Just caps it all
without some justification, as the Texan was right down there with Sir Nick Faldo as a captain calamity – Mickelson was venting his long-held frustration if rewriting a little history.
It hardly helped that at the time he was barely on speaking terms with Woods. Not so this time. Behind the scenes, the United States’ attempt to win back the Ryder Cup is turning into the Tiger and Phil Show.
Love is the front man but his open-door leadership has allowed the one-time arch-rivals to forge an unlikely alliance. “The last few weeks, we’ve been talking on the phone multiple times a day,” said Mickelson. “It’s been really exciting for us because we’ve been on so many teams for so many years, and to have this much input and involvement in the process with the way Davis has brought everybody together and their ideas, it’s been fun for Tiger and I to be a part of something like that.
“I feel that this is, in my 20 years, the first time we are actually involved in the decision-making process.
“When players are put in a position to succeed, more often than not they tend to succeed and when they are put in positions to fail, most of the time they tend to fail. This time we feel as though Davis has been putting us in a position to succeed.” ❑ EUROPE’S hopes of deploying crack Ryder Cup pairing Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson in every session at Hazeltine hang in the balance. Open champion Stenson has a knee problem and he admitted he will go into the gruelling three-day contest carrying the injury.
“It could be a question of how much golf I can play,” said Stenson, who had three wins out of three with Rose at Gleneagles two years ago.
“Nothing is for certain but I’m up for a lot of golf and, unless the knee tells me otherwise, that’s the way I approach it. It doesn’t hurt me when I’m playing golf. It’s been walking that’s more of an issue.”