Week(s) In Review, Sept. 16-30: The Ryder Cup

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WeekInReview2.jpgSome of the highlights from Ryder Cup week, starting with the opening ceremony.

JPB writes: Well, the Americans won the battle of clothes. The Euro outfits were pimptastic and fit in with the Al Czervik development. He did do the condos at the K Club right? It is good to see midcentury Miami golf hustler come back in style. I didn't see the whole thing so I missed the entertainment and whatnot. The sppeches I heard could have been worse. So all in all better than I expected.

Once the matches got going, JPB also noted the painful pace of play: Horrifying that a match could take over 5 hours. Something needs to be done. Even if you are playing for your life, it might not be worth living any longer if a round, especially in match play, takes 5.5 hours. And the Ryder cup is an exhibition, not life or death.

As the rout developed, DAW noted:  Is it not possible that the explanation for the current result is simply that the Europeans are just a tiny bit better, particularly on a familiar course and with the crowd behind them? Why do we have to go through the usual finger-pointing exercise? Is it really that hard for the press to come up with another angle?

And once the rout was complete, Hawkeye wrote: I would just like to say something positive about the US team that has been almost completely overlooked - the fact that the four rookies have scored points in five of the seven matches they have played. Compare that to #1 & #2 in the world scoring points in just three of the eight matches they have played, with two wins and a halve.

LEFTY: In 2008 at Valhalla, Captain Azinger will lead America to a dazzling display an incredible 10 points, five of them scored by crusty, old veteran Tiger Woods, fourth oldest member of a team that also includes Furyk, Chris DiMarco (a captain's pick despite falling to 168th on the OWGR) Mickelson, Ryan Moore, Lucas Glover, Sean O'Hair, Kyle Reifers, Michael Putnam, Anthony Kim, J.B. Holmes and Billy Horshcel. I'm excited already...

F.X. observes: One thing I notice about younger better players is that they aren't interested much in match play with handicaps, as if it is somehow unmanly to put their game to the test except in stroke play. If the very best players we produce are inculcated with this mindset at a young age, what hope do they have of competing in match play at the highest levels? They simply don't perceive it as "real golf." It's just nuts since the whole handicapping system is designed to let players of unequal skill compete as equals at match play. One suggestion: start a movement among high schools to play at least half their matches in Ryder-Cup formats. Get the best young teens tasting fourball and foursomes.

Tim Liddy: Why is it so hard for us to realize that the US does not have the best golfers (as a group) in the world anymore? Why can't someone say it publicly instead of their putts dropped, they play better as a team, etc. They have a better team!

ScottS: There is always discussion around this time about golf being an "individual sport", and that "medal play is the truest test", but it stands out rather strikingly that when those seemingly cardinal principles are infringed on even slightly that all hell breaks loose.  Figures like the top US players tend to be held up in the light of being great as individual players who want nothing less than to dominate and destroy. So, when domination of only half of the field and supporting the other half becomes the game, they seem to faulter.

the village idiot: In America we don't golf with others. We golf by and for ourselves, trying to post our own scores. We don't care for the social interaction of a game. We try to beat our personal best. Says a lot about why we suck at match play, no? For self-obsessed Americans, having to pay attention to how other people are playing is too much of a distraction!

CBell: Surely the Euros are at least the equals of the Yanks at the game, but we don't perceive them in the same light. We'd take a lot more pleasure from seeing Donald Trump lose a contract or, say, be dumped by a supermodel wife than we would from seeing the same thing happen to some lesser-known mogul from afar.  In our hearts it's simple justice meted out by the fickle gods of golf - and divine justice trumps loyalty to the state for all but the shallowest of men.

jneuman: Wilt Chamberlain said nobody roots for Goliath. That's us on the international scene. Rooting for the U.S. is like rooting for the New York Yankees -- we have the most resources by a huge margin, and therefore we really OUGHT to win everything. What fun is it to root for a side playing with a stacked deck?

