EUROPEAN UNION PREVAILS
U. S. SQUAD DEFEATED IN RYDER CUP INTERNATIONAL GOLF SHOWDOWN
Nowadays, you can set your watch by it: the usual victory by the quirky, thoroughly likable and always unified lads from Europe over the greatly overestimated stars from the world’s No. 1 golfing nation.
It’s rarely the Easy Ryder Cup, but every second year, the result is essentially the same: pints poured and magnums uncorked over the heads of Team Europe’s doughty dozen, while the Americans retreat into a glum news conference to be asked the unanswerable question: What’s wrong?
The only difference Sunday, at the conclusion of the Europeans’ 16 1/2 to 11 1/2 shelling of Tom Watson’s U. S. team was that the sniping — usually conducted behind the principals’ backs, in off- therecord conversations — spilled right out into the open, with no preamble, as Phil Mickelson laid the defeat at Watson’s door, and Watson lobbed it right back at the players.
At least Mickelson only required one finger to point. Watson needed 12.
Now the ceremonial Blaming of the Captain is a biennial rite of these events, dating from the start of the millennium, after St. Benjamin of Crenshaw led the U. S. to an improbable comeback at the 1999 Ryder Cup in Boston.
St. Ben was considered a brilliant captain because he wagged his finger at the media on Saturday night when his team trailed 10- 6, and said he had a good feeling about Sunday.
And darned if the Americans didn’t roar back to win, and that made Crenshaw an oracle, as well as an inspirational wizard.
In succession, sadly, there followed Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, Tom Lehman, all losing choices, then a brief shining moment with Paul Azinger at Valhalla in 2008, and back to the outhouse with Corey Pavin in 2010, Davis Love III in 2012 and now Old Tom Watson.
Azinger was hailed as a genius for his “pod” system of four- man units, and lauded for his inclusive approach to letting his team have a big say in forming the pods. He even wrote a book about it.
Four years later at Medinah, when the U. S. blew a 10- 6 overnight lead on Sunday, Love was ripped for being inclusive and letting his players have a big say in forming their pairings.
Watson apparently didn’t let anyone have a say in anything, made a couple of head- scratching decisions — to sit his hot rookie pairing of Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed for one session, and park Mickelson and Keegan Bradley on the bench all Saturday — and his team lost, so evidently that, too, was the wrong way to go about it.
All we know about that is, the only way not to be dismissed as an incompetent is to win. There is no second option.
Mark James and Nick Faldo, the last two European captains to lead losing sides? Idiot and egomaniac, in that order.
Sutton? A moron. Pavin? Culpable for not following Azinger’s template. Love? Too palsy- walsy. Watson? Not palsy- walsy enough.
Maybe a real leader takes all the blame on himself, even if he doesn’t believe it
Now, Mickelson has played on 10 Ryder Cup teams — eight of them losers — so he’s certainly paid the requisite dues to be allowed his opinion. That he expressed it while sitting a few seats away from Watson at the dais Sunday was the remarkable part. He didn’t once say Watson’s name, but in reciting all the ways Azinger got the best out of the American players in 2008, his meaning couldn’t have been clearer if he’d been driving a Greyhound and backed it over Old Tom.
Watson’s retort — that it takes players to win, not pods, and that his vice- captains were all involved in decisions about pairings and whom to play and whom to sit — could be summarized as: “Hey, we all soiled ourselves here, not just me.”
So maybe he wasn’t the best captain. Maybe he could have done better than Webb Simpson as a captain’s pick. Maybe it made no sense to pick Keegan Bradley as a mate for Mickelson, and then sit them both for an entire day.
Maybe a real leader takes all the blame on himself, even if he doesn’t believe it.
But what explains the Europeans winning seven of eight points from alternate- shot, which was the difference in the matches? Is it the captain who causes the U. S. players to come up small in the waning holes of each round?
Faldo said, and Colin Montgomerie reiterated, that the Europeans were 110 under par for the week, the U. S. 78- under. Bottom line, Faldo tweeted: # BetterGolfWins.
Was it Watson who caused Jordan Spieth to blow a 3- up lead and lose to Graeme McDowell, or Hunter Mahan to cough up a four- hole lead over Justin Rose and settle for a half- point?
Did his captaincy doom Jim Furyk to extend his miserable Ryder Cup record to 20 losses?
Did Watson personally sprinkle the magic dust that enveloped Victor Dubuisson and Jamie Donaldson ( and Rose) all week?
The PGA of America has tried every kind of captain, and just about every kind has failed, because the Europeans putt better, rise to the occasion, and have more fun.
The Americans? They overdo the “We are family” theme. Nobody seriously believes it.
It came out like sour grapes, but NBC’s Johnny Miller had it right when he said: “The young kids are going to have to figure out how to get it done, because the old guys don’t know how.”
Losing begets losing. And now it begets finger pointing.