Weekend Wrap - Ryder Cup Detritus Edition

If you think we're slow to move on, consider the options.  There's no actual golf news to cover and we certainly won't be discussing baseball right now....

Leftovers - It so happens I'm not the only one slow to let go, as the Tour Confidential panel seems fixated as well:

In the days after Europe’s Ryder Cup victory at Bethpage Black, much of the conversation has focused on the fans, the heckling and the reaction to it, by players, golf legends, organizers and more. Is the Ryder Cup experience out of control? Or is some of this overblown?

Yes, next question. 

Jessica Marksbury: Loud and partisan crowds are what makes the Ryder Cup fun, but it sounds like this year things went over the top. The kind of vitriol that was reported is against the spirit of

the event — and the sport itself — and that’s a shame, because rowdy atmospheres can and should still be respectful. It’s what makes tournaments like the WM Phoenix Open so beloved. But there’s obviously a fine line there.

Sean Zak: Wouldn’t call it “out of control,” but rather “un-controlled.” Event organizers clearly did not have the proper protocols in place to manage for unrelenting verbal abuse. I think you saw that in their removing certain hecklers from certain pairings. I.e. it’s okay to take your absurd show to another part of the property, rather than expelling them period. I’m not going to act like it’s simple — but I think there wasn’t enough control, and we’d benefit to see more of it four years from now at Hazeltine.

Jack Hirsh: I think Rory McIlroy’s comments on Sunday night hit the nail on the head. Golf can hold itself to higher standard. The Ryder Cup and the Phoenix Open are the only tournaments of the year where you even hear boos on the course. How it could devolve so far for people to be calling McIlroy slurs and throwing things at his wife, not to mention people screaming while Euro players were over shots? There’s a clear and obvious line and it was crossed and fans who took part in that should be ashamed of themselves.

That uncontrolled bit is spot on, I think, though Sean goes easy.  My sense is that the PGA of America was quite content to play a dangerous game.  They of course knew what they were signing on for, and I can't help but feel that they were winking and nodding at the worst of them.

I also had a couple of opportunities to ask about planning at Met. Golf Writer outings to the Black.  I can tell you that, not only did the assembled State Park and PGA Of America officials demonstrated no intention to aggressively police the crowds, but they didn't even seem to understand why a fellow might be worried about it.

Schadenfreude is a bitch, but you'd have to be a better man than your humble blogger not to take pleasure in their comeuppance.  Not only did they take another massive reputational hit, but their strategy appeared to backfire on the home team.  Well played, PGA of America.

I'll copy-and-paste this, but more because it's easy than because it adds anything:

If something does need to be changed, what’s the move?

Zak: Better communication — including from the captain — better messaging by the emcee, better precedents set early in the week, etc. Oh, and when it seems to be brewing, get out ahead of it. On Saturday morning rather than Monday morning. Talking to fans waiting half-a-hole ahead of the groups receiving the worst of it. That wasn’t happening.

Marksbury: Blatantly disruptive behavior should not be tolerated, full stop. There needs to be enough staff members in place to identify instigators and remove them — not to a new spot on the course, but off the property.

Hirsh: These are both good, but I saw a tweet on Monday I agree with. Because the pricing of tickets at this Ryder Cup was so absurd, the only people who could afford had no fear of retribution of what they did. I think the PGA priced out the very people who would have appreciated the chance to watch the Ryder Cup.

Are you familiar with Occam's Razor?  It's a slightly more complicated philosophical construct, but it can be boiled down to avoid attributing to malice what can more logically be explained by incompetence.  So, were the crowds abusive by design or just from stupidity?  Well, in this case they're hardly mutually exclusive...

That last point by Jack Hirsh is, though, a bit of a howler.  In the run-up to the event, folks were concerned that the ticket prices might create a Super Bowl like crowd, one devoid of passion.   Yeah, I know, if only!

The next Ryder Cup is two years away at Adare Manor in Ireland, and now the conversation turns to who leads the two squads. Does Luke Donald come back for three in a row? And who leads the U.S.?

Zak: I’m guessing Luke will want to know who he’s up against, since captains are often remembered in respect to their competition. He won’t rush into that decision, and will have six months or so to settle into it. That said, I bet he does it again. He seems to enjoy it a lot.

For the Americans … hmph. The shortlist seems to be 5-deep. Keegan Bradley, Stewart Cink, Brandt Snedeker, Jim Furyk and Tiger Woods. The one I think will do the best job is … Furyk. But Bradley would do well, I think. Plenty of this year’s Cup was out of his control, as is often the case.

Marksbury: It sure sounded like Luke would strongly consider giving a three-peat a go. I’d actually like to see Keegan get one more shot, if he’d be up to it. It seemed like the U.S. players enjoyed his leadership and that’s saying something after a loss. Given the list of other names Sean floated, I’m not sure who the next pick would be.

Hirsh: Zak, I believe it was you who mentioned the next U.S. captain should have the captaincy until he loses. Donald hasn’t lost and seems to have everything covered. Even if he goes for three wins and loses, he will still go down as one of the best European Ryder Cup captains.

For the U.S., I don’t even know at this point. Tiger seems the obvious choice, but not sure if he could foster the team atmosphere that Europe has succeeded with. I say go back to Steve Stricker. Not even sure why he wasn’t the captain in Rome.

OK, I'm going to need a moment to stop laughing....  Jim "Alas, Poor" Furyk, Sean?  Did you not see Paris?  You want to talk about 2025 foursomes pairings?  I suggest you go back and see who Furyk through out in foursomes.... Anyone remember that Mickelson-Bubba Watson foursomes team?   

On the Yanks, I expected three responses that Tiger would lead them out of the wilderness, so color me surprised.  But none of the three followed that script, and Jack Hirsh's bit is more Tiger-skeptical than I ever expected to see in print.  I actually figured that every golf writer for a major publication, needing access, would assume Tiger to be the hero we need.

But that list from Sean Zak is plenty uninspiring, no?

But, to talk about the next U.S. Captain, I feel the conversation should start with the question of where Tiger was this week?  Not only should he quite obviously have been the U.S. captain, but his reasons for turning it down are (or, at least, should be) disqualifying, to wit, the involvement of J.P. McManus in the 2027 installment.  But I'd add his failure to even show up or be an Assistant Captain....  He's not a team player and he only does that which he perceives as being in his own interests, so doesn't he seem the perfect bespoke U.S. Captain?

As for Luke, I just can't think he'll do it again.  At the personal level, it seems to include no upside and quite a bit of downside, so can't see why he'd sign on.  More importantly, Europe has a backlog of guys that are in the wings, Bjorn and Noren, to name a couple.  Those guys have been loyal soldiers, and I can't imagine Luke wanting to stand in their way.

But we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again:

In the lead-up to Bethpage, Keegan Bradley had the opportunity to be a playing-captain, although he elected not to pick himself and, in hindsight, it could have hurt the Americans without having him as a player. Should the PGA of America avoid this situation in 2027 so Bradley has an opportunity to contribute as a player?

Zak: Eh, we shouldn’t count on a 41-year-old version of Keegan Bradley to be the best version of Keegan Bradley. Particularly with the many younger Americans who will certainly be better than 41-y.o. Keegs. It might make most sense to offer the job to Bradley tomorrow and say, “We’ll handle the playing-captain thing again if you happen to be crushing it in 18 months.”

Marksbury: Given the way Keegan has played these last two years, he may want to focus fully on getting on the team himself! I’m sure the stress of a captaincy is even more draining than it appears. So yes, if Keegan is the pick, I agree with Sean — they should lock him in ASAP.

Hirsh: I don’t think Keegan should be captain in 2027, so this isn’t an issue to me!

Hold your thoughts on Keegs until I get a chance to work in Geoff's reaction, but would he have made a difference this year as a player?  On Sunday morning I made the logical argument that, with the U.S. seven points down, that no one guy mattered.  Of course, that logic fell apart and it all felt different by mid-afternoon on Sunday.

The unfortunate thing is that it's easy to over-interpret, because Keegan could have been uniquely useful.  He's one of the best iron players out there which, combined with his fiery personality and unfinished Ryder Cup business, might have made him useful.  If I were the captain, he would have been one of my first captain's picks and he would have been in both foursomes sessions, but we can't know it would have changed anything.  The one thing we know is that it was a completely avoidable issue that the PGA of America walked into with it's eyes open.

Let's turn things over to Geoff at this juncture, with his typical Point Misser post.... although, such was his bounty, the Geoff couldn't fit it all into a single post.  Yup, it was that kind of bizarre week.  Let's dive into his first post, beginning with the captain:

Keegan Bradley. The stock post-USA loss disclaimer: the Captain does not hit the shots and has only so much power to save a sinking U.S.S. Club Car. The Captain has to deal with PGA of

America numskulls lurking around every corner, offering laceratingly dull stories and terrible lineup suggestions. But a Ryder Cup Captain also can put players in a position to succeed and is empowered to make lineup calls when someone is off their game. Early on, Bradley appeared to pull the right strings by getting his team to Napa so they’d remain sharp and get to know each other (a promised team trip to Bethpage did not happen). He appeared to create a positive spirit around the squad. There have been no stories of communication failures or unexplained pivots from the plan he publicly said was set long ago. (The catty comms gripes traditionally take a while to dribble out).

