Midweek Musings - Ryder Cup Addition

It's flood the zone coverage of all things Hazeltine, so let's have at it...

Davis, The Walk-Back - This was the captain to Matt Adams late last week:

“We don’t have to do anything superhuman, we’re a great golf team,” Love said. “This is the best golf team, maybe, ever assembled.”

You see the problem, of course, as there's simply no upside to such boastfulness....  especially when you're the captain of that team that never quite lives up to its press clippings.

So, do we think that Davis might have been asked about it at Tuesday's presser?  From the transcript:

Q. Your comments last week about potentially the best team ever assembled raised some

eyebrows. What went into saying that, kind of a bold statement, and was there any concern about kind of adding a little motivation to the European Team room, because there's been some back and forth since then regarding that.

DAVIS LOVE III: Yeah, it raised some eyebrows around our team, too, because if you listen to the interview, or it wasn't really an interview, it was a send-off that Matt Adams does for the American Captain, a very nice guy from Canada called in and said, I'm supporting the U.S. Team, I just think they need a little bit more swagger when they go out and play. And I said, I agree with you, we've got to get these guys going.

No, no, heaven forfend, I never thought it was an interview.... so glad to have that clarified.  And, by the way, a nice guy from Canada is redundant..... they're all nice guys and that's why we don't like them.  But that's not important now....

Davis, sorry I interrupted your train of thought, please go on:

And I told a story that Tom Kite always told me, just out-drive them and walk faster than them, get to your ball first and dominate. Every time you get 2-up, you know what's better than 2-up? 

I said, No, what? 

He goes, 3-up. 

He was trying to give me an attitude of, you're better than them, let's out-play them. Let's show them that you're better. 

Then Matt Adams was asking me, What are you going to tell your team?

And I said, I would tell my team they're the best team ever assembled. Let's go out and show off and play and have fun. 

That's what Nick Saban would tell his team when they're getting ready to go play Ole Miss. He wouldn't say, You guys have done a pretty good job this week, and you're a pretty average team, let's go out there and just give it a good shot. No, he's going to say, You guys have worked hard, you're the best team I've ever seen, let's go crush these guys.

Sigh.  You really didn't know what's better than 2-up?  I'm beginning to understand what happened at Medinah...

OK, are you prepared for the bad news?  Violating the first rule of holes, Davis intends to dig further:

So the question wasn't, how do you rank this team in history. It was, what are you going to tell your team to fire them up. So I would still tell them the same thing, you're a great team, let's go out there and have some fun, play your game, don't get in your own way. 

I think we try to be -- especially like our top players, five or six guys, whether it's Davis Love and Tiger Woods and Justin Leonard in '97; we try too hard to be better than we are or to do something extraordinary, and I think we get in our own way doing that sometimes. And we just need to understand that we're a really good golf team, they are a really good golf team. If we just go play our game, the results will take care of themselves.

It's just unfortunate that, you know, in that nice conversation, that it got misconstrued.

Misconstrued?  Yeah, that's the ticket....pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.  Notice how he's focused on defending the uncontroversial first half of the quote, and kinda, sorta ignores that second half.... But wait, there's more:

Obviously that comment and to the other extreme, the comment about The European Team, is not what this is all about. So Darren and I have already talked about both of those things, and that's just part of The Ryder Cup. And our team's happy, their team's happy. We're out there working hard and moving on.

Davis, you are aware that Darren is on the other side, right?  But we're moving on.... Ryan Lavner corrects the historical record:

Anyone who knows the difference between a Titleist and a TaylorMade can look at this roster and determine that it isn’t the best ever. (1981, anyone?) Dustin Johnson is the presumptive Player of the Year. Jordan Spieth added two more titles to his growing collection. But other than that? The Americans have combined for just three wins this year. This probably isn’t even the best team this decade.

Hmmmm, this decade?  Perhaps Davis was going for best losing team?

Lavner succinctly covers the pushback:

Lee Westwood poked fun at Love’s bravado on Twitter. Last week, Rory McIlroy sent his own zinger: “They’ve definitely assembled the best task force ever, that’s for sure.” 

Added Sergio Garcia: “You don’t win Ryder Cups with your mouth. You win them out there on the golf course.”

And while Darren may have patted you on the back and said, "no offense take", the other guys know what you meant:

“Whenever we are going up against one of the greatest teams ever assembled,” he said, “that’s motivation enough.” 

Sorry, Davis, but it’s clear that the one-liners are just beginning – win or lose.

The truly funny part is that Davis was attempting to take the pressure off his guys, and accomplished the exact opposite.  I'm with Rory....  Best. Task. Force. Ever.

Bubba, An Appreciation - I find the golf world's reaction to Bubba quite maddening, and it forces me to make a comparison that you won't like.  I find it eerily similar to the reaction to a certain Presidential candidate, as well as to governing elites in general (think Brexit).  I have no use for Mr. Trump and I think his adherents have chosen badly, but I also believe that it's the failure of other candidates and elected officials to understand the concerns of these voters that gave his candidacy oxygen....

As relates to the Bubbameister, I first noticed this phenomenon last year, at the time of the famous poll of Tour Players that had Rickie and Poulter as most overrated players.  Right behind them was Bubba, who I consider a major over-achiever.....  with his ADD and other assorted phobias, I never thought he could win a golf tournament, much less a major....

I find the golfing world reflexively hostile to Bubba, for reasons that don't speak well for those folks.  I don't know if it's the redneck upbringing or overt references to his faith, but there's an hostility that's quite unbecoming....  I see a man that publicly fights his demons, but that acknowledges his shortcomings and tries to improve.  he's become much better in his international travels, and was one of the few top players to embrace the Olympics.

