Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Harrington looked like the loneliest man in Wisconsin
TO be fair, as a European, it was easy to lose yourself amongst forty-odd thousand Americans, for whom Stars and Stripes fancy dress appeared to be the norm rather than the exception.
But wandering around the back of the 15th green on a late, sun-kissed Wisconsin morning, Padraig Harrington looked a little lost, only his earpiece for company.
He had come looking for Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia, as if groping for crumbs of comfort.
You can bring together your 12 players, their caddies, the WAGs, the motivational speakers, but being Ryder Cup captain can be a heck of a lonely job.
When the wheels are off and your wagon is hurtling headlong towards Lake Michigan, you feel pretty friendless.
First, let’s get one thing straight.
This, as we suspected, is a truly formidable American team. This course, as we suspected, has been set up to suit
Steve Stricker’s bombers. This crowd, as we knew fine well, has been raucously partisan.
And let’s get another thing straight.
This European team has not played anything like it should be able to.
It has certainly not putted anything like it should be able to.
Time and again yesterday morning, the Europeans missed clutch putts.
Time and again yesterday morning, the Americans holed first, from a greater distance, and the Europeans responded by missing.
Time and again yesterday morning, it seemed as though the noisy pressure coming from outside the ropes and tumbling from the grandstands got to the Europeans.
But when this contest is over, there will be a spotlight on Harrington’s captaincy.
And yesterday morning’s
foursomes session contained a fair bit of what he has got wrong in a nasty nutshell.
Paul Casey and Tyrrell Hatton threatened to recover from a brutally brilliant start by the USA pairing of Dustin Johnson and Open champion Collin Morikawa but imploded in the final holes.
To be fair, the buck for that defeat probably stopped with Hatton but Casey was sliding to his third successive defeat, with three different partners.
For the 44-year-old to play
three matches on the spin was always going to be a big ask.
In 2021, in the context of a Ryder Cup against Stricker’s vibrant young team, America is proving no country for old European men.
It was hard not to feel sorry for Lee Westwood in what will almost certainly be his final Ryder Cup as a player.
To be picked 11 times is a great achievement but his loss to Xander Schauffele and Patrick
Cantlay yesterday morning was his SIXTH on the spin.
For Westwood’s Friday defeat, Harrington sent him out with Matthew Fitzpatrick.
To send them out again looked like sheer folly. And so it proved.
Westwood had limped over the qualifying line, leaving Harrington with a wild card dilemma that ended with him overlooking Justin Rose.
To leave out a world-class ball-striker who has form around this course – Rose was fourth in the PGA Championship here in 2015 – certainly surprised the Americans.
These Harrington decisions will be pulled apart if and when America win today.
And as he looked forlornly towards Rahm and Garcia, rare symbols of European excellence, you suspect Harrington was already pulling them apart himself.
The Ryder Cup captaincy can be a lonely job.