Bradley’s first massive blunder started wth not scheduling four-ball sessions to start, as is the home captain’s prerogative and traditionally is a better format for Americans. He then put together quite possibly the worst foursomes pairing since 2018 when Jim Furyk sent Bubba Watson and Phil Mickelson out in Paris and minus a team of whitecoat-wearing, Freudian-trained observers armed with strait jackets. I’m referring to Friday’s opening foursomes duo of Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas (who anyone could make a four-ball case for). Then there was the even more heavily criticized duo of Collin Morikawa and Harris English because Data Golf said it was a bad idea. But the duo made sense from a temperament and style perspective—until they got walloped by McIlroy and Fleetwood and somehow were sent out again Saturday morning.

“You know, we’ve got a lot of faith in our players,” he said. “Collin Morikawa has won a couple majors.” Whoa. Those were in 2020 and 2021. But go on. “Harris has had a great year.I think in the past, sometimes we have panicked with the pairings and switched everything up, and it hasn’t worked out. We wanted to stick with the plan, and that’s what we did.” Oh, you did.

We speak a lot about captains putting their players in a position to succeed, but the PGA of America doesn't seem to have done that for Keegan.  Given the manner in which he got the gig, he was never going to be a strong captain.  And much of what he's being criticized for, course set-up and Shack's bit above, represent Task Force orthodoxy of limited value, but not to be changed by a weak captain.

The Captain may not hit the shots but he does control narratives and perception. In his role as frontman, arbiter of dignity, leader, and in Bradley’s case as the “younger-and-touch-with-todays-players” guy, he forgot the first rule of the Ryder Cup or any team event: good sportsmanship and leaving everyone feeling better about a contest conducted with dignity.

Saturday’s disastrous press conference came after a long, brutal day but that still does not excuse some of the idiotic assertions Bradley made. He revealed that he’s living in 1995 when Europeans were playing slow greens and shocked by American agronomic standards. Mark James and Howard Clark were not this year’s opposition. Bradley seemed oblivious to what was going on or was not informed of it by his Vice Captain’s. He’s yet to apologize publicly to the guests from Europe, yet former Captain Tom Watson did…from his couch.

“I thought the fans were passionate,” Bradley said. “I mean, their home team is getting beat bad. You know, they are passionate fans. I wasn’t at Rome, but I heard a lot of stories that Rome was pretty violent as well.” Oh it’s been violent a time or two in Rome, just not this century and certainly not at the 2023 Ryder Cup. “The fans of New York, from what I have seen, have been pretty good. You’re always going to have a few people that cross the line, and that’s unfortunate.” Guess he hasn’t read any Samuel Ryder lately.

“I was happy to see our players trying to quiet down some people that were like that. Part of it is our fault. We are not playing up to the standards that they want to see, and they are angry, and they should be.”

He’s right. Part of it is was his team’s fault and fans were angry so they took it out on the visiting team in a bid to make the matches closer.

This isn't a good look:

Q. You said the way your players have played is maybe partly to blame for some of the fans crossing the line --

KEEGAN BRADLEY: I did not say that. That’s not what I said. I said the fans are probably upset that their home team is losing. I did not say that.

Q. But do you think maybe you bear some responsibility in terms of some of the words that you and your players used beforehand in terms of stoking up the fans to bring a hostile environment?

KEEGAN BRADLEY: What words were those?

Q. To bring chaos and just talking up the atmosphere here, Collin --

KEEGAN BRADLEY: Yeah, Ryder Cups are wild. I don’t appreciate those words that you just said. I know what you’re trying to do. The Ryder Cup is full of passionate fans. They’re full of passionate players. And that wasn’t right.

In a low point not seen but witnessed by the reporters present, Bradley wanted to confront the reporter afterwards for asking questions based entirely on what he said. Again, it’s a long day and his team took a rough beating, and there is only so much a Captain can control. But maintaining dignity and handing off the privilege of Captaining the USA team in a good place could have been within his control had he voiced stronger disdain for the bad apples. Instead, he came off as an out-of-touch Point Misser.

We all know that generals fight the last war:

Plans. Bradley’s mantra sounded a lot like past losing Captains and speaks to a longtime American culture of not having a cohesive culture that bruises no egos by adjusting on the fly. After becoming Captain, Bradley sounded like someone who might use his passion and knowledge of sports to take the data and find that elusive sweet spot between overreliance on analytics versus adjusting on the fly. The Europeans stick to plans because they are usually more thoughtfully conceived, they are honest with themselves about their weaknesses, and have built a culture where players can handle bad news when the Captain calls an audible. Bradley admitted that his plan had been made a while ago as a defense for sticking with Morikawa and English, an odd confirmation that he did not account for the state of certain players’ games, the course setup “surprise,” or how best to exploit the strengths of his team.

Where do I get one of those hats?

To me, Keegan sounds quite reasonable on that score, at least until you saw his teams play.  To me, the bit that I still don't get, is Saturday.  The U.S. got crushed on Friday, yet there wasn't any urgency in the team on Saturday.  And, while Geoff makes a point worth considering above, the U.S. was almost as bad in fourballs this year as they were in foursomes.  How do we feel about that in the context of giving Keegan a mulligan?

Who else does Geoff have it in for?

Vice Captains. As the European buggy brigade actively monitored matches and took on some of

the fan policing duties mismanaged by the PGA of America, America’s walkie-talkie chatters perfected the art of grim-faced, arm-crossing uselessness. There were rumblings they discussed “we need to speed the greens up” over the airwaves in what was an admission they did not know how advanced planning or agronomy works. Future Captains, they are not. The VC’s also should have been more involved in policing the jackwagons so players like Justin Thomas did not have to. It was also shocking how unaware Bradley seemed about stuff that took place when answering press softballs. Were the VC’s not telling him about anything about, say, the Hovland injury and long-established rules? Or about the slurs hurled by fans who might have backed off if sports-fan Bradley said, “cut it out”? Bradley even suggested Sunday night that it did not rain when discussing the soft conditions. Okay, maybe that weirdness is not on the VCs. But either way, nice custom-made A-J’s. Now, every time you put on your red-white-and-blue Jordans, you’ll be reminded of the Buffoonery At Bethpage.

Data. You’re a dinosaur in 2025 if you don’t believe every question can be answered with quantifiable answers. The same ones that also feed sponsor activations, promote sports betting, and satisfy point-missers who think athletes are actually humanoids executing a “base reality” simulation for a pre-planned outcome. But another match play event has come and gone with a sizable number of folks in positions of responsibility point-missing the layers of match play. The mysteries, the vagaries, and the nuances of the format cannot be quantified. Both teams know this, so they attempt to blend stats with gut instincts. It turned out that in a biennial tradition unlike any other, one team’s braintrust managed art and science better than the other. Again.

Shack nailed it....None of those guys will rock our world as captains, will they?  Of course, the telling detail is the guy missing from the pic.  Yanno, the one playing Call of Duty down in Jupiter....

Guess who is in Geoff's crosshairs in Part 2:

PGA Of America. Ryder Cups run by the organization cannot be considered a safe place for parents to bring their kids. That’s how far the members-only, for-profit/non-profit has fallen. The purported game growers and nurturers running the org predictably oversold, overpriced, overserved, and under-etiquette policed the 45th matches at Bethpage. This set up a toxic brew that should stain the organization’s leadership for at least a decade. Or, until players force the PGA of America to sell the thing to the PGA Tour, whose private equity partners might be just as cravenly squeezing every penny out of the event (so be careful what you wish for Tour fanboys!). An organization that has been integral to the junior golf explosion through its role in the Drive, Chip and Putt, PGA Junior League, and its thousands of members who introduce people to the game, allowed the Ryder Cup to be sullied by a refusal to see what could happen. And worse, they did not shift course when it became clear things were not going well.

The inevitable debacle started with the $750 ticket price for each day of the three sessions. (Yes, you got boiled dogs and Grandma’s Cookies softer than the greens as long as you didn’t visit between sessions when they ran out of everything.), The PGA of America’s cynical Chief Commercial Officer and Long Island native, Jeff Price, defended the price and claimed a sell-out occurred within 48 hours. Yet for around $1250 each, a fan could buy a maximum of six venue-verified tickets on official partner SeatGeek’s site, even when the public sale max was only four. (Note to PGA: try to be more subtle next time.) So yes, it means these were batches of PGA of America tickets marked up to squeeze more money out of the people’s course. Governor Kathy Hochul refused to get involved in the price-gauging even though it’s a state-owned property. She was booed mercilessly at the opening ceremony. Things seemed even shadier when we found out her husband used to work for the consulting company that helped determine the obnoxious prices. Despite the PGA-Seatgeek partnership, prices dropped below face value for Saturday action and plummeted on Sunday. But the fees remained appallingly high.

The PGA of America then tried to place 55,000 people per day on a footprint that would have been straining at 35,000 because of the two-lane roads in and out of Bethpage. Throw in the Ryder Cup’s limited amount of action taking place at one time, and fans realized they’d been duped. Their team started losing. It was hot. As a result, horrible things were said, and spectators tried to interfere with the outcome.

