder Cup, and be accountable for many of the decisions that have taken place when you’re not a part of those decisions.” In casually throwing Sutton under the bus – and not