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from JEREMY CROSS at Hazeltine, Minnesota prepare our best and play our best and I believe we will play our best.
“This is the foundation week for us. This is the week where all the past captains, past vice-captains, PGA of America officials and the caddies have had involvement in the decision-making process.
“It’s very much like the model that the Europeans have used with great success and I give them credit for their ability to lift each other up to great heights.
“When you get together as a team and work together, you can achieve much greater success than you can as an individual. We’ve seen that for decades from the Europeans.
“It’s exciting to be part of the groundwork and the foundation of the US side trying to do that now.”
Mickelson was so distraught about what happened in Scotland two years ago that he launched a blistering attack on captain Tom Watson.
He might have been sitting alongside the American legend at the time, but that didn’t stop him blaming the 2014 skipper straight after the heavy defeat.
The left-hander admits the captain’s role is crucial and used the time he lost a match alongside Tiger Woods back in 2004 as an example of how it can all go wrong.
He said: “It starts with the captain. That’s the guy that has to bring together 12 strong individuals and bring out their best and allow them a platform to play their best.
“That’s the whole foundation of the team. You’re saying, ‘Well, guys just need to play better’ or, ‘They just need to putt better’. Absolutely you do.
“But you play how you prepare. In Majors, when we win or play well in Majors, it’s because we prepared properly for those events.
“And in a Ryder Cup you have to prepare properly for the event.
Grabbed
“In 2004, Tiger and I were paired together and we ended up not playing well but we were only told two days before that we were playing together and that gave us no time to work on things. “The golf ball I was playing was not going to work for him. He plays a high-spin ball and I play a low-spin ball, and we had to find a solution in two days. “I grabbed a couple of dozen of his balls, went off to the side and tried to learn his golf ball in a five-hour session. “In the history of my career I had never ball-tested like this. “Had we been given the time to prepare, I think we would have been able to make it work. “But that’s an example of starting with the captain, that put us in a position to fail and we failed monumentally. “But to say, ‘Well, you just need to play better’ is so misinformed because you will play how you prepare.”