Yeah, quite the mess they created.  More importantly, while their revenue maximizing efforts are obvious to us all, they seemed to miss some important details, no?  Those soft greens took them completely by surprise, no?  Something maybe they should have thought about ahead of time...

I guess Tim Waltz wasn't available?

Don Rea. The game has dealt with carnival barkers and military grade All-World shmendricks before. But Rea may be unlike anything golf has ever seen. The current volunteer leader of the PGA of America desperately wanted to be hired as the CEO (and still does, so wear that body armor to meetings, Derek!). Rea has been building toward an even more revealing week than his bizarro PGA Championship shenanigans in May. At the Ryder Cup and following the event, he exceeded all expectations, and as respectable publications have already written, he should resign.

On Sunday afternoon of the Ryder Cup, Rea spoke to BBC Northern Ireland’s Stephen Watson and was asked about the fan behavior. You can torture yourself watching it here. Each of these batty quotes deserves special attention.

• “Well, you’ve 50,000 people here that are really excited and, heck, you could go to a youth soccer game and get some people who say the wrong things.”

• “When there are American players who have to control the crowds that distracts them from playing.”

• “It happened when we were in Rome on the other side.”

• “Things like that are going to happen and I don’t know what was said. But all I know is golf the engine of good.”

Rea then played a silly part in the closing ceremony. PGA officers labor under the delusion that anyone wants to hear from them, and he had one job: to congratulate the winning team. While many were offended by his suggestion that Europe merely “retained” the cup, it is technically accurate and has been said many times before when a team wins the matches. (It was The Quad’s headline.) But Rea’s was laced with condescension:

“Me and Rosie [Justin Rose] looked at each other thinking the congratulations didn’t feel very heartfelt,” said Matthew Fitzpatrick, speaking at the Alfred Dunhill Links.

What a buffoon!  But, as is to be expected, one ready to play the victim card at the drop of a hat:

Hubris.  It really would be hard to think of an organization less focused on serving its members than the PGA of America.  Sure, the love to cite their 29,000 members.  But the organizations focus is never on them, not least with their massive Frisco, TX edifice complex.  Remind me what that does for those 29,000 members?

I will have to kiss you goodbye here.  Catch you late in the week.

Weekend Wrap - Clean Up On Aisle Six Edition

With the Wednesday Game™ moved to the afternoon, we have time to ponder last weekend's excitement....  I mean, if you can stand it.

The Secret Sauce - I continue to believe that the Euros have perpetuated a multi-decade long con that has tied the Yanks up in knots, though I'll spare you that Usual Suspects reference.  But let's see what Luke has to offer up here:

After Europe’s Ryder Cup victory, Luke Donald revealed his secret

Plastics?  Rosebud?

After captaining Europe to a convincing win in Rome in 2023, Donald again pressed all the right buttons at Bethpage to become the fifth European captain to win on foreign soil. As the European celebration commenced, Donald’s team spoke about his attention to detail, which included changing the shampoo at the hotel, getting new bedding and covering cracks in the doors so his team could get better sleep and recover better.

“I really have committed myself to this job because I feel I owe it to the players and I owe it to the Ryder Cup, which has been so special to me. I’ve had so many incredible experiences,” Donald said on Sunday. “So yeah, I’ve had to kind of put my own game a little bit to the side, and every day I’m trying to think about things that could help us, come up with different things that might just give us a little edge.

“My job is literally to give these guys a better chance to win. It can be as simple as some very small things.” 

Hogan thought the secret was in the dirt, Luke seems to be going with the lavender shampoo....

That sound you hear is my eyeballs bugging out, though here Luke makes an argument that reminds me of the arguments for broken window policing:

Donald’s secret wasn’t in analytics or Le Labo shampoo, but in his understanding that his job as captain was to provide his world-class players with the belief that they could etch themselves into history. When you fuel the world’s best with unbridled confidence, the rest often takes care of itself.

“Well, our theme was we were trying to win for a fifth time away,” Donald said. “We talked about it at the beginning of the week. The practice shirts were based off the wins we had already had away: ’87, ’95, ’04, 2012. Everything we did was sort of centered around that, and to make the guys feel that we had done it quite often. In ten Ryder Cups since ’83, we had won four of them and we had come damn close three other times. This wasn’t an impossible task. We knew it was going to be difficult. We wanted to inspire them to know it could be done.

“My job, again, is to give them the reasons to make them believe that they can win.”

It appears that the only ones unconvinced that the Euros could win were the opposition....  Who played like it for two full days.

I'm quite confident that our Task Force will be all over the personal hygiene products for Adare Manor, with no need to revisit those pesky foursomes pairings....

This is an interesting take:

'The Badge and The Boys': Europe's Ryder Cup inspiration comes from within

Although hailing from different countries, the European's commitment to one another sets them apart

Over to JR:

The 45-year-old Rose was brilliant on the greens all week at Bethpage, leading all 24 players in strokes gained/putting, and my colleague Luke Kerr-Dineen asked him why. Rose shrugged and said he couldn’t explain it.

“I wish I knew,” he said, with a celebratory beer resting next to his microphone. “I wish I could be a bit more selfish and know that 25 weeks of the year. But do you know what I feel like the power of this [pointing at his teammates], the power of the group, who knows what it is, that ability to lock in, the ability to just want it that little bit more.”

Then he paused.

“But the answer to your question is I don't know, other than the badge and the boys, honestly. That's all that matters, honestly, the badge and the boys.”

Compare and contrast:

It struck me for the first time on Monday. Keegan Bradley led his U.S. team through the tunnel to

the first tee, without their clubs, to soak up a moment together. They listened to the national anthem performed incredibly by New York City firefighter Bryan Robinson, and heard the moving words of Chris Mascali, a fire lieutenant who lost his father on 9/11.

The only time you’ll hear the European anthem—”Ode To Joy”, before you ask—is at the opening ceremony. Ask the 12 players on Team Europe to name the anthem and I doubt the majority would know.

After watching Bradley and his team on the first tee that morning, I realized that the Americans were seeking to draw inspiration from the identity of their country. It may seem extremely obvious, but I think it’s prescient to what I would realize on Sunday night.

The U.S. team feels the need to represent their country while the European team seeks to draw inspiration only from those who have played before them. They don’t seem to be interested in playing for a country. They play for each other. They seem inwardly rather than outwardly motivated. As much as the Euros represent their continent, and wear their flag, they ultimately feel a responsibility to those who built Team Europe.

Every two years, everyone in golf attempts to quantify why the European team, underdogs on paper, seem to have success in this unique format of team golf. Rose, himself, was asked about it in Rome.

“We are united by a culture and we are united by a generation of players that have come before us.” he told us on the back of a five-point European victory. “This is our time. Luke has been very clear on that message, this is our time to shine, not because this is our stage, we are just taking care of it because of the amazing role models that we've had before us that have shown us how to do it.”

There’s no reference to Europe or a shared sense of responsibility to represent a country or continent.

“There's a really strong culture on the European Team. A good pairing on the European Team doesn't mean playing with your best mate. You know, it means representing something bigger than yourself, and I feel like that's, for me, what being a European Ryder Cup player is all about.”

Well, yanno, they are from different countries, so it's going to be hard to mask that.  

But perhaps the differences are in leadership..... Because, there was this from that first linked piece:

Donald was not the initial European captain for the 2023 Ryder Cup in Rome. That was Henrik Stenson, who was stripped of his captaincy after leaving to join LIV Golf. The post went to Donald on short notice. He aced his first Cup and backed it up by leading Europe to a resounding victory on American soil. Perhaps the Europeans should send a gift basket to LIV Golf.

Do we think he wanted to step into that mess?  Do we thin Luke wanted to be the guy they turned to when no one else would take the gig?  I'm sure he was completely upset at having been passed over and thinking he'd never get a shot, but he sucked it up and did what was needed.

Contrast that with the U.S., who also lost an a*****e slotted for the captaincy when he selfishly took the easy money from LIV.  That put another guy, the hero of all American players, in the spotlight as the next man up.  His answer, as you might have gleaned, was quite different than Luke's, and would submit that that very difference tells us all we need to know about the U.S. Ryder Cup effort.

To make it blindingly obvious if you're not following.  Luke Donald was sweating bath soaps and thread counts, whereas Tiger was on his couch in Jupiter playing Call Of Duty.  Do we need to say anything more?

Resurrection - It's 2014 all over again, though with one rather large difference, that being the venue for their comeback.  Let's see how this feels:

Ryder Cup 2025: U.S. team broke itself with the Keegan Bradley debacle, but the fix is easier than it seems

Tom Watson in '27?  I mean, what could go wrong?

To me, the piece starts with a discrediting howler:

Following Europe's Ryder Cup 15-13 victory at Bethpage Black, there are people who will point

to the strong European play on Friday and Saturday as an explanation for how the U.S. was humbled on its own soil, ending the decade-long era of the home blowout. American captain Keegan Bradley is one of them. On Saturday night, facing the worst second-day deficit in modern Cup history, he lamented Europe's mind-boggling putting performance. It serves his interest to push that narrative, since any focus on their play distracts from the failures of his captaincy, but he's not wrong. Europe did play exceptionally well in tough circumstances, and Luke Donald's team deserves a mountain of credit.

