US out for 1st Ryder Cup win on foreign soil since ’93
Call it the Whipping at Whistling Straits.
At the 43rd Ryder Cup in 2021, Team USA routed Europe like it was 1979, winning 19-9. America’s youth won out over Europe’s experience. The six U.S. Ryder Cup rookies combined to go 14-4-3.
“It seems like the younger they are, the better they play,” said U.S. assistant captain Davis Love III.
It was the first time in 44 years that the U.S. didn’t lose any of the five sessions. By any measure, this was a statement win for Team USA.
Not to diminish its achievement, but winning at home wasn’t the U.S. team’s problem, other than a fluky European comeback in 2012. The hosting U.S. won in 2016, but its loss in Paris two years later meant the pressure was on America to hold serve.
Otherwise, it might’ve been back to the drawing board, given the Euros had won four of the previous five meetings and nine of the last 12 in the biennial match. Which brings us to the question that won’t be fully answered until this week: Did the U.S. beatdown in 2021 represent a sea change in Ryder Cup fortunes?
The real validation of America’s new formula for success is to win on the road for the first time since 1993 when the 44th Cup is held in Rome at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club. Asked for a quick rush to judgment during the U.S. team’s closing press conference at Whistling Straits two years ago, one of America’s impressive rookies, Xander Schauffele, refused to take the bait and balked at looking ahead.
“I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but we are just going to enjoy now,” he said. “You’re thinking way too far ahead of us, for me, personally, so we’re going to enjoy this one for now and collect ourselves shortly after.”
But Jordan Spieth, twice on losing teams overseas in 2014 and 2018, has experienced the pain of playing on foreign soil and stepped up to answer the question. He compared the U.S. romp to a Presidents Cup and already, to borrow a phrase from New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, was on to Italy.
Friday-Sunday
Marco Simone Golf and Country Club, Rome, Italy
The three-day biennial competition between 12 of the best Americans against 12 of the best from Europe starts on Friday . ... The Americans lead the all-time standings at 27-14-2 but since 1979, Europe holds an 11-9 edge ... The U.S. won the last Ryder Cup, 19-9, at Whistling Straits. The last U.S. win away from home, however, came 30 years ago.
“I think that this is unfinished business,” he said. “It’s one thing to win it over here and it is a lot easier to do so, and it is harder to win over there. If we play like we did this week, the score will look the same over there in a couple years, and that’s what we’re here for.”
Spieth, who turned 30 in July, was in diapers the last time Team USA beat Europe on the road. Why has the U.S. side — despite consistently having the deeper, more talented team on paper — lost the last six matchups on the road? There is no simple answer.
“That’s a great question,” Hal Sutton, the captain of the U.S. side that lost at home in 2004 at Oakland Hills, said. “If we had the answer, I’m sure we would have already solved it.”
Shane Ryan devotes a whole chapter of his book, “The Cup They Couldn’t Lose: America, the Ryder Cup and the Long Road to Whistling Straits,” an interlude titled “Why does Europe win?”, to the seven most-common theories, including old standbys that the Americans just need to play better and Europeans just like each other more. (Ryan quotes an oldie but goodie from a Euro vet explaining their team chemistry: “We get together for a week, we get along, and when it’s over, we all go back to hating Monty.”)
Padraig Harrington, who was Europe’s captain at Whistling Straits, has his own theory that touches on the mental aspect of the competition and the pressure of expectations.
“We go to try to win the Ryder Cup, whereas the U.S. tries not to lose it,” he said. “Because they’re favorites, because they should win, they’re afraid, whereas we’re the country cousins! We have a point to prove. Even if we did find oil in our backyard, we’d still have a point to prove.”
Golfweek talked to several past captains from both sides to try to understand what’s gone wrong and why this could be the year the Americans end their skid.
Hitting rock bottom
The recent uptick for Team USA’s fortunes was born in arguably the team’s lowest moment, when it was blown out in Scotland in 2014. Phil Mickelson publicly aired the team’s dirty laundry during its media session following the defeat and hung out U.S. captain Tom Watson to dry.
“When the mess was over, it was no longer possible to say with any credibility that the Ryder Cup was simply a test of which individuals played better. The effect of management was so obvious that even the most dyed-in-the-wool stubborn American couldn’t pretend everything was fine,” Ryan wrote. “It’s the Ryder Cup that broke the Americans.”
Something good came from that day: a new beginning and commitment to change the culture.
“The PGA realized they had to do something different,” Love said, noting that The Task Force, which was created in the aftermath of Mickelson’s tirade, was a necessary evil. “They said, ‘We’ll spend money on stats guys. We’ll spend money on NetJets to fly you guys in if you want to play practice rounds.’ . . . If we go in there and say we need this for (Italy), we’re gonna get it. The Phil thing was the boiling-over point. It had been simmering for a while. Phil was the only one with enough nerve to say it. Now, he could have said that in the debriefing but it would not have been as impactful.”
Home course rules
With the outliers being the European rout at Oakland Hills in 2004 and 2012’s Miracle at Medinah, during which the Euros rallied from a 10-6 deficit on the final day, 10 of the last 12 Ryder Cup have been won by the home team.
“It seems the way the Ryder Cup is going, the home team certainly has an advantage every time that we play this thing. That was apparent in Paris a couple years ago. I think it was pretty apparent this week, as well,” said Rory McIlroy at Whistling Straits in 2021. “You go back to Hazeltine, same sort of thing. This is the pattern that we are on.”
Is it the partisan crowd as the 13th man? Is it course knowledge or the way the captain of the home team sets up the course? Furyk, who was the losing captain the last time the U.S. played on the road in 2018, says the home-field advantage is worth at least a point. He joked that in Paris it was worth seven, the difference in the final score (17½ -10½).
Furyk recalled that Seve Ballesteros narrowed fairways and grew the rough at Valderrama in 1997 and forced American bombers such as Tiger Woods and Love III to hit fairway woods and 2-irons off the tee.
“It leveled the playing field,” Furyk said.
This was straight out of former Europe captain Tony Jacklin’s playbook. In 1985 at The Belfry, Jacklin had neutralized the so-called American advantage by requesting the greens not be cut too short – the Americans were more accustomed to putting on fast greens. Jacklin and the Euro captains who followed turned over every stone in search of the slightest edge. Jacklin was the first captain who devised his pairings based on player compatibility.
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