LET BATTLE COMMENCE
Bill Elliott runs the rule over the course, the captains and the potential teams as Europe prepare to head across the pond to defend the Ryder Cup
Onward, onward we go chums. After a unique sprint of Majors since The Masters last November, we now hurtle towards the biggest fun week of all, the Ryder Cup. A year late – and all the more welcome for that painful delay – the 43rd matches betwixt the USA and Europe will certainly offer a vivid contrast to the hurly-burliness of the 2018 rumble at Le Golf National, the Eiffel Tower a backdrop, cosmopolitan Paris a hectic staging post for everyone concerned. It’s not that the imaginative jousting field that is Whistling Straits is inferior; it is not. It is, however, somewhat quieter. Perched on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, this Wisconsin course is also near, well, not a lot. Wisconsin,
after all, is known as America’s dairyland, with cows and sheep aplenty. It comes with a huge reputation for producing great cheese, although those of us who have actually tasted American cheese may narrow our eyes a little at this particular accolade.
Whatever your own cheesy thoughts on this, it is beyond doubt that Whistling Straits is one of the very best courses created anywhere in the second half of the 20th century, designed and built by, for me and many others, the greatest designer of this period. Pete Dye died last year aged 94, but what a legacy he left behind – courses like TPC Sawgrass and the Ocean course at Kiawah Island.
Shortly before Kiawah was completed I spent a couple of hours with him, walking the course and playing some holes. He was both eccentric and fascinating; his mission statement was to build courses that were different, visually brilliant and deceptive. He also liked them to be the brutal side of challenging if you failed to recognise the subtlety. No wonder he was hailed as the Picasso of golf design.
Whistling Straits is perhaps his greatest gift (here I should add that his brilliant wife Alice helped with many of his designs, theirs was a great partnership) with its sweeping, rolling fairways, its grasses, its deliberate British and Irish links-like feel. Ever since it opened in 1998 the course has figured in America’s top ten, an astonishing plaudit given the breadth of opposition. One respected reviewer wrote that this mundane two-mile stretch of lakeside land had been turned into a passable imitation of much that Ireland’s revered Ballybunion links offered visitors.
Even more astonishing is the fact that until Mr & Mrs Dye got their hands on it, there was no rolling or sweeping stuff going on. The Straits is built on what was a former army airbase and thus a piece of dull and necessarily flat land. Not now. With money no object, Dye was able to play God and build his own tilting, swaying landscape.
A fitting venue
Having hosted two US Women’s Opens, a US Senior Open and three USPGA Championships,
Whistling Straits is more than ready to test the technique, the nerve and, above all, the intelligence of the US and European teams. Taking place in late September, the temperature could drop towards ten degrees Celsius if the wrong wind whips in off a lake that thinks it’s a sea. However cool it may turn out, the golf, as ever, is guaranteed to be hot, the competition intense, the individual focus remarkable. For some, this will raise their games to another level; for others, it will begin to shred what remains of the nerves.
It’s why we love the Ryder Cup. Strategy is vital in elitelevel golf, but passion is even more important when it comes to the intensity of this historically gilded piece of international match play. What is also obvious is that the two captains, though contrasting in personality, are prime examples of golfers who have always effortlessly brought these qualities to the party. Any party, but especially the Ryder Cup.
America’s Steve Stricker and Europe’s Padraig Harrington offer wildly contrasting figures. Ask Stricker a question and the reply is likely to be polite but brief to the point of inconsequential.
Cough and you’ll miss it. However, ask Harrington something and you usually have to set aside the next 20 minutes to hear the answer. Ask a follow-up query and supper may have to be left in the oven. Where Stricker’s natural pose is cool and laconic, Harrington is usually totally engaged, his fertile intelligence swiftly considering a much broader picture than most journalists have imagined existed.
Both men are universally regarded by other golfers as “really good guys”. Each also still plays well enough to be considered seriously as performers for their respective teams, instead of leading them and fretting over pairings and the quality of room service for their posses of pampered players.
Despite home advantage, Stricker has the more difficult role as skipper of a side desperate to emphasise their often irritatingly instinctive sense of superiority in front of a partisan crowd. The high degree of difficulty surrounding this challenge is not, however, because of this abiding fact, but because he has elected to have the power to select half the US team. This is unprecedented and surely will cause him
more problems than it may solve. If the US side fails to win then Stricker will face more opprobrium than any previous American captain. Harrington, wisely, has kept his selections to three, half the dilemma his rival now faces.
What Stricker has going for him is the potentially overwhelming home support with quite probably an unfettered full house of fans allowed to crowd the fairways. How many European supporters will be there is unknown and dependant on what’s happening with Covid. Whatever occurs with the virus, the fact Wisconsin is Stricker’s home state only adds to the thought that he will go into the fray as the Big Cheese. How he ends it is another question, of course.
