Thursday Threads - Ryder Cup Afterglow Edition

The event had a strange, LIV-infused vibe to it, but Stefan Schauffelle's attempt to hold it hostage reminds us that nothing matters if his son isn't making bank.  As he said, though I'm paraphrasing here, "Nice little event you have.  Sure would be ashamed is anything happened to it."

Not sure I love this event's future, so let's linger a bit over this last installment.  Geoff breaks the world down into the following constituent parts:

Ryder Cup: Champions, Cutmakers And (Point) Missers

He starts with this last-minute substitute:

Champions

Luke Donald. A second coaching choice has shocked the world before. Due to the nature of the Ryder Cup job, Donald was either bound to end up as a wise disciple of Cicero or another bungling

Caligula. He—or should we call him Sir Luke from now on?—pulled strings to near perfection. Donald managed nine different nationalities, maintained calm, appeared in total control of his troops, made a shrewd format change, and offered dignified answers while still letting a few of this strongest opinions be known. Now he faces demands for a return Captaincy at Bethpage. Heck, a $100 million LIV player/manager advance from Andrew Waterman has probably been dangled. Still, for all the talk of data, mood lighting and doing it for Seve, this victory still came down to having full control of who went out to play Marco Simone on Friday. Donald sent his best possible teams in morning foursomes, then spread the wealth later in the day hoping the role players stepped up to maintain a lead. They did. It was over on Friday night. Bold. Brilliant. And most of all, he proved the Captain and Vice Captain consultants actually matter.

As Tom Watson once noted, it comes down to twelve players, and Luke's guys showed up.  He certainly had the courage of his convictions, moving foursomes to the morning being perhaps his boldest move.

But, Luke, take those chips off the table:

Ryder Cup: Europe want Luke Donald back as captain for Bethpage

You're gonna get crushed at Bethpage and it could get ugly with the crowds, so why not let Henrik take this one?

You can sort through his comments on the players, but let's contrast the above with his thoughts on that other captain:

Cutmakers

Zach Johnson. A true believer in the Task Force way got him the job. Jordan Spieth and Justin

Thomas were the only two players on the committee that voted him in. Talk about conflicts of interest. But devotion to the buddy system for picks and pairings also caught up to Johnson. As did the failure to find ways of getting his 12 egomaniacs more competitively sharp. Rustiness cost his squad a chance at ending the European soil losing streak. Johnson also appeared to lack the will or authority to break up the Thomas/Spieth duo after it was apparent on Friday that Spieth was hitting it wildly. Was it out of loyalty for making Zach the Captain? Meanwhile, Luke Donald’s picks tallied 3.5 more points more with each side playing their selections in 20 matches. That all said, and more important to the point of the Ryder Cup, Johnson was classy, respectful and a quality representative who answered all questions but rarely made this about himself. Johnson undoubtedly popped a few Aleeves dealing with the Schauff-Lay nonsense, yet never let on what a mess he had to clean up. Also, bonus points for constantly reiterating how the “bug” going around the team was not an excuse or reason Europe was fortunate to face a USA team less than 100%.

That feels about right to me.  I do think that Zach handled himself well.

The bigger issue, as Geoff hits on, is that the U.S. Ryder Cup effort is held hostage by the cool kids.  Not only will they not go unless they get to pair with their besties, but now we'll watch them whine about getting paid.... Good times!

These are systemic failures for sure, but fealty (haven't used that word in a while) to the system was a condition of his employment.   But, just out of curiosity, one notices that Rickie got himself benched but Jordan was sent out in foursomes?  

Shall we see what he has to say about your humble blogger's two favorite guys?  This guy played some golf, so is lumped in with the Cut-makers:

Patrick Cantlay. Spectacular golf on Saturday with three closing birdies as he wondered why everyone was waving their hats. Now stick to being a golfer. You’re not the smartest guy in the room. You need to focus on hitting that little white ball instead of trying to get a cut of Ryder Cup revenues or auditioning to be the next Commissioner.

