Vice grip on Pod Squad
CHASKA, Minn. — Tiger Woods is not really a part of this year’s Ryder Cup team, as he found out when he tried to get into the team picture. But Patrick Reed is certainly glad he’s part of the Pod Squad.
As a nonplaying vice captain, Woods mistakenly thought he would be part of the team picture when it was snapped on Monday. As he approached the photo area he was informed “players only.” Life on the outside for the 754th-ranked player in the world is a far cry from what it once was for Woods when he dominated golf’s biggest stage, but to be frank he still dominates the stage. He just doesn’t dominate the golf course anymore. Woods has clear picture of role with U.S.
Both those realities were apparent yesterday as Reed and a number of others discussed Woods’ presence and how seriously he has approached his role as chief tactician and coordinator of a pod of players that includes Reed, Jordan Spieth, Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar.
Under the pod system devised by Paul Azinger in 2008, which happens to be the last time the U.S. defeated the Europeans, a vice captain watches over four players like a mother hen. Reed wasn’t quite sure if someone who once soared as high as Woods would willingly do that, but he spoke glowingly of Woods’ help this week.
“You see a guy like Tiger and you see the credentials he has, all the major wins, the 105 worldwide wins, and ultimately one of the best golfers ever to live on the planet, when you have someone that’s that successful they are going to do (one of) two things,” Reed said. “They are either going to be like ‘I don’t have time for this,’ or they are going to be, you know, forthright.
“When I got here, I didn’t quite know what to expect. I’ve talked to him a little bit, but I haven’t spent a lot of time with him. And to have a guy like that who, if you ask him any question or if you need anything, he is there. He’s all-in. He’ll answer any question, whether it’s about golf, on the golf course, off the golf course, anything. He’s there to genuinely help you and help you on not just Ryder Cup but throughout other things, and it really speaks volumes on what kind of person he is.
“To have somebody like him walking down the fairways and being there with you. We played nine holes on the first day, and the whole group, it was so windy, they only wanted to play nine. I decided I wanted to go see the back nine, so I just walked the back nine backward. He was like, ‘All right, well, let’s go.’ And he walked it with me, helping me figure out the golf course. You don’t get that very often. And to have somebody do that for you, especially a guy like Tiger Woods, it meant a lot to me.”
Team captain Davis Love III settled on Woods as a vice captain about a year ago after Woods called him to offer strategic suggestions while Love was in Korea with the struggling Presidents Cup team. Love was impressed enough to name him a vice captain a month later, although Woods hoped at the time to be a playing member of the team for the eighth time.
Back problems precluded that but he is here this week, less than a month before his scheduled return to competitive golf for the first time in 14 months, working not on his game but on that of the 12 men comprising the U.S. team. According to Reed, Woods has not swung a club since he arrived but what he has done is embrace the Pod Squad.
“When we walked the golf course and we started on 18, 17, as we’re starting to go back, you know, you could tell he was just kind of watching, kind of seeing how I do my thing,” Reed said. “After we got through about two or three holes, then he was like, all right, well ... this green kind of slopes this way, so if you miss the green, the ball should kind of go there. So he throws the balls over there and says, ‘This is where you need to be chipping and this kind of stuff.
“The way his mind works on the golf course, it’s impressive. It definitely shows why he has won so much and where he is. It was amazing. I learned so much just from that nine holes walking around that I felt like just that alone could save me so many shots throughout my career just by thinking about the little minor details.
“It’s not rocket science. It’s really stuff that you’re like, ‘Well, I should have been thinking about that.’ It’s nothing complicating or confusing. It’s just actually knowing what to look for, and just the experience and expertise he has in sharing that with me this week has been awesome.”
Considering that Woods is 13-17-3 in Ryder Cup play and Reed 3-0-1, one can speculate who could do more for whom, but one thing is clear. Eldrick Woods may not be a Tiger anymore, but he’s still a genius on a golf course.
“I think it really adds a lot to have Tiger,” Love explained. “His analysis of how to break down a golf course, how to prepare for a major championship. His analysis and his determination and his focus have really been helpful over the last couple of months. He’s like our offensive coordinator.”
Brandt Snedeker said Woods had called him so many times to discuss strategy in recent weeks he finally told him his wife was wondering what was going on between them. What it was, it seemed, was a constant exchange of tactical information designed to achieve one goal: win.
“We’re talking about everything,” Snedeker said. “How we are getting prepared as a team, how I should be getting prepared as an individual, what our thought processes should be, how we are going to come together as a team, why we haven’t been successful in the past and why we’re going to be successful going forward and things like that.
“He’s a 100 percent in. He’s probably spent more time in the last three weeks on this stuff than all of the other assistant captains put together. That’s the kind of guy he is and how much he cares about it. It’s infectious.”
If it’s infectious enough to inflict something fatal to the chances of a European team that has won six of the last seven Ryder Cups, they might just let Woods in the team picture after all.