Mark Holthoff: I think it's because almost no one on the American side seems to be having any fun. While we're busy "gutting it out," the Europeans are enjoying themselves, each other, and the game itself -- and that's a lot more fun to watch.

Sean Murphy:  The United States' next Ryder Cup Captain should be the grossly neglected......Larry Nelson.

And finally, Chuck wrote: It is interesting (and perhaps just a mere coincidence) that one of the greatest extended periods of success for Europe in the Ryder Cup coincides with one of the greatest periods of futility for Europeans in the major chanpionships.

One Last Ryder Cup Question...Follow Up

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Earlier in the week I wondered about the impact of a possible four day Ryder Cup starting on Thursday instead of the current Firday-Sunday setup.

One strategic element lost might be that rare time during morning four-balls when the Captain's have to figure out their afternoon pairings. As we saw this year, Tom Lehman twice left J.J. Henry out of afternoon play, only to have Henry light up the back nine and leave everyone wondering why he was left out of foursomes.

This question brought reader Blue Blazer out of hiding, with the great fan of all things USGA insisting that the players have created this awkward situation with their painfullly slow play (five-plus hours for the first four-ball out!). BB says 80s and 90s matches used to end around noon (as opposed to 1 p.m this year), giving the Captain's another hour to sort out their afternoon pairings.

So Blue Blazer is right that it is not unfair to the Captains to have to make their afternoon pairings with only nine or so holes of golf played for some.

It's a slow play problem.

Nicklaus Prepares For '07 President's Cup By Watching As Little Of Ryder Cup As Possible

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From a story by Garry Smits:

Nicklaus said the U.S. Ryder Cup team had the same intangibles going for it as the European team.

"They [the U.S.] played for pride and their country, the same things as they other guys," he said. "They played as a team. They just got whipped. The Europeans just played better."

Nicklaus said he didn't watch all the matches, but he guessed that the U.S. team played with as much desire as it did last year in the Presidents Cup.

"They probably played just as hard for [captain] Tom [Lehman]," he said.

Nicklaus said reversing the U.S. Ryder Cup fortunes had to start with developing younger players who had an instinct for winning.

"The big problems is we don't have any young players," he said. "Tiger was the youngest player on our team, and he's 30. We've only got one player in the U.S. under 30 who's won more than one more tournament.

"I think the colleges are developing players who are good at winning college tournaments, but that promotes playing conservatively. I don't think they come out of college knowing how to win yet."


Oh To Be A Subscriber, Vol. 86

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Sharonda at SI customer service was kind enough to credit it me for the last two weeks of Golf Plus that I missed because the computers decided I was a Fantasy Plus man.

Anyone else get switched over?

I guess this beats getting the X-Games Plus or whatever its called, but it would not be fun to go an entire year without missing Golf Plus. Then again, my subscription has been extended two months thanks to the computers!

Meanwhile, Golf World has been arriving on Wednesdays or Thursdays. Scary I tell you. This can't keep up.  

"the fact that he gave that ball to me..."

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Get your tissues out, Peter Kostis offers this emotional heart tugger of an anecdote to remind us that he's teaching one of the best players in the world.

I've been Paul Casey's coach five years, so when he made that ace on 14 yesterday—well, let's just say it was something special. A walk-off hole-in-one at the Ryder Cup—just the fifth in event history—to win your match! I was following Paul's foursomes match. When we reached the 14th, Paul's girlfriend Jocelyn turned to me and said, "This shot is right up his alley." It's like she knew. He didn't even see the ball go in, due to the topography.

 Or the lousy shaping work. Eh, just a thought...

When he watched his swing on the Jumbotron, he could read the lips of about 5,000 people saying, "Get in the hole!" Then he gave me the ball—an amazing gesture. He said something very personal which I'd rather not share, but the fact that he gave that ball to me, of all the people he could have handed it to, shows the kind of kid he is.