Unfortunately, there is a glaring problem with relying on this explanation to the exclusion of the systems behind the performance. There is a reason Europe held a seven-point lead going into singles, just as there's a reason that when the captains' influence waned on Sunday, the tide reversed to such a shocking degree that it almost bailed Bradley out. (Ironically, coming up just short had the effect of accentuating his mistakes; more on that below.) It's not because the Europeans have better players than the Americans—statistics alone can tell you as much. There is luck and variance in such a brief format, but the fact is that the Europeans built an institutional advantage that gave them an edge in the pairs sessions before the first ball was even struck. On the occasions when America has succeeded in this century—just three times, in 2008, 2016 and 2021—it's because they successfully counteracted Europe on that institutional front, built a well-oiled organization and came prepared to execute an informed plan.

But after the Rome blowout of 2023, instead of viewing the result as an unlucky confluence of player illness, normal road woes and a red-hot opponent—in other words, a blip in an otherwise successful U.S. reboot beginning with the task force—they gave up the progress they had made and returned to the randomness and hope of the Ted Bishop/Tom Watson debacle. And just as in 2014, they faced a European team that, far from retreating to complacency after its spoils, stood on the shoulders of its own successful decades-long template to reach the next stage of evolution and crack the code of how to prepare a team for a road Ryder Cup.

That reboot crashed and burned in Paris and Rome, so the real strategic error seems to have been the over-interpreting of those home game wins.

Seriously, you cough up a home game at Medinah and get crushed on the road in 2014, so you tear it to the ground and rebuild based upon hot gas from Phil.  To me, there's an obvious test of the Task Force, and it wasn't about holding serve.  I cringed at the triumphalism at Hazeltine, and my challenge was to see which side could break through on the road.  We have our answer.

So, how did they get there?

Any person with any power who believes that this result can be explained exclusively by what happened on the course—"the Europeans just played/putted better"—is unconsciously perpetuating a broken ideology, and extending the time it will take to mop up an unholy mess.

In the summer of 2024, Bradley was selected as the next captain of the American Ryder Cup team. It had been a decade since he played in a Ryder Cup, he had never served as a vice captain and there was every chance that he could qualify as a player ... or, worse, he could be a borderline captain's pick and have to decide whether to take himself. In a post debating whether this was a smart decision or not, I pointed out these red flags and further wondered how such an important decision could be made with such seeming randomness in a single phone call, based mostly on sympathy engendered from segments in “Full Swing,” and so far outside the considered philosophy they had tried to build after Gleneagles. In other words, how were we going rogue again, just a decade after the Watson debacle? I don't consider myself especially prescient to have noticed these potential pitfalls—they were obvious. And they all came true.

Bradley seems like a smart person. He seems to have taken the job seriously, and he certainly cares deeply. He seems to be liked by his players. He made a noble sacrifice by not picking himself for the team, even though that scenario—that the only way he could fail to make the team was by being thrust into the position of captain—was an absurdity born of a sequence of poor decisions.

And, yet, CTRL-F: Tiger yields zero results.

Shane Ryan is spot on, the PGA of America had no bench and no plan after Tiger spurned them, but I'm dying for someone to ask Justin Thomas the most obvious of questions.  If the fortunes of the Euro team can be affected by the aroma of the bath soap, what is the effect of America's alpha dog needing the wash his hair the week of the Ryder Cup?

The problem with Bradley is that he was put into a position to fail. He was not ready for this job. He could have been a tremendous captain in a decade, but with Donald returning with nearly his entire team from Rome, it's evident in hindsight that he had no chance. Even in his famous locker room speech after last year’s Presidents Cup, when he guaranteed victory and declared that "they're gonna doubt me ... I've been doubted my whole f---ing life ... that's when I do my best work," you could see him operating on the wrong theoretical principles. He thought winning the Ryder Cup was about his own will, his own energy, and not about the complex network that success requires. He was the mythical John Henry, if John Henry was unaware of the machine. Compare that to Donald's cool, almost corporate approach, it was volatile behavior, and you have to pity Bradley for his ignorance. Looking back, he was a determined, eager zealot, running headfirst into a brick wall.

He was put in a position to fail. In turn, once the Cup began, he put his players in a position to fail. He managed to find the statistically worst possible U.S. foursomes pairing, put them out in the opening session, and then, when they were blown out, he committed the unthinkable blunder of sending them out again a day later, to similar results. He had teams like Henley and Scheffler teeing off on the wrong holes, which he had to correct a day later. He sat some of his best players Friday morning because they were rookies, inadvertently putting them under even greater pressure when they had to play their first match trailing 3-1.

These may all sound like small problems, but they are tip-of-the-iceberg warnings that hint at darker trouble beneath. If you'll tolerate an analogy, you've probably heard the story of big musical acts that include strange items deep in the pages of their rider—the list of requirements from the venue—with the quintessential example being something like "a glass bowl full of only yellow M&Ms." This seems like diva behavior on the surface, but the reality is that it's a test of how well a venue's staff has prepared for their show—how good is their attention to detail? If they walk in and see a glass bowl of yellow M&Ms, they can feel assured that the more important things have been properly attended to.

I have been unable to confirm the color of the Euros M&Ms, but does Shane think the pairings were any better in Paris or Rome?

But Shane is smoking something here, and I can only hope he brought enough to share:

But then I remembered a conversation I had with Davis Love III after Whistling Straits, when the Americans defeated the Europeans by the historic margin of 19-9. Love had been one of the architects of the task force and the American rebirth and was directly responsible for the 2016 win at Hazeltine as captain, and as vice captain five years later. When we spoke a few months later, he mentioned how they were trying to keep getting better on an organizational level. How, I wondered, was that even possible after such a massive victory? Here's what I wrote then:

His response incorporated elements like food and transportation that were so granular they'd be too boring to recount here—at one point, it got down to what kind of water Dustin Johnson drinks—but that have a big impact on the players' experience and will be improved in the future. Susan Martin, a manager at the PGA of America who works closely with all the captains and teams, has already sent out a questionnaire to everyone involved with the Ryder Cup to identify other areas of improvement. If they've come so far as managers and planners that they're thinking in great depth about the food and the cars, it seems clear that absolutely no stone is being left unturned. And coupled with the quality of the players, it's a disheartening prospect for their enemies; it's America unleashed.

It's incredible to read how optimistic that sounds, to remember how competent the Love and Stricker captaincies were, and to remind ourselves that it wasn't that long ago. At that point, the Americans had responded brilliantly to the European dominance of the early aughts by learning from their opponents, building on the lessons of Azinger's revolutionary captaincy in '08, forming a task force that identified the key problems and solutions of their failures, and creating a system that could function as the bedrock of successful teams.

Shane, you ignorant slut!

Shane is capturing the zeitgeist perfectly, though not to his credit.  Shane, given that those "competent Love and Stricker" captaincies were followed by disastrous Furyk and Johnson captaincies, perhaps it was more illusory than you're considering.  Perhaps one can get away with things at home games, especially home games where Europe fields a weak team.  

And now his rousing coda:

But America as a Ryder Cup power is not dead. They had found the answer—more accurately, they had found the path—but they wandered off when they responded to a setback abroad by abandoning what they'd built. They courted disaster this cycle by naming a green captain and giving him too much power too soon, and disaster, ever dutiful, answered the call. Now they live in the days of humiliation.

And yet, America doesn't have to be a beaten dog. The answer is right there, in the recent past, and the men who can bear that message forward are ambassadors like Love, Stricker, and Furyk, and the next generation who served as vice captains this year and endured the failure. There is no dearth of talent in the U.S.—it's still the greatest golfing power on the planet—but the lesson of Bethpage is that a team sport like the Ryder Cup requires a coherent system, and not the vicissitudes of a lone operator. Bradley, unmoored, was destined to fail. Those who come next are not bound to the same fate.

Shane, when was the last time the U.S. was competitive on the road?  It's been a long time, the further issue being that in their recent road losses, when the going got tough, the U.S. players turned on each other.  

Let's wait to declare victory until they win or at least make a good showing at an away game.  Let's face it, the next one will be lit.  Not only do the Yanks need to show something, but that guy from Jupiter will expect to be a hero captain.  We'll see how that one plays out....

Grades - Everyone and anyone is offering grades, beginning with Shack's Champions:

Europe Just Gets It, Again. Ryder Cup fans are reminded every two years how the Europeans devote incredible amounts of time, money and resources to bind their team around a single cause, to position them to succeed, and use social media capture every move in a world where players thrive off of a certain kind of attend that only the European Tour Group can create. Win or lose, Europe rarely never gets much wrong—other than their highest-bidder venue embarrassment sticking the matches at way too many converted farm fields. The Euros learn from the past but always move forward by passing along or building upon a shared wisdom. They’ve made the Ryder Cup into the ultimate career milestone for millions of golfers. They wear dress shoes to gala dinners. And in making their efforts on and off the course so consistently good, they’re now all too regularly beating the United States. Then again, they’ve got a 400 million population advantage, a multi-century head start, and golf started on their continent, so they should be beating the United States.

In the matter of Luke Donald v. Tiger Woods, it's the Badge and the Boys in a rout.

