RYDER CUP

It was like that all week.

Europe produced stars old and new with a team that was as strong as ever.

“We got it right this week,” European captain Thomas Bjorn said. “We never, ever looked toward their team about what they were about. We were about us as a team and what we do.”

The final shot came from Alex Noren, who after conceding a short birdie putt to Bryson DeChambeau on the 18th hole, made a 40-foot birdie putt to win the match.

That made it 17½10½, the biggest Ryder Cup rout in 12 years.

Two years after the Americans thought they had their Ryder Cup problems figured out, Europe reminded them Sunday which team practically has owned that shiny gold trophy for the last quarter-century.

Europe now has won nine of the last 12. The Americans remain winless away from home since 1993.

And there wasn’t much U.S. captain Jim Furyk could do about it.

“They played some great golf this week, and I take my cap off,” Furyk said.

Molinari was just as good on his own as he was with Tommy Fleetwood, and the The faces of Bryson DeChambeau, left, Webb Simpson, center, and Tiger Woods show their disappointment after the U.S. team’s defeat. best year of his golfing life somehow got better. Just over two months ago, he was posing with that silver claret jug at the British Open as Italy’s first major champion.

“Nothing was going to stop us. And you saw it on the course,” Molinari said.

It was the most lopsided victory since consecutive 18½-9½ victories by Europe more than a decade ago when the Americans looked utterly lost. They formed a Ryder

Cup Task Force after the 2014 loss. The idea was to build continuity and momentum, and it seemed to work when the Americans won at Hazeltine in 2016.

Now, maybe it’s back to the drawing board.

“Let’s be honest — the European side played some exquisite golf,” Mickelson said.

The same couldn’t be said for Mickelson or Woods, both with losing records in the Ryder Cup.

Mickelson didn’t even play on Saturday and lost his matches on Friday and Sunday. He ended his 12th appearance in the Ryder Cup with a record 22 losses. At 48, he might not get another chance.

“I did not play well this year,” Mickelson

said. “This could very well, realistically, be my last one.”

Woods was 0-4, the first time in eight Ryder Cups that he failed to contribute a single point.

He looked like he lacked energy on the course and certainly in his speech over the last two days.

“It’s disappointing because I went 0-4, and that’s four points to the European team,” he said. “And I’m one of the contributing factors to why we lost the cup, and it’s not a lot of fun. It’s frustrating because I thought we were all playing pretty well, and I just didn’t perform at the level that I had been playing, and just got behind early in the matches and never got back.”