My NSA sources picked up Casey's comments to Kostis and passed them along: "Peter, since I couldn't get you a room here at the K Club, maybe you can sell this on Ebay to recoup some cash to pay for that lousy $500-a-night hotel room in Kildare." 

Ryder Cup Clippings, Final Edition Vol. 4

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ryder_cup_logo.jpgDespite the rout, there's still plenty to say about the Ryder Cup, starting with Golf World's Ron Sirak on the tape delay issue:

TV networks have to face the fact that times have changed. The Internet makes it impractical to take live events and repackage the time element out of them. Remember, a large part of what is compelling about sports is that it is an unscripted improvisational drama happening now. Why turn it into an old made-for-TV movie?

Brett Avery issues his report card in the new Golf World, and it's not pretty for the U.S. team.  They also have posted the stats and scoring package in a PDF file.

Jim Furyk commented on the Ryder Cup in his Amex press conference. Anyone care to guess who the writer was?

Q. I meant the Europeans, they're not winning majors, but they do very well in the Ryder Cup.

JIM FURYK: I think they would find that question very offensive because now you're taking a shot at them in the major championships. You're offending someone, I'm not sure exactly who it is (laughter).

I don't mean it that way, but as an American player in the Ryder Cup, I had a writer, actually very well respected writer from the U.S., a guy that everyone in this room would know, ask me point blank to my face whether it was all over on Sunday whether in the whole big scheme of things whether it actually mattered to me. Now, without wanting to reach out and just strangle him or send a few F bombs his way, I just bit my tongue, said yes, told him he offended me and walked away. There's not much else I can do. It's an offensive question.

Nothing towards you, but when you all write stuff about us about how bad we played, if someone writes last week that I played awful, I had no game, I didn't show up, you know what, I can accept anything physical. But when someone questions what's inside me or my teammates, that's kind of like the offensive part. That's where I think guys get upset.

I'm not upset with you or anything like that. I understand the questions. But for everyone that knows me inside, they know how important the Ryder Cup is. And if you can't get up for the Ryder Cup, you don't have a pulse. It is the premium event. I get more jacked up for that than I could imagine ever getting jacked up for an event individually, maybe to a fault at times, but it's exciting. You could not step on the first tee last week and listen to everyone pound their feet in the stands and listen to the place going nuts and singing and thinking, how cool is this.

Lorne Rubenstein swoons over dreaded 2010 site Celtic Manor even though the course is under the knife not long after its original design was deemed a complete disaster.

In a Globe and Mirror Mail column, he wonders if the U.S. team has been harmed by the President's Cup.

Consider the six Ryder Cups played before the first Presidents Cup, back to 1983, that is. The United States won three and tied one. However, as mentioned, the U.S. team has won only one of the six Ryder Cups since the Presidents Cup started.

Why might the Presidents Cup make such a difference? Remember, this is just a theory.

It could be because the U.S. players who qualify for both the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup -- read Woods, Mickelson and Jim Furyk, to name three heavyweights -- are called upon to represent their country every year.

The Europeans, however, are called upon every two years. They have 24 months to build up to the Ryder Cup, without interruption. They're fresh when they play.

The U.S. players who qualify for the Presidents Cup and the Ryder Cup don't have that amount of time to get excited about the Ryder Cup. This isn't to say the Presidents Cup isn't worthwhile in its own right. It came into its own in 2005 when the United States beat the International team by three points in a dramatic confrontation at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Prince William Country, Va.

Reviewing The Grove

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Joe Passov reviews WGC AmExpress host The Grove and loves it. Peter Dixon sounds a little less excited in The Times:
In almost every respect, the event at The Grove, just outside Watford, has the look of a fully-fledged PGA tournament. More specifically, the course, designed by Kyle Phillips, an American, has been set up in just the same way — a touch of Americana plonked right in the middle of the Home Counties.
Jim Furyk had some interesting things to say in his news conference:
You know, not the golf course I think you would expect coming to England or coming to London. It had a very new style of architecture to it with the green complexes, falloffs, collection areas off the edge of the greens, not something I was anticipating before I got here.