I did figure this guy would matter:

Shane Lowry. While 1-0-2 hardly screams “MVP” status, the moody one and his streamlined physique relished pushing back at hecklers who launched horrible stuff his way, including Ozempic jokes despite his fitness driven weight loss. More remarkable was Lowry’s work with Rory McIlroy in four-balls and the Sunday Singles the capper: a birdie at the last to tie Russell Henley and secure retention of the Cup as Europe looked to be sinking under the weight of a USA surge. Lowry pulled off the halve all while scoreboard watching and obsessing over the Ryder Cup coming down to his match. Lesser men might have folded. “It was, yeah, like the worst two hours of my life. It was horrible. It was. But I said to my caddie walking down 18, ‘I’ve got an opportunity to do the greatest thing I’ve ever done today,’ and I did it. And I’m very proud of myself.”

And who would you rather have a beer with, Lowry or Cantlay?

He didn't actually play all that well,  but he did seem to get the one important thing:

Justin Thomas. No American demonstrated true sportsmanship or used his stature better than

Thomas while still competing against McIlroy. Even as his Captain went with all both-sideism on the fan rudeness issue and was rarely seen admonishing the crude attempts at interfering with play, Thomas attempted to manage crowd noise during Saturday afternoon’s four-ball match. Thomas showed visible disdain when repeatedly having to ask for quiet but he likely prevented Saturday’s harassment from veering into a NATO situation. Thomas demonstrated what genuine “veteran” status and match play experience means in a Ryder Cup. Even better: he lost none of his competitive edge battling McIlroy and Lowry to a huge halve before dramatically stopping Fleetwood in Sunday singles.

With Cam Young, he also provided the high point for the Yanks with those dramatic swings on the final green.

This Golf Digest piece is obviously grading on the curve:

Tommy Fleetwood (4-1-0): A+

If this were only about the pairs sessions, you could add about 10 plus signs to his grad above,

and there aren't enough superlatives to crown him. Was he the best player by strokes gained, by far? Yes. Was he the only player who went 4-0 in pairs? Yes. Is he a golden Ryder Cup god who should have a statue of himself built in every town in England? Probably, yeah. But none of that gets at what it feels like to watch him, when he sticks almost every iron devastatingly close and buries long putts on the few occasions when he leaves himself more than five feet. Even the man's body language with his teammates is beyond reproach; he looks like the best guy in the world to pair with, and along with stellar play, he brings so much positive energy to the team. He's a superstar, and even the narrow loss to Justin Thomas on Sunday (and the missed chance to go 5-0), can't undo his place as the best player at Bethpage.

He had a great week,  but to me that 4-1 is really 2-1, giving him one-half point for each team win.  I don't think you can lose your singles match and get an A+. 

Amusingly, Tommy had that same record in Paris, winning all four team matches with Francisco Molinari, but losing Sunday.  This pattern has become ubiquitous, as the Euros ride their alpha dogs hard in the team sessions, but the risk is that they're gassed by Sunday.

Let's get to some more nuanced takes, including these mid-tier ranking from Geoff:

Bethpage Pink. The state-owned public course made history by becoming the seventh venue to host a U.S. Open, a PGA Championship, and a Ryder Cup. And from its (too?) healthy turfgrass, to the native roughs, to the trimmed trees, the property is looking swell. The Rees Jonesification of the Black’s bunkers remains ghastly to look at in all hours, particularly now that blinding country club sand added for the Ryder Cup produced an alarming number of fried eggs. The course started the week somewhat soft despite all the additional sunlight hitting the turf, thanks to tree trimming or losses since 2019. Rain then softened it up (even though Captain Bradley said it didn’t rain!?). It was staggering to see how pitifully short it played thanks to the change in driving distances and technology since the 2019 PGA. Several holes are complete pushovers with or without high rough. Unless equipment rules are more drastically altered for the professional game beyond the 2028 changes, they might just keep the Warning sign in storage. Good thing the PGA of America sees this and is strongly supporting the new 2028 testing rules.

Setup. When it was apparent the Europeans would bring more bombers to this Ryder Cup—how did the USA’s braintrust miss this?—the USA’s traditional light rough approach backfired. It was designed to reward its freeswingers, but the Europeans were the ones who seemed ecstatic and made some cocky comments about the rough being a better place to be than some fairways. After Sunday play, Keegan Bradley said he regretted the setup and suggested he should have listened a little bit more to his “intuition.” But Bradley never indicated what would have made a difference other than regretting the softness and speed of Bethpage’s greens that his players missed in some key moments with short irons and appeared to overread. The Europeans spent two long days getting to know them and made more key putts. “The Europeans played just incredible golf,” Bradley said. “Doesn’t matter how you set the course up when you play that well.”

It was always a strange choice by the PGA of America.  Not only was it in conflict with the articulated set-up strategy, combined with an unseemly embrace of the crowd misbehavior that we experienced.

But, Geoff, how did you not save this for your coming "Loser" category?

Captaincy Selection Committee. The “younger” mantra came up repeatedly during Keegan Bradley’s surprise unveiling after a unanimous decision. Oh, he Captained like a young man who’d played two Ryder Cups. Everything else about the rationale behind Bradley’s selection and the future looks pretty bleak. Tiger Woods could take the job before but does he want to report to the PGA of America’s smother brothers, Don Rea and Derek Sprague? No chance. The committee added Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas before the Rome loss and were joined by former Captain Zach Johnson, then-PGA VP Rea, then-President John Lindert, and then-CEO Seth Waugh. “A lot of them were asking questions to me and Justin,” Spieth said at the time. “The cool part about it was the questions they asked of us, and we were blatantly honest, from clothes we were wearing to ceremonies to how many dinners we’re doing, what kind of recovery tools and methods we had and access to that. It was a good start.” Curious, did a basic understanding of what attributes work in foursomes happen to come up? Asking for a nation.

And another category error that makes me curious what he's held back:

Americans And Foursomes. The analytics told Keegan Bradley that America holds a 16-8 foursomes record over the last three domestic Ryder Cups. So he kept alternate shot as the opening session format and swatted away questions from writers who remember some of America’s glummest faces occurring during a format our boys hate. As with all things match play and stats, the numbers apparently did not highlight another vulnerability: only one duo responsible for some of those 16 foursomes points could be reunited at Bethpage (Schauffele/Cantlay). Then there was no word of Bradley prepping the rookies in alternate shot work at the team combine in Napa. But I’m sure they had some dynamite Cabs. Last year’s Presidents Cup success in foursomes apparently inspired the first of Bradley’s poor decisions to open with alternate shot at Bethpage and wheel out Scottie Scheffler and Russell Henley twice. Luke Donald must have been over the moon when Bradley kept the foursomes-first order in place. You know, the same format that was vital to Europe conquering Rome…in 2023. Bradley apparently forgot what an awkward format it can be on a Ryder Cup stage where everything speeds up and routine-reliant world-class golfers can feel out of place. The USA would have been better off starting off with Four-balls to let eight of the rugged individualists play their own ball while giving the Captain a sense of who was in form. Last year’s Presidents Cup started with Four-ball on Thursday and again for Saturday’s two-session day. The USA started 5-0 under Jim Furyk, a 2025 Ryder Cup Vice Captain, then were swept by the Internationals in foursomes on Friday. The warning signs were there. Bradley whiffed.

If we're going to criticize foursomes pairing, how does Morikawa-English not get a call-out?  Henley is the third ranked player in the world, so it's hard to criticize Bradley for riding with him.  Riding with the 132nd ranked foursomes pairing on the other hand....

Eyeing the exit, this Golf.com grading piece had these to mull over:

The Captains

Keegan Bradley, Grade: C

Bradley poured his heart into this, but you don’t get A’s for effort. Give him credit for his energy and positivity — and for rallying his troops for a Sunday run — but some of his decisions will be picked apart for years to come, from the benign course setup to his stubborn insistence on sticking with pairings that showed no signs of life. Perversely, Bradley’s widely praised and selfless decision — opting not to put himself in the lineup — may wind up being recast in hindsight as a move that actually hurt the team.

Luke Donald, Grade: A

If he made any wrong moves, he hid them well. In his second consecutive turn as captain, Donald was a picture of poise and certitude, the outgrowths of confidence and painstaking preparation. At this point, he’s become like the brainiac in class you want to hate for getting everything right, except you can’t because he’s just too pleasant and respectful.

The Fans

Grade: D-

If you’re going to be loud and abusive, at least be creative, and pipe down when the guy steps up to the ball. It isn’t difficult to be an ardent fan without acting moronic. Too many at Bethpage failed to find that easy balance this week.

The Venue

Grade: B-

Bethpage Black is a beauty. It can also be a beast. But this week it was defanged, stripped of rough to 1) theoretically give the U.S. a competitive advantage while 2) producing excitement-sparking birdies. But birdies aren’t what make match-play exciting; pressure-packed moments are what make it so, which has nothing to do with scores relative to par. On a neutered course, the competition became more bomb-and-gouge than artful struggle, and less compelling than it could have been.

I actually wished they gave the PGA of America a grade, because all three of those failures happened on their watch.

I don't know how you give the fans a D- when they did exactly what the organizers wanted.  