American strength
As I write, the teams have yet to be finalised, but there is no doubting the fact that, on paper and as judged by world ranking positions, the Americans have everything going for them. Only Europe’s Jon Rahm can boast a seat in the world’s top ten, and as he is presently No.1 this is a significant boast indeed. After the Spaniard, it becomes rather problematic for Europe in general and Harrington in particular – no one can gloss over the hard reality that the American players currently occupying those top six automatic places are also in the world’s top ten.
Even more disconcerting is that the next six highest-ranked Americans – should Stricker choose to peel them off as his captain’s picks – are all comfortably in the world’s top 20. Indeed, when I add up the world ranking positions for both possible teams, the USA comes in at a total of 109 against Europe’s 194. If I were Stricker, I’d have these numbers writ large on the US locker-room wall and possibly scrawled somewhere on Europe’s as well.
Consider again those top six Americans: Collin Morikawa, Dustin Johnson, Bryson
Dechambeau, Brooks Koepka, Justin Thomas and Xander Schauffele. Now consider the – current – top six Europeans in the world: Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Rory Mcilroy, Tyrrell Hatton, Matt Fitzpatrick and Paul Casey. All excellent golfers, but some a bit more consistently excellent than others. Actually, a hell of a lot more consistent.
There is, of course, no need for despair here. World ranking points don’t help a man if his legs are shaking and his nerve is being hung out to dry when he stands on the first tee of a Ryder Cup. Harrington will be sure to remind everyone that there have been 12 Ryder Cups in the last 26 years and that the Europeans have won nine of them. This is an astonishing record and one that pays tribute to a succession of gifted captains. It also highlights the European side’s apparently eternal ability to shuffle into an integrated fighting unit and up their collective game while their American opponents too often tend to just shuffle. We’ll see.
What is also indisputable is that it is hugely more difficult to win away from home. Of those nine European wins, just three have been in the States, the two most recent of these victories at Oakland Hills, Michigan in 2004 and then magical Medinah in Illinois eight years later. Wisconsin is bordered by both Michigan and Illinois, so if there is a bit of the USA that tends to favour Europe then it appears to be this bit. I may be clutching at geographic straws here but it’s better than grabbing at nothing.
In the end, however, I suspect that Europe’s ace card may well be their most visible one... Harrington himself. He was asked recently if he planned to bring in a motivational speaker to fire up his side. He hedged his reply a bit but suggested it was wildly unlikely, pointing out that Ryder Cup week was “not a training week”. He added that while he may well offer a slice of motivational schtick himself, he wanted the European players to “be themselves, to just go and play and not try to be someone or something else”.
Look, Padraig has had three years to think about these matches and who to pick and what to wear and who to pair with whom. This is a lot of thinking time for a man who admits he can often overthink things. His instincts, however, remain sound. He knows he is a perfectionist, but he knows also that perfect is outside his reach and that, anyway, the hapless pursuit of it often has one side benefit: the consoling achievement of excellence.
I have no doubt that, whatever the outcome, Harrington will play a clever hand, that the players will respond to him as a leader and that his pairings will be both imaginative and astute. Anyway, how can one not love someone who has the wit, as Harrington did at a lunch a couple of years ago, to answer a punter’s question so brilliantly. He was asked how not to be nervous over a 4ft putt to win something really big. “Ah now,” he said. “The only way I’d say you could not be nervous in that situation would be to never allow yourself to be in it in the first place.” While I have no doubt that he will out-talk Stricker, I suspect he will also out-think the American. It will be fun to see how it shakes out.
Hard but fair
Meanwhile, there is a new trophy up for grabs during this Ryder Cup. This is the Nicklausjacklin award and a somewhat tinpot idea for a panel to honour one player from each team who best embraces the “proper spirit of the week with an emphasis on goodwill and camaraderie”. This, of course, is based on Jack Nicklaus’ concession of Tony Jacklin’s shortish putt during the 1969 matches that meant the Ryder Cup was halved for the first time.
Fact is at least half the American team were very irritated by Nicklaus’ concession, pointing out that while he would play in many Ryder Cups, this may have been their only chance to win one. I understand their chagrin from all those years ago and suspect they will be miffed again when they learn of this latest wheeze.
Personally, I prefer the give-the-buggers-nothing philosophy before, win, lose or draw, sharing a drink or three together afterwards.
Camaraderie is for the bar while relentless, hard but fair competition is for the course. You may disagree. I doubt any of the players would, especially Koepka and Dechambeau, whose cartoon fallouts have been the comedic highlight of the season so far.
Wherever the high ground is here, allow me to leave you with a quote from Mr Dye, his reply to a journalist when asked how he would describe Whistling Straits. “This course is popcorn,” he grinned. “But sometimes people choke on popcorn.”
Let the choking commence. Break out your own popcorn, settle back and prepare to enjoy what surely will turn out to be another thrillingly memorable Ryder Cup.
“World ranking points don’t help a man if his legs are shaking and his nerve is being hung out to dry”