But it's definitely a golf course that looks like it's been built in the last 10 to 15 years. I'm not sure when it was built, but it has a very new feel to it.

I came over here a couple weeks ago, playing Wentworth. Even though it had undergone a facelift with Ernie it has a very traditional feel to it, old style, and I didn't know what to expect coming to The Grove. But when we all think of coming to London, we don't think of anything really all that new, because they're kind of old and classic, at least I do.

So it has a little different feel to it than I expected. But the golf course is in very good shape. The turf is fantastic on the greens. The fairway and rough in areas is extremely thick and penal. It's got some very difficult holes on it, 8 and 9 come to mind right off the bat, long par 4s with pretty tight fairways, difficult green complexes on both of those. So it'll be I think it'll be a decent test.

Yesterday the greens were quite soft and rolling very well, which always yields pretty good scores.

The course I think could play pretty tough right now. It seems like the setup is going to field some decent scores.

Q. Do you actually prefer when you come to London, do you feel almost cheated if you don't get the classic?

JIM FURYK: No, I don't feel cheated. I think I prefer a classic golf courses in the States or whatever. It's not a secret I'm not a real big fan of modern architecture for the most part, but the golf course is fine. A lot of the golf courses that we play on in the States are of a modern architecture, and I tend to pick the ones we play on our Tour. Most of the courses that I really like were probably built pre 1960 and are a little bit more traditional, and I grew up on courses built in the early 1900s at home when I grew up playing the game. It might not be old for here, but it's old for home. Stuff that I enjoy playing.

I think had I grown up in Florida or had I grown up in an area where modern architecture was a little bit more popular, that probably would be the way I would be swayed because it looks good to your eye what you grew up on.

Australia Out As A WGC Site

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Bernie McGuire reports that Australia is likely not going to be hosting a WGC event anytime soon.
Former Australasian PGA Tour boss and now tour consultant, Andrew Georgiou, said there was simply not enough corporate backing in Australia.

"While it would be nice to see a World Golf Championship return to Australia, the simple fact of the matter is that there is not the sponsorship money in Australia to host one of the events,'' Georgiou said.

One of the three WGC tournaments - the $US7.5m American Express Championship - is taking place this week at The Grove course just north of London and WGC officials indicated yesterday a fourth will join the schedule from 2009 and be staged in China for a 10-year period.

This week's AMEX championship is the seventh staging of the event that was first played and won by Tiger Woods in 1999 in Spain.

U.S. Ryder Cup Ratings

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Considering how lopside the matches where and how early the coverage came on in the Western U.S. (it does exist!), these ratings don't seem that bad. From Larry Stewart in the L.A. Times:

NBC might be doing well with football on Sunday nights, but it did not do well with the Ryder Cup. With European golfers dominating Americans over the weekend, those ratings were down. NBC averaged an overnight national rating of 3.0 for its two days of coverage. In 2004, NBC averaged a 3.4 overnight rating. Final national ratings were not available.

In L.A., the Ryder Cup got a 3.0 rating for Saturday's coverage and a 2.1 for Sunday's.

"We've had a coalescence of three different things come together"

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In another of golf's worst kept secrets, the tours are taking the WGC World Cup to China. Announcing the move were George O'Grady, Jon Linen, Tim Finchem and various dignitaries from new host site Mission Hills.

Wow, it looks like the World Cup has been sav...eh, maybe not...

Q. So it will not be the World Cup after two years, or it could be?

GEORGE O'GRADY: It could be; it's unlikely.
Q. So Jon, your reaction to that, are you already investigating other possibilities beyond the two year period?

JON LINEN: We would work with the Federation and cross that bridge when we get there. Right now we know we're going to be where we're going to be for the next two years.

We know we're going to be where we're going to be for the next two years. Whoa, I think that calls for a little mop-up from the $7 million man.