No, I think he needs to whine more about money.... And this stiff:

Xander Schauffele. If you’re going to be a demanding diva the golf has to be better. A 1-3-0 record accented by dour expressions and lack of awareness at your place in the golf world can be replaced. Maybe you’re just the victim of a wacky golf dad. In which case it’s time to cut off his dad bun and take control of your personal business. A place on future team rosters now seems in doubt. Do you think Captain Tiger really wants to hear Stefan’s thoughts on product improvement?

It's laugh-out-loud funny how these two think they're the straw that stirs the drink, while having accomplished very little in the game.  Patrick's big head isn't, alas, merely a metaphor....

Don't think Geoff really gets it here:

(Point) Missers

The Task Force. They’ve certainly had their successes and done a lot right for the USA side (when playing domestically). But once again the buddy system’s fatal flaws emerged. The 2023 matches called for a blazing start. The layers of politics and egos dictating some pairings appears to have prevented fully forthright assessments of who was playing best. Sending Jordan Spieth back out with Justin Thomas Saturday morning made no sense the way Spieth was hitting it. Did their role in selecting the Captain influence this call? Why are they even picking Captains? Tolerance of the buddies within the team—Schauff-Lay in particular—appears to not have been the wisest move. This is all easy to note now after USA lost by the same score as the doomed 2014 squad. But Keegan Bradley, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau probably make this team better on the course. You know, the golf course. Where they actually play the matches.

First, what successes?  We're in an era of home team dominance, so those sugar-high home wins, and the triumphalism resulting therefrom, have made the U.S. cocky heading into road games.

The task force has always been a joke, fixing our Ryder Cup team by putting Phil and Bryson out in foursomes in Paris and sending a team to Rome that hadn't played in more than five weeks.  As important, two critical members of the team missed the scouting expedition while fighting over legal wording, where was the task force in that?

What we have is a coup by the elite players, in which they demonstrated their contempt for this event and the golf fans in general.   Cantlay and Xander were willing to miss the Ryder Cup in order to keep Netflix out of the team room (the Euros had no issues with Netflix being in their team room), which is a good call if you have things you don't want the world to see.  While the two guys accused of roiling the waters over players getting paid assure us the week wasn't about that, it's the same two guys that went to the mattresses to keep the cameras out..... And then one of their father's issues a Tony Soprano-like ultimatum.

This remains weird beyond words:

Joe LaCava. With each video shown Saturday’s weird meltdown moved up the list of all-time caddie screw-ups. It was the football equivalent of an assistant coach running onto the field and taunting a kicker before a game-winning field goal. And a first-ever black eye for a normally low profile bagman. As Rory said, “time is a great healer and we'll all move on.”

As for the TV coverage, it's quite the train wreck:

Comcast/NBC. Following two weeks of treating the viewer like an annoyance, it’s time to explain why golf has become too expensive for a company with a $180 billion market cap. Why can’t you provide basic production elements that established NBC Sports as the one-time gold standard? Show us the numbers. Plead your case. Tell us how the rights fee you agreed to pay is no longer sustainable and why you need to renegotiate to avoid flooding the zone with commercials. Or get out of the golf business. Your partners and customers deserve better.

Randomly cutting away. It’s one thing to take the world feed. But it was stunning how many times NBC cut away mid-action for breaks. As in, a ball was in the air but it’s time for a commercial. Automation of some kind? Infused with AI? No cutaway was more fitting than one on Sunday when a rare non-world feed featurette of highlights was juxtaposed with beautiful Rome scenes, all set to a big, thumping score. Dan Hicks read a carefully scripted narration to this mood setter, only to be cut off before the closing line was delivered. The interruption took us to the same commercials we’d seen 20 minutes before. Pitiful.

Paul Azinger. Either unprepared or uncomfortable questioning a fellow American captain, it was a brutal week for NBC’s top analyst. Many gripes were tinged with bursts of hostility toward European success that felt uncomfortable at times. Predecessor Johnny Miller was an All-American homer as well. But he never rooted against the other side or sounded angered by European success. Johnny also never moved into creepy stuff about clickbait or nationalism. What’s going on with one of golf’s best analysts?

