A Ryder Cup runs over with rancor and surrender
Europe's five-point victory was closer and simpler than it appeared.
The Ryder Cup is golf with the glass broken.
It’s what happens when Google translates all speech from Ceremonial to Real. It’s a world in which the logos are ripped off and the sponsors don’t need to be thanked and the sports psychologists are no longer telling you to pretend that garbage is ambrosia.
It has coaches, or captains, that we can all second-guess. When a player flubs a shot, it’s not just a matter of finishing 10th when he could have finished 8th. No, people actually cheer his mistakes and partners actually shoot him the stink-eye.
The outcome is measured in holes, not strokes. Your opponent can make a quadruple-bogey and still stay in the game; you can make an eagle and only gain an increment. It is a totally different province from the money trail that they walk for 103 weeks every two years. And that is why it transcends golf, or most everything else, in sports.
This Ryder Cup came to a new venue, at Marco Simone Golf And Country Club just outside Rome, and golfers from both Europe and the U.S. did as Romans do. They drove (and putted) recklessly.
The Euros won the first four matches of the competition, and then seven out of eight, and then on Saturday afternoon the Americans cut their lead to five points, and by late afternoon Sunday, Euro captain Luke Donald admitted he was desperately looking on the scoreboard for the half-point he needed and wasn’t sure he was seeing it.
But Rickie Fowler of the U.S. took care of that on the 15th hole, conceding Tommy Fleetwood’s putt of two feet, eight inches and guaranteeing that Europe would get at least that half-point. That clinched it, and then the hosts went on to win, 16 ½ to 11 ½. It wasn’t as clear-cut as the record book will make it seem, but it was an emphatic reversal of the Americans’ record-breaking 19 to 9 win two years ago at Whistling Straits, which seemed like the n-ramp to U.S. domination for as far as the eye could see. As usual, golf only lets you see so much.
Fowler’s concession shocked NBC’s Paul Azinger, a former victorious Ryder Cup captain, and many others in golf. Robert MacIntyre, the young Scotsman who was being pursued by U.S. Open champ Wyndham Clark, had just missed an un-conceded foot-and-a-half putt behind Fleetwood and Fowler.
Fleetwood had to make that par to go 3-up on Fowler with three to play. Of the games that were going on around them, there was no guarantee that MacIntyre would get a draw with Clark, or Shane Lowry would catch Jordan Spieth, or Sepp Straka would split a point with Justin Thomas. Donald had already played his high cards early on Sunday, as Jon Rahm came back for a crucial halve with Scottie Scheffler, and Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland had already put away Sam Burns and Collin Morikawa, respectively. Europe had no firewalls on the back end.
Fleetwood had two putts to win the 15th hole, since Fowler’s tee shot had found water. His lag putt was fine but not great, certainly not “stone dead.” The chances of Fleetwood missing, and allowing Fowler to hang around, were probably half of one percent, but this is the Ryder Cup, with the Miracle of Medinah and the Battle of Brookline fresh in our minds. As Fleetwood walked toward the ball, Fowler sidled up and told him to pick it up. Fleetwood did, and turned triumphantly to the crowd, which kicked off a dusk-to-dawn party that might have awakened Caligula himself.
“I was relieved,” Fleetwood said later. “I was pleased to hear that he gave me that putt.”
To be clear, the Americans would have had to roll sevens in every other match to win the whole thing. And it was not even closer to the weirdest thing that happened.
Patrick Cantlay, who is getting married Monday, spent the competition hatless, which led to stories that said he was protesting the lack of Ryder Cup pay (and yet was still playing) and that he had become a pariah in his own team room. On Sunday, Morikawa and Thomas also played without hats, and the whole crew, including Cantley, had a good laugh about it during the losers’ press conference, which is usually a morose and resentful ritual, at least when it involves Americans.
In any event, the fans were riding Cantlay, which meant none of them were old enough to remember Men Without Hats or the Safety Dance .On the final hole Saturday, Cantlay rolled in the third of three consecutive birdie putts that would get the Americans back into the game. His caddy Joe LaCava, a veteran who has also carried the bags of Tiger Woods and Fred Couples, was mocking the crowd by waving his hat. In doing so his path intersected with that of McIlroy, who was trying to line up a putt. The U.S. won the hole, and Lowry began barking at LaCava, and later, in the parking lot, McIlroy lashed out at an unidentified American — “It was whoever I saw first,” he said — and had to be stuffed back into the car by Lowry. A few cold ones soothed those fires, McIlroy said.