TIM FINCHEM: If I could just comment on this, I think what's happened is we've had a coalescence of three different things come together. One is the opportunity to have a World Golf Championship event supported in China for more than a decade; the second is that we feel strongly that at this particular point in time the priority is to bring top flight PGA TOUR level golf to China and to Asia; the third thing is we want to perpetuate the World Cup.

So we've addressed all of these things in a way that we've unfolded here today, which is we're going to take advantage of the commitment that China and Mission Hills has provided, we're going to perpetuate the World Cup for the next two years at Mission Hills. We intend to have World Championship golf for the ten years beyond that, but how that unfolds after the next two years is yet to be determined for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is as George mentioned, the world calendar is reasonably set through 2008. There are issues with the tournament structures and dates after that, in addition to these format issues.

So we will address those as we get to them over the next year, year and a half, but in the meantime we're going to focus our energies on making the World Cup as good as we can make it at Mission Hills for the next two years.

Ah, much better. Those multiple "perpetuate" references are so much tighter than "We know we're going to be where we're going to be for the next two years." That's why he gets the big bucks!

Q. Is there a fear that the World Golf Championship events will be devalued by the fact that most or all will be in America for the next ten years, foreseeable future, and then the next one will be in China for 12 years; will it become stale after so many years?

GEORGE O'GRADY: From a European Tour point of view? I think everybody can have a view on it. I think it's been well chronicled that when all the World Golf Championships or the stroke play events, the Accenture, have been played in America. Not all of us were totally best pleased. But if we have to look at the force of the world economy where it goes, I mean, if we are sitting here, if I'm allowed to say so, a tremendous European victory in the Ryder Cup Matches just finished, and various people have said, why. Now, reading the papers for the last two days, better people than myself can work that out in a playing sense.

Say what?

Q. With that said, George, when is the next window of opportunity for one of these things to be in Europe?

TIM FINCHEM: After 2010 probably.

Nice rescue by the Commissioner. 

Johnny, The Cough Button Is Your Friend

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Alan Bastable at Golfonline reports what Johnny Miller said off-air and which was picked up in the media center and the U.S. team locker room.
While chatting off-air with his colleagues, Miller said Tiger Woods was  "playing like crap" and that he hit one shot like a "cripple."

Only Miller wasn't entirely off the air.

Unbeknownst to the NBC crew, its off-air banter had actually been piped into the U.S. team's locker room (as well as the media center).

While expressing continued exasperation with the U.S. team's performance, Miller also referred to Scott Verplank as a lead weight and said that U.S. Captain Tom Lehman should have benched Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson in the afternoon's foursome matches, but that he didn't because Lehman was afraid to "take the heat" he would face for shelving the world's No. 1 and 3 ranked players.

The NBC team learned about the locker room feed when David Toms alerted on-course reporter Mark Rolfing. Rolfing immediately told his colleagues, and an awkward silence ensued. Miller, seemingly unfazed, then sent greetings to the U.S. team.

Within minutes, the NBC feed to the media center went silent.

"He was active until the last second"

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138.jpgThe Dallas Morning News' Brad Townsend and Bill Nichols pen the best of the obits on Byron Nelson.
Nelson's wife Peggy came home from a Bible class around 12:30 p.m. and found her husband on the porch, longtime friend and business manager Jon Bradley said.

"He had been gone for a while," Bradley said.

He said Peggy told him Nelson was feeling good Tuesday morning, and may have been headed for his golf cart when he collapsed.

"He was active until the last second," he said.
Richard Goldstein writes the New York Times obituary and Thomas Bonk pens the LA Times version.

SI digs up Walter Bingham's 1995 piece detailing the win streak.

Of course, Dan Jenkins contends that it was actually 13.

Ryder Cup Clippings, Final Edition Vol. 3

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SI posted a poll of PGA teaching pros from Golf Magazine's 100 best, asking them to pick the next Ryder Cup Captain. The results:

Corey Pavin      35%
Paul Azinger     26%
Fred Couples     26%
Davis Love III     10%
Jeff Sluman        3%

Well that's settled. After all, we know how the PGA of America always listens to its constituents.