He's just absorbed arguably the greatest Ryder Cup snub ever, as the seventh ranked player in the world.  Jason Sobel has an appreciation:

This is a guy who played in seven of the last eight PGA Tour events to close out the season, including a detour to Rio de Janeiro for the Olympics. There's no doubt he'd enjoy some downtime with the family at home, just relaxing instead of watching his buddies play golf. 

This is also a guy who once lost a major championship in a playoff, only to anxiously ask seconds later, "Did I make the Ryder Cup team?" That's how much he cares about playing in this event, which only shows how much it must have hurt when Love never called with positive news. 

And yet, when it came down to it, Watson insisted he'd rather drive a cart while listening to the action through an earpiece than be anywhere else this week. 

"I think it shows a lot about who Bubba is," said Rickie Fowler. "People may not always see that side of him. Bubba's one of my best friends. We've spent a lot of time together. I've always seen that side of him, but hopefully this shows some people that that's part of who he is."

 He took it like an adult, and not everyone would have been as gracious.  As for that Fowler guy, he should consider playing well this week, because he's a guy whose resume pales in comparison to the cart driver's.

Quick Hits - Johnny Miller with an idea so crazy it might work:

But the Ryder Cup is the one time these guys don’t play for prize money. Miller shrugs

that off. “Probably a little dumb thing,” he conceded. “But I’m scratching at straws.”

“Literally, every day you get a pay-out if you win, you put money in the pot if you lose. Cold cash.” 

Miller said he’d even have a little bit of a ceremony. “Here’s the money I lost, here’s the money I won. It would be the (player’s) own money. Not huge money, but they’re used to playing for money.

Well, they're used to playing for someone else's money...... except for Phil, and, as I understand the Billy Walters story, he doesn't pay up unless you give him an insider stock tip.

So, perhaps not....

Did you catch the amusing video of Tiger being booted from the players-only photograph?  Video at the link....

This amusing tweet indicates that our Tiger might be finding an outlet for the special forces Jones:

Can I just note how God-awfully ugly these unis are.  From a distance it looks like a red mansierre.....

Joel Beall corrects eight misconceptions about the Ryder Cup, including this one I thin we're onto:

 

Yes, the Europeans tend to display the tightness of college fraternity brothers, but that doesn't mean the Americans are lacking in sociability. If anything, guys on tour are closer than they've ever been before.

Well, I certainly embrace the team more with that guy on the right sitting at home....

Bob Carney has my favorite item of the day, dispelling another myth about the Ryder Cup.  Four-ball, a/k/a better-ball or the grammatically-incorrect best-ball) is the most ubiquitous of golf formats, what we each invariably play with our buddies each weekend.  But you may be surprised to learn that, not only was it the last of the three formats to be added to the Ryder Cup, but it was a disparaged format by many.

The King plays a shot in the 1963 RC with
Dow Finsterwald looking on.

Samuel Ryder, the English seed merchant and golf fanatic -- he was buried with his 5-iron -- likely borrowed the Cup’s original format of singles and foursomes from earlier events, more than likely the Lesley Cup, a competition played from 1905 by some of the best players on this side of the Atlantic. It endures today, among the golf associations of Metropolitan New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Quebec. Lesley Cuppers over the years have included many US amateur champions and presidents of the USGA. They will tell you that their competition inspired not only the Ryder Cup but also the Walker Cup. 

That’s hard to prove, but the Ryder Cup’s original format of singles and foursomes is exactly the format used by the older competition from 1907 till today. The Ryder Cup added four-ball decades later.

 But it's the disses of the format that are most interesting:

For most old-schoolers (and Old-Worlders) four-ball garnered about as much respect back then as a scramble would today. It was considered a mostly American game designed to get in as many shots as possible. It was seen as downright “amoral” in that it allowed a golfer to escape the consequences of his own play by relying on his partner. Listen to Open Champion Harold Hilton on the emergence of four-ball on his side of the Atlantic: 

“It is the predilection for four-ball play which is in a goodly degree responsible for the decadence of amateur golf in Great Britain.”

Amoral?  Decadence?  Wow, I had no idea....

American architect Max Behr spent several thousand words in Golf Illustrated back then to condemn it just as vociferously:

“Not only does [four-ball] bring with it a vacillating responsibility to the result, but with its destruction of a real contest a weakening of the character and spirit of the game; for the minute responsibility becomes inconstant it becomes degrading.” This, he argued, “is always a hindrance to the best in us, which means the cultivation and improvement of our play. Our strokes must undergo this test again and again before any semblance of permanent ability can result.”

Degrading?  But wait, there's more....

New York’s John Montgomery Ward, quoted in William Quirin’s book on the Lesley Cup, thought it downright humiliating at times for the player who is “off his game.” His words will take you back to, oh, last weekend: 

“He flounders along as best he can, unconsciously ignored or politely tolerated by his partner. His sense of weakness and consequent humiliation so oppressive that he fails to render any help even when the opportunity is offered, and he concludes the unhappy round knowing that he has figured at at all in the result…..”

I feel dirty....how about you?

Lastly, Alex Myers has finally given the event its moniker:

The Brawl By The Mall (Of America)

OK, I lied...can't go out on that note...  How about we bid adieu with this:

“Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated; it satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time rewarding and maddening – and it is without a doubt the greatest game mankind has ever invented.” – Arnold Palmer

True that.