That same Golf Digest piece that gave Tommy Lad an A+ seemed to be a little tougher on this guy:

Cameron Young (3-1-0): A

Man, did this guy deliver. Young fniished as one of only two Americans with three points, and he ended as the top American statistically too, gaining 5.06 strokes, second only to Tommy Fleetwood among all players. There was theoretically the most pressure on him, being the only native New Yorker on the team, but he rose to the occasion marvelously and more than rewarded Keegan Bradley's faith in him as a captain's pick. Even as the U.S. team went down in flames, he was the bright spot (read here for my full thoughts on Young's performance), and though a less-than-stellar Saturday afternoon session keeps him from an A+, overall he gets great marks in his rookie Ryder Cup.

So a so-so Saturday afternoon keeps him from that plus, but a so-so Sunday afternoon doesn't affect Tommy?

What a week for Cam, and one assumes he has effectively punched his ticket to Ireland.

That's it for today.  I'll probably take the rest of the week, though I promise to jump on Geoff's final grading post when it is available.  have a great weekend.

Weekend Wrap - Oh So Close Edition

Was there a moment this week that conformed to our expectations?  For sure we expected it to be close, but that 15-13 final score masks a Jekyll and Hyde week such as we've never seen..... maybe since Medinah.

Shall we take  gander at how Shack wrapped it?  Yeah, again, that was largely rhetroical:

Europe Retains The Ryder Cup

USA stages a brilliant singles comeback before Shane Lowry's 18th hole birdie clinches a tie followed by Tyrrell Hatton's halve to win at Bethpage, 15-13.

OK, I hate the "retain" nonsense, and it's a bit weird to user it in the header when they won outright.

The Ryder Cup will remain with a European squad that captured just one of Sunday’s 12 Singles matches and did so against a USA squad that at one point earl on trailed in 9 of 11 matches.

Sam Ryder’s cup and the ingenious, never-over-until-it’s-over 28-point format remains alive, thriving, and captivating as ever after Europe edged the United States, 15-13.

The Americans commenced the day seven points back on home soil and in danger of a loss so terrible that it would have produced Task Forces for the Task Force, class-action lawsuits against Keegan Bradley from the Society For Data Golf, and maybe even a Presidential commission. (Or at least an I told you to pick yourself social tirade by Friday’s guest of honor.)

But with the Americans using Sunday Singles to show the heart, passion, and the quality of golf they’d been playing all year, the USA salvaged the 45th matches and their dignity.

Agreed, though they still have some 'splainin' to do about Saturday....

Saturday’s turd-show featuring $750-paying jackwagons, putzes of many stripes, and other assorted nimrods masquerading as fans, was rendered a largely forgotten storyline thanks to Sunday’s picturesque day at Bethpage State Park. There were still fan attempts at interfering with the matches and an exhausting number of dim attempts at humor. And we’ll never know how many European holes were lost to the antics. A double-digit number is not out of the question.

I'd love Geoff to expand on that last bit, because this seems to have been the PGA of Americas intention in going to this venue.  And as we get into Envelopegate below, I'll leave a marker here.

Sunday’s Singles gave the world the kind of tense back-and-forth duel that had been expected

going into the week, headlined by dramatic opening winds from New York’s Cameron Young and Justin Thomas. But for a while, the gargantuan scoreboards were awash in neutral “Tied” grey, with only Xander Schauffele’s 4&3 win over Jon Rahm falling into the category of statement-making, red-on-the-board.

Match four’s showdown between Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy delivered plenty of thrills even if both players appeared to be running on fumes after four sessions and high-intensity duels.

“Playing all five matches is a grind,” said Scheffler after winning 1UP. “Rory and I even chatted about that a little bit today.”

McIlroy confirmed.

“I felt like I was running on empty today. I gave so much of myself the first two days and I tried as hard as I could out there against Scottie. Scottie and I both didn’t have our best. It was a bit of a pillow fight if I’m honest.”

Courtesy of team and PGA of America “observer” guest badges, a who’s who of CEO’s, stars and real-life, unpaid influencers went all 18 inside the ropes to watch the superstars. McIlroy was once again subjected to an overload of lame gallery comments as he was close to hitting shots. Low points included at the 10th tee, where his subsequently dodgy tee shot allowed Scheffler to win the par-4 with a bogey, and again at the 18th where he had to back off his fairway bunker shot.

Isn't this what they wanted?  How else to explain picking Bethpage and then changing it to Hazeltine? 

Honestly, I would have preferred Rory to be matched against Bryson.  A little bad blood goes a long way in these things.  Although that incendiary pairing might have elicited even more boorishness from the rabble.

Somehow I expected Shane Lowry to be in the middle of it all:

“Look, we were all prepped on [a close finish] last night,” Shane Lowry said. “You don’t want to take any complacency out there to that arena against those players. The U.S. Team are 12 amazing players, and we knew it was going to be very hard.”

Coming off a match-tying birdie at the 15th against Russell Henley, Lowry would have a shot at the Cup-retaining points necessary to reach 14.

“I didn’t envision myself going up the 18th needing a birdie to retain the Ryder Cup,” Lowry said. “It was, yeah, like the worst two hours of my life. It was horrible. It was. But I said to my caddie walking down 18, ‘I’ve got an opportunity to do the greatest thing I’ve ever done today,’ and I did it. And I’m very proud of myself.”

Henley drove into the 18th’s left fairway bunker and hit an incredible recovery to 9 feet 8 inches from the deep mess of spread out of puzzle piece bunkers. Lowry countered with a shot inside Henley, who left his putt short to set up the Irishman as this year’s European hero.

Lowry sank the 6’3” putt and broke out into a raucous 18th green celebration as teammates joined him. Captain Luke Donald grinned but largely retained his stoic demeanor in hopes of capturing Europe’s fifth outright victory on American soil.

He didn't look excited at all, did he?  But how about that Ruthian called shot?

What I loved was the symmetry, though perhaps not the exact right concept.  In those earlier 18th hole denouements, Young-Rose and Thomas-Fleetwood, the Yanks had their balls inside the Euros but on the same lines, and paid them off to great effect.  Here it flipped, and Lowry would have had no doubt about his line.  Unfortunately, despite having played great on a track that was perhaps a bit long for him, Russell Henley made the unforgiveable error there in not getting a shortish putt to the hole.

Shall we segue to the Tour Confidential gang for their take?  Again, rhetorical:

The Europeans held on against the Americans in the 2025 Ryder Cup to become the first

road team to win in a decade. Europe had big leads after the first two days before the Americans dominated Sunday singles and closed the gap to two late in the day before ultimately falling 15-13. Players have said before how difficult it is to win a road Ryder Cup, yet Europe got it done this weekend. How did Europe pull it off?

Zephyr Melton: They executed their plan to perfection on Friday and then just flat-out out-played the Americans on Saturday. (It helps when you’re making seemingly every putt you look at.) The Euros regressed to the mean in the final session, but by then the cushion they’d built up was enough to hold on for victory.

Jack Hirsh: They embraced and relished playing as a team, which is not something that’s easy to do in golf. It’s very clear that Europe consistently plays greater than the sum of its parts each and every Ryder Cup. The U.S. keeps searching for answers on how to succeed in the Ryder Cup (Europe has won all but three Cups this century) and it’s literally staring them in the face.

Josh Sens: Agreed, Jack. But I also think that’s a deep-rooted cultural thing that’s hard to change. This week was like a metaphor for the character of each side: the Europeans romped when it was all about partnering up; the Americans rounded into form when they were going it alone.

Cultural or structural?  Europe most certainly rides the underdog thing especially well.  Combine that with the ability to return your entire winning team from two years ago, and that's a pretty big advantage. 

On Captains - Again we'll lede with Geoff, on the Eurodeity:

“We knew New York was not going to be easy,” Donald said. “It was rough. It was brutal at times

out there. It really was. It was nasty sometimes.

“But I think when you prep these guys enough and you communicate enough with these guys and you give them a plan and an idea and a theme and a motivation, they don’t really need motivating, but you know, the theme causes the cohesion of the team.”

Over-analysis of Donald’s captaincies will continue for months and even years. We’ll find out what thread count sheets and the brand of mattresses he had moved into the Garden City Hotel to improve rest. We’ll learn more about the stop-gap light-blocking strips brought in to ensure full darkness, and study the shampoo chosen by Luke and his longtime sidekick, confidante, and devoted wife Diane to make everyone feel better about their hair and therefore, their Ryder Cup games.

I agree with Geoff that Luke's discussion of shampoos and thread counts was quite off-putting.  yeah, it has to be done, but I'm guessing the other side was comfortable as well....

Let me vary from conventional wisdom here with a quote that might seem to you from out of the blue:

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist

I know, you didn't see that one coming.  But I think the Euros have pulled off a great scam on the U.S., convincing them that it's all about a system, or data or some elusive Vulcan Mind Meld.  

I was thinking of inserting Tom Watson's quote from the infamous 2014 post-match presser, but perhaps it's even better to excerpt this longish bit about the aftermath of that day:

The long-term consequences

 The public feud led to a major institutional overhaul of the U.S. Ryder Cup program.