Lawrence Donegan offers his final thoughts on the Ryder Cup:

Even those who are not in the gang, such as Sergio García, are granted temporary membership for Ryder Cup week. Colin Montgomerie, too. At the start of the post-victory press conference, a US journalist asked the team to sum up the Scotsman's contribution to the European cause.

"Careful lads, careful. Make it good, " interjected Montgomerie, perhaps mindful that several of his team-mates are less than complimentary about him the other 51 weeks of the year. But he need not have worried.

"Monty is simply a leader on the course and off it," volunteered Westwood. "He's proven today that he is an inspiration when he goes out first in the singles. He's a pretty quick player, too, so he likes going out first." As eulogies go it was hardly WH Auden but this contribution spoke of the mentality of the European team, every one of whom was happy to lay aside ancient enmities in the greater cause of victory.

From Alan Shipnuck's SI game story:

Why can't Johnny win? Maybe because the players on the PGA Tour get so rich with a few top 10s that they never learn how to close the deal. Maybe it's because Europeans grow up competing in more match play, or that the far-flung logistics of their insular tour breeds more camaraderie. Maybe Americans' obsession with making technically perfect swings has de-emphasized the art of scoring. Or maybe Europe simply has better players: Coming into the Ryder Cup, eight members of its team were in the top 20 in the World Ranking, compared with just four for the Yanks.

These arguments, and others, have been kicked around for the better part of the last decade, but one point is indisputable -- an event in which only pride is at stake brings out the best in their stars and the worst in ours. 

And John Huggan weighs in at Golfobserver with this point about Mickelson, which I suspect will be made many more times in the coming months:

The question is simple: Is he willing to take golf even remotely seriously after the PGA Championship in August? If not, Mickelson should forfeit his place in all future US sides. That he should pitch up in Ireland not having played competitively for a month was a disgrace, an insult to his teammates and indicative of his less than enthusiastic approach to representing his country in golf's most compelling event. Instead of being on the course these past few days, the 36-year old Californian should have taken the advice offered by a wonderfully 'Irish' sign at the K Club: "Lost people should go to the information centre in the tented village."

And Huggan addresses the idea of the U.S. becoming "The Americas" team:

Then again, one has to wonder what Jack Nicklaus was thinking as he surveyed from afar the carnage that was America's Team. Was he musing the possibility of the hapless US side being bolstered by the likes of Canada's Mike Weir, Angel Cabrera of Argentina and Columbian Camilio Villegas in a newly constituted 'Americas' team? To even suggest such a thing can no longer be dismissed as frivolous or mere mischief making. After two successive nine-point shellackings that hardly bode well for the new world's prospects at Valhalla two years hence, it is a question that brings with it a growing legitimacy.

And, how can you not love this:

Finally, on a personal note, your correspondent is sure he is hardly alone in taking an enormous amount of pleasure from the delicious last day moment that saw Woods' caddie, the despicable Steve Williams, slip on a rock left of the 7th green and drop his boss's 9-iron into the drink. The only pity was that the endlessly boorish New Zealander did not do likewise.

That would have been the perfect end to a memorable week. Well done Darren. Well done Ireland. Get a grip America.

Tilghman, Faldo, Lerner and Foltz

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Ron Sirak and Stu Schneider report that The Golf Channel will pair Kelly Tilghman with Nick Faldo in the main booth, with Rich Lerner and Jerry Foltz (!?!?!?) on the 17th hole.

If nothing else, this news will bring legions of new readers to this site thanks to this very post.

Yes, one of the oddities of blogging is the ability to see how people reach your site. And believe it or not, based on one measely mention of Tilghman in a post a while back, 10-20 visitors a week find this site running searches for "Kelly Tilghman" and "pictures," or sometimes, her name and "nude photos."

What a wonderful world!