This became the only topic that mattered, especially to the European media. In truth it was just the type of barking that happens at most NBA, MLB and NFL games in the States. It’s what golfers do when all the protections are stripped away. They lose their outer robot and they strike back like most aggrieved folks do. It’s the same way they acted when LIV Golf came along and threatened the PGA Tour that had become their safe haven. They didn’t say, well, Bryson DeChambeau and the guys are just doing what’s best for them. They took it personally.
LIV Golf had a presence in Rome. The U.S. hierarchy did not select Dustin Johnson, who was 5-0 at Whistling Straits, although it did select Brooks Koepka, another LIV stalwart who won his fifth major championship in May. Johnson, who truly does not care what is said by anyone at any time, would have been a fine 39-year-old stabilizer on the U.S. roster and, incidentally, one of the best players.
Henrik Stenson also left for LIV, which was awkward because he was supposed to be the European captain. Donald replaced him. By then the Euros had reassessed their tank job at Whistling Straits and had concluded that the human scrapbooks in their room, like Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia, would no longer be automatic selections. That is how Ludvig Aberg, who played in this Ryder Cup before he played in any major championship, made the team.
Ryder Cup captaincy is a thankless gig unless you win, and even the winners are reluctant to do it again. Steve Stricker, the U.S. captain in 2021, was picked apart for inviting Scheffler, who beat Rahm during that blowout and is now the No. 1 player in the world.
U.S. captain and two-time major winner Zach Johnson was knocked for picking Burns, who won the PGA Tour’s match play event this year, and Thomas, who had a dreadful year but also had a 6-2-1 Ryder Cup record. It seemed like the buddy system was at work, since Spieth and Thomas are close.
Donald heard the same things when he picked Justin Rose, who at 43 was the oldest player on either team. To do so, Donald skipped Adrian Meronk, the Polish player who had won a European Tour event at Marco Simone, and was one of the best Euro players this year.
Rose played very well in the team events this weekend and pushed Cantlay hard before losing in singles. Thomas wasn’t very good but was hampered by Spieth’s dismal play, at least until they both won on Sunday.
It’s all a guess, and Johnson and Donald had to make the first ones. For those who think history should be dismissed in an attempt to take the hot player, that would mean Johnson should have left off Spieth, a foolhardy thought. Johnson might have been in charge, but couldn’t draw up a blitz to keep Rahm from holding out chips and slam-dunking putts.
Donald did have influence, however, as the home captain. He was in charge of the course setup. Marco Simone actually had punishing rough, sloping fairways and tricky greens with sharp dropoffs, exactly the type of thing most PGA Tour players do not encounter as they savage the doughnut shops they play week to week. The European players are generally more accurate. They also don’t depend on a driver-wedge attack, so Donald had several of the par 4s either shortened to driveable distances or lengthened to 500-plus yards. This made the U.S. even more uncomfortable.
Donald leaned on analytics that were collated by Eduardo Molinari, an Italian whose brother Francesco won the 2018 Open Championship. Eduardo also played on the Euro Tour, but also loves to poke around in the data. He concluded that Europe excelled from 180 to 220 yards out, so he recommended conditions to fit that. Donald also was careful to pair young players with established stars with whom they might have common ground. That’s why Aberg, from Sweden, was walking aside Hovland, from Norway.
The Americans visited Marco Simone two weeks before the event and familiarized themselves with the golf course and the terrain. But they didn’t have a competitive event after the Tour Championship, which was in late August. When the U.S. got drummed 7-1 on Friday, the critics suddenly decided they were rusty and flat, although some were actually sick, particularly Fowler. Spieth said he would have preferred an event that was closer to the Ryder Cup, like the PGA Championship used to be, like the BMW event in London was, for the Euros. One can be assured that the Americans would have been accused of overscheduling if they actually had done that and still played poorly.
Because the Ryder Cup belongs in the maelstrom of regular sport instead of the boardroom of golf, it attracts such a cacophony of overthink. The main reasons Europe won are (A) home teams tend to thrive in these competitions and (B) Europe had three of the top four players in the world going in — Rahm, McIlroy and Hovland vs. Scheffler, and Scheffler has somehow held onto No. 1 despite some dreadful putting weeks.
The better team won, and did so without facing the dread of a putt that it couldn’t afford to miss. The two will meet again at Bethpage Black on Long Island, but not until 2025, which is fortunate. Blood pressure medicine needs time to build.