• The "Task Force": The PGA of America, which manages the U.S. Ryder Cup team, convened a "Task Force" of former players and captains to revamp the entire selection and management process.
• Player empowerment: Mickelson's core complaint about a lack of player involvement was directly addressed. The new system, championed by the "Task Force," gave players a much greater voice in the team's direction and the selection of the captain.
• Improved results: The new approach was immediately successful, with the U.S. team winning the Ryder Cup in 2016 at Hazeltine, ending a three-match losing streak. The new process, ironically, failed to produce a win in Europe in 2018, leading some to question Mickelson's original logic.
• Lasting bad blood: Despite the organizational changes, the personal relationship between Watson and Mickelson was permanently damaged. Years later, Watson continued to express disappointment with Mickelson's public behavior, calling his comments "sour grapes".

That penultimate bullet is a laughfest.  The triumphalism at Hazeltine didn't survive the opening session in Paris, and player empowerment has turned out to be a mixed blessing at best.  Maybe, and I'm just spitballin' here, it matters who you're empowering.....

It probably also makes sense, before we get to the harder captain to evaluate, to note how Luke's selection evolved out of the mayhem of Henrik Stenson's betrayal.  Whatever we think of LIV at this weird juncture, Henrik proves to us that the Euros can be just as self-serving and disingenuous as the Yanks.  Maybe not quite at the level of Mickelson, but Henrik should be banished from polite Euro society for his move.  He signed a contract top captain the Euros including a clause stating that he wouldn't jump, then did so as the ink was drying....

The U.S had a very similar problem in the run-up to this cup, and it led to a cascading series of errors.  When this event was awarded to Bethpage, the captains were assumed to be Phil and Sergio.  Each of those guys deserves to spend eternity in Golf Siberia, but for the former I'd argue that it's more about 2014 than LIV.

I don't subscribe to the theory that the problem with the U.S. is that they don't care.  If you watched them out there, especially a guy like JT, you can see how badly they want it.  But we all know who should have been the U.S. captain, and it's easy to compare and contrast.  Despite his reservations at the time, when Europe told Luke Donald they needed him, he answered the call (and might even be willing to consider a third go, though he probably should give it a pass).  When the U.S. went to Tiger and told him he was needed, he responded that he needed to wash his hair that week.  See the minor difference?

If you're wondering why I end up rooting for Europe, you don't need to go any further than Tiger and Phil.  Of course, Patrick has made his won unique contributions thereto....

So, Keegs?  I'll lede with this off-the-wall take:

Keegan Bradley didn’t win Ryder Cup but gained something valuable

So who’s going to be your U.S. captain in 2027, when the Ryder Cup is played in Ireland and the team is anchored by Scottie Scheffler?

Scheffler offered the answer Sunday night, just minutes after the two-point, wildly close U.S. defeat, was signed and sealed. He was being interviewed by Damon Hack of NBC Sports. Hack

asked Scheffler about the American captain, Keegan Bradley. And then Scheffler, who was on four losing teams Friday morning and afternoon and Saturday morning and afternoon, got emotional. His voice cracked. For a second or two, he got stuck on his words.

And that’s when you knew. Keegan Bradley will be offered the job again by the PGA of America, and he will absolutely take it.

How can you be so sure? Because Scheffler and all the other 11 players were floored by the job that Bradley did, and because Ryder Cup captains are selected by a committee comprised of three players and three PGA of America officials. Bradley was chosen by a committee that included Zach Johnson, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. It’s likely that Scheffler will be on the committee to elect a captain for the next outing. Either way, he’ll have a loud and influential voice. Scheffler, a man who says exactly what he means, said this to Hack about his captain: “Keegan has been amazing.”

That would actually be a great idea, but it's not going to happen, and the reason it won't tells us everything we need to know about this clown show.  That guy who couldn't give up a week of Call of Duty to visit Long Island will get the gig.  His buddy J.P. McManus owns Adare Manor, and your humble blogger suspects that Tiger demurred this year yo help his buddy, leaving us to speculate as to what consideration might run in the opposite direction.

You can find any take you want on the Interwebs.  I'll be kinder tan this guy, for instance:

Why Keegan Bradley is Captain Calamity: Classless behaviour, disastrous pairings and gaffes show appointing him to lead US team was a HORRIBLE mistake, writes OLIVER HOLT

Look, don't blame me, but I'm not strong enough to pass on this lede.  I've always said that pairing Tiger and Phil was only the second stupidest thing Hal Sutton did that fateful Friday.  Oakland Hills had all four Par-3's on either even or odd holes and he allowed Fred Funk, a man whose most notable skill was finding fairways but was a bottom-tier iron player, to play the tee shot on those long one-shotters).  It turns out that, not only was Hal Sutton a bad captain, but he was a worse captain than any of could even imagine:

At the 2004 Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills, the US skipper Hal Sutton said during his Opening Ceremony speech that he wanted to thank his three kids for their support. His wife held up four fingers to remind him he had forgotten a child.

I'll give you a moment to collect yourselves.... 

What exactly did Bradley get wrong?  I haven't bought into their Medinah-driven conclusions ever:

“I think I would have set the course up a little different,” he said on Sunday shortly after Europe withstood a ferocious rally to win the Ryder Cup 15-13.

The U.S. captain has a say in the course setup and Bradley elected to cut the rough. As a result,

there was little penalty for missing the fairway and most of the players were able to hit a high percentage of greens in regulation. It turned the Ryder Cup into a putting contest and the Euros dominated on the greens. NBC Sports analyst Brad Faxon recounted how he ran into European vice-captain Edoardo Molinari, who oversees the team’s data analytics, who was surprised that the setup favored the visitors.

“He told me, ‘This is exactly playing into our hands.’ Not the way he thought that the Americans would set it up,” Faxon said.

It took away some of what makes American players such as Scottie Scheffler and reigning U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun special, and put shorter hitters such as Russell Henley and Collin Morikawa at a disadvantage. Harris English is another member of the USA team who does his best work on hard courses, not pushovers.

I still find it mystifying why those greens were so soft.... yes, we had some rain before the event started, but September was completely dry until then.

To me, the bad taste in the event and the lingering questions have to be about Saturday.  They got beaten pretty badly on Friday and I was expecting Saturday to be a remake of The Empire Strikes Back:

Europe needed only two points to retain the Cup to start Sunday, although the Americans didn’t give up easily, put the first three points on the board and led the majority late. How surprising was Sunday’s effort? And where was that urgency the previous two days?

Melton: You’ve got to give the Americans credit, they fought hard on Sunday to make it a heck of a lot closer than most thought it would ever get. With a more talented team (on paper, at least), the singles format was always going to play in their favor, and once they got some momentum, they really got things rolling throughout the afternoon.

Hirsh: I agree with Zephyr, the American struggle in the Ryder Cup is really confusing given that they typically have the talent advantage. It certainly helped that Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy weren’t at their Sunday best, and frankly when you win the first three matches like they did, and in dramatic fashion on 18 like they were, that can have a cascading momentum effect. There was none of that Friday and Saturday.

Sens: I don’t think the Americans lacked urgency the first two days. If anything, I suspect they wanted it so badly that they might have been pressing. It’s not a shock that they mounted a comeback, in part because the format is better suited to them but also, I would wager, but they were playing like they had nothing to lose.

But this is where those foursomes pairings open Keegan to second guessing:

After a dominating victory at Whistling Straits in 2021, the Americans were crushed two years ago in Rome. Now they’ve been on the wrong side of the scoreboard two years in a row. What didn’t change over the last two years that should have?

Melton: For all that was made about Keegan Bradley breaking the mold as a captain, he seemed to make the same tactical errors that his predecessors fell victim to. The decision to roll out the Morikawa-English foursomes team twice is one that will be scrutinized for quite some time, as will sitting Cameron Young in the first session. While the Euros dial in their plan and stick to it, the Americans always seem to make gut calls that come back to bite them. This year was no different.

Hirsh: I thought Keegan Bradley was supposed to breakup the boys club? The fact that Collin Morikawa was on the team despite having a terrible season was evidence to the contrary. It just seemed like Bradley was trying to make everyone happy instead of doing what he thought was right. The U.S. needs to blow up its entire Ryder Cup process and start over from scratch. And they should do it quietly. No task force, no pomp and circumstance captain’s selection. Just learn from what the Europeans do so well and apply it.

Sens: Whenever the Americans lose, fans and players and pundits on this side of the Atlantic spend a lot of time agonizing over what went wrong, as if there has to be some hidden explanation, or some question that a task force can resolve. In this case, I think one of the explanations is that the Europeans had the better team. I’m not talking about World Rankings or any other power metrics. I’m talking about a mix of Ryder Cup veterans and young talent, most of them in good form, all of them absolutely thirsting for this event. Several top Americans, meanwhile, came into this event out of form. I think it reflects a particular kind of American arrogance to think that there must be some other reason, as if we can’t accept that the other team was simply stronger.

To me, the bigger takeaway is what bullshit all that Task Force nonsense was.  And their triumphalism after Hazeltine and Whistling Straits was self defeating...

What was the best (and worst) captain’s decision of the week by both Luke Donald and Keegan Bradley?

Melton: The previously mentioned Morikawa-English pairing was Bradley’s biggest head-scratcher. Running it back on the second day was borderline malpractice. I think the Euros played it about as well as they could have.

Hirsh: Yeah I can’t think of a bigger blunder in recent Ryder Cup history than running Morikawa-English back against the same Euro team. It was like Bradley was conceding two wins to FleetwoodMac because they were so good. I also don’t understand why Ben Griffin played just two matches, give the guy a chance, you did pick him to play.

I can’t think of poor decision by Luke Donald this week. He’s been class for the last three years since being named captain and the Euros would be wise to keep running it back with him. Can you believe he wasn’t even supposed to be captain in 2023?

Sens: The Morikawa-English repeat was definitely a head-scratcher. But the course setup also appeared to be a factor. Conventional wisdom seems to be that the Americans are the bigger hitters who benefit from a bomb-and-gouge course. But as Edoardo Molinari of the European braintrust said before the event, he felt like the relatively easy setup played into the Europeans hands. I think it’s telling that the Europeans were so dominant in the opening six holes, which are some of the easiest on the course. The Americans fared better when the holes got tougher. In the future, maybe they’d be better off setting up a stiffer test.

You know what kind of player would have been helpful in that Saturday foursomes session?   Let's see, how about a fiery personality that's also one of the best ball-strikers on Tour?  Yeah, say a guy like Keegan Bradley might have been helpful, but Tiger couldn't be bothered.

With the U.S. seven points down heading into singles, there were no decisions that seemed to matter.  But after Sunday?  Each one could have made the difference....

My frustration is that Tiger is being allowed to skate for being a self-centered dick.  There seems little doubt who I'll be cheering on in Ireland.

Let's finish with the Tc gang, although the clock is impinging:

Bethpage Black is known for its incredible difficulty, but the U.S. squad moved up tees and mowed down the rough to make it a birdie-fest over three days. What are your thoughts on that movie both from a strategic standpoint and TV-viewing experience?

Melton: Neutering the Black made for a pretty bland viewing experience, IMO. Golf balls stuck where they landed and off line shots were seldom punished. I’ve played the course dozens of times and I’ve never seen it so benign. It took a lot of intrigue out of the event.

Hirsh: It was terrible. Why go to a notoriously tough golf course (one of the hardest in the world) only to make it easy? I would have loved to watch a Ryder Cup where par might win some holes. What does it matter? Yes fans love birdies, but they love watching players grind too. Do people not like watching the U.S. Open?

Sens: Agree. The obsession with birdies ignores the fact that par is irrelevant. It’s match-play, for cripes sake. In the heat of the Ryder Cup, the excitement doesn’t come from putting for birdie. It comes from putting for one less than your opponent. The setup was disappointing in that respect. That said, the soft conditions compounded the problem, and it wasn’t something anyone could control.

Yeah, I never loved the Bethpage choice, especially since it seemed so obviously in conflict with their preferred set-up.  The more so since to PGA of America seemed to want to encourage boorish behavior from the crowds.

Who or what was the biggest surprise of the week for each team?

Melton: Scottie going 1-4-0 is definitely up there for the Americans. For the Euros, I’ll go with Viktor Hovland’s health.

Hirsh: How about Cam Young? Maybe “surprise” is the wrong word, but this was as much his coming-out party as his win last month. Hopefully this is the start of a tear that we all saw coming from him after his rookie season. Could also put Bryson DeChambeau’s 1.5-point dud here too.

I’m with Zephyr here, tough news to learn Viktor has been dealing with a neck issue.

Sens: I can’t top those. But probably worth mentioning J.J. Spaun on the American side. Not a shock that he played so well. But for his first go around in a Ryder Cup, he looked remarkably comfortable. On the flip side, I’d say Jon Rahm coming up relatively flat in his last two matches, given how deadly he’d been leading up to them.

Yeah, I think the U.S. maybe found a couple of studs there.  They'll need them going forward.

Envelopegate - I don't think Keegan helped himself here:

Is the envelope rule one that should stay? Or does it need to be changed?

Melton: Perhaps each team should have an on-site alternate in case of injury. It seems like the most logical solution.

Hirsh: I don’t hate that idea Zeph, but I actually also don’t hate the envelope rule. I don’t think a team needs to be penalized for injury, especially for an event considered an “exhibition.” It’s a decent compromise and it worked out in the end this week. In fact, I think it probably benefited the Americans.

Sens: I could live with either of those proposals. Or, each team puts out a captain or assistant captain to fill the slots.

First, Keegs started whining abut this when he was seven down, so not a good look.

It's not that it isn't subject to discussion, but Keegan's "It has to change before the next cup" is above his pay grade.   I don't even agree with him on the merits.  he was reacting as a guy who needed a miracle but, absent that huge deficit, it's not clear who is helped, since the guy in the envelope if the worst player on his team.  I know anyone can turn it around, but if they were tied I don't think Keegs would have been upset by losing Harris English.

The only alternative is to have a reserve, but do we think Mav McNeely wanted to spend the week here as a back-up?

The Path Forward - see what you think of this:

The cascading failures of a Bethpage U.S. Ryder Cup

But hidden in Lowry’s answer is a kernel of truth that speaks to a much broader U.S. failure: The final two hours of Lowry’s singles match against Russell Henley on Sunday afternoon were the most discomfort he felt all weekend at Bethpage Black. That is reflective of this week’s uncomfortable — and unfortunate — truth: In nearly all ways, this U.S. Ryder Cup was a spectacular letdown.

It will be easy (and tempting) to focus on just one area of the U.S. debacle: the leadership, the players, the stars, the crowd, the environment. It will be harder to remember that, from up close, the reality wasn’t nearly as simple. This American team was not just beaten at Bethpage, it was beaten everywhere, and in nearly every way.

The biggest failures took place on the course. For the second straight Cup, a talented U.S. roster was roundly stomped in the team sessions, looking discombobulated and listless against a European onslaught. Depth was a problem again for the Americans, who saw a whopping one-third of the roster go winless at Bethpage, but the American star power wasn’t much better (save Xander Schauffele and brilliant rookie Cameron Young). Scottie Scheffler became the first player since Peter Alliss in 1967 to go 0-4-0 in the first four sessions of a Ryder Cup, while Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau played five sessions each and emerged with three combined points.

“It was probably one of the lowest moments of my career,” Scheffler said of the final loss of his 1-4-0 week.

Scheffler watched from up close as the U.S. lost each of the Cup’s first four sessions, outclassed and out-birdied by a European side that looked better prepared and more comfortable in the match play format. That, too, was part of the letdown: Captain Keegan Bradley and the U.S. team seemed to struggle with the minutiae of roster and pairing management, sticking to a “plan” for alternate shot that included datagolf’s last-ranked option (Harris English/Collin Morikawa, 0-2-0), and necessitated a player-driven flip of odd-even holes in the Scheffler/Russell Henley pairing. These decisions were at least defensible for Bradley, whose players might have lost no matter their order, arrangements or opponents. The same could not be said for the decision to set up Bethpage Black for a birdiefest, trimming the rough to heights lower than typical public play and leaving the greens as soft as day-old butter, which seemed to benefit the Euros significantly more than the Americans.

I'm actually more focused on the cascading mistakes of fthe course, not least this bit:

The crowd situation was more nuanced than an angry mob, but not by much. Whether a few bad apples or a few too many, the display pumped oxygen into a series of ugly stereotypes about New Yorkers, New York golf and the decision to bring the Ryder Cup to a municipal course. The Bethpage faithful should be embarrassed by the display, as should the PGA of America, which failed to adequately train its marshals and security staff to sniff out the problem. The players, as Justin Thomas pointed out, also bear some responsibility for amplifying the frustrated environment with a mostly uncompetitive showing.

“Cam and I said to Shane and Rory yesterday that we felt for them,” Thomas said Sunday. “Cam and I just wished that we gave them something to cheer for instead of people to cheer against. I think that was kind of the main consensus of the last two days, that we weren’t giving them enough to cheer for, and they were just trying to help us win.”

This, it seems, was both the first and final failure of this Ryder Cup: A failure of soul. From the first announcement of a Ryder Cup at one of America’s true golf havens of accessibility and affordability through the final day of $750 per ticket competition, the Bethpage Ryder Cup seemed to fundamentally misunderstand itself. The point of hosting a Ryder Cup at one of America’s purest venues was not to set records for ticket revenue or hospitality offerings but rather to provide one of the loudest and most passionate golf fanbases in the world the chance to raise its voice. The goal was to bring one of golf’s greatest events to the real golfers of New York. In the end, this Ryder Cup got neither.

Yeah, I'm feeling more like they got exactly what they deserved....  They wanted the benefit of the ill-mannered crowd, and now they can answer for it.  the Euros used it for motivation, so good on them.

I'll leave you with this final image:

Actually, I'll leave you with a final question for Justin Thomas, though I do want to give him props for his attempts at crowd control on Saturday.  JT was especially emotional, which received quite a bit of pushback early in the week, but would have been better received after his Sunday heroics.  How about some enterprising reporter asks JT, in view of his enthusiasm, how he feels about his a*****e buddy's decision to be unavailable?

I'm sure we'll have more so muse upon as the week unfolds, although the baseball playoffs might impinge on my availability.  Have a great week.