It's bad and trending worse...

Zinger especially has gotten disjointed and struggles to get his words out.  It's like he's trying for, well Zingers, and they're all landing flat.  And then there's the commercial load....

Wither Ryder - In 2018, Alan Shipnuck mourned the demise of the Ryder Cup due to the era of U.S. dominance.... Yeah, OK, are you done laughing yet?

Shane Ryan also finds no pulse, with this non-obituary obituary:

We come today to mourn the soul of the Ryder Cup, but make no mistake: This is not an obituary. The Ryder Cup will survive in its current state of atrophy. It will be held every two years barring global catastrophe, rotating between Europe and the United States, attended by thousands of fans and months of hype and heaps of salvation money. But this weekend, in the Eternal City, on land from which once rose a great empire, we bid solemn farewell to the institution as a competitive, or even interesting, event. To borrow a Zach Johnson-ism, we've lost the Ryder Cup.

I've seen enough, and only fools let themselves be deluded for more than a decade. The fact of the matter is that the Ryder Cup has evolved into a malfunctioning affair in which the script is pre-written. The home team reigns supreme and has done so for five straight Ryder Cups, winning by gaudy margins. This will continue into the future—and there appears to be no practical solution that doesn't involve removing the Ryder Cup from its host nations—an obvious impossibility that wouldn't be desirable even if it could be done without hemorrhaging money (which it could not). In modern sport, there is nothing as predictable as a Ryder Cup; the drama is dead.

The current circumstances have been evident since 2014, when the Europeans won by five points in Gleneagles. But in the wake of the Medinah fluke, we weren't ready for the truth, and Tom Watson was a poor enough captain that you could plausibly blame bad leadership.

But the solution is what?  Is it the Euros fault that the U.S. showed up unprepared on Friday?

Eamon Lynch has longer-range thoughts, but not of the pleasant ilk:

Lynch: Ryder Cup won’t be unscathed by golf's new world order. Radical change is coming

The Ryder Cup reliably showcases the sport’s greatest theater and passion. That’s the user experience. The apparatus around the Cup and its inner workings are strained, and demand a rethink that’s more pressing than any ideas we’ll see emerge from the post-mortem analysis of Team USA’s latest defeat.

Some of the issues are owed to the ownership structure. Europe’s half of the Cup is mostly held by the DP World Tour, with minor slices owned by a couple of regional PGA associations. There is no asset of remotely comparable value that the European circuit can bring to the new for-profit entity it is creating with the PGA Tour and, negotiations pending, the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (plus sundry investors who don’t have a side hustle abusing human rights).

Yet as vital as the Ryder Cup is to the books of its various owners, it is commercially isolated. Business types gripe about its limitations in terms of opportunities and partnerships that global sponsors will pay handsomely for. Eventually, some enterprising corporate cipher will see a means by which it can be plugged into a bigger commercial platform to increase profits. Any such platform must be built around the world’s best players, so it seems ordained that wherever the major tours go in the coming years, the Ryder Cup must follow.

That sounds ominous....

The qualification system in Europe has been modified more frequently than Cher’s face, but every tweak has had the same rationale: accommodating stars who mostly compete in the U.S. while preserving a pathway to the team for guys who ply their trade at home. Leveraging the Ryder Cup to reward loyalty to the DP World Tour is parochial but necessary. On the opposite shore, the PGA Tour has no ownership stake but is the means by which players qualify. These systems (mostly) work now, but what happens if top players one day commit to a lucrative global schedule of tournaments elevated above the current American and European circuits? The Ryder Cup qualification system will immediately become unfit for purpose.

The fix for that is something that should be considered now: go to 12 captain’s picks and dispense with the points system entirely. Such a move would certainly have opponents, but plenty of pros. It would be tour-agnostic and grant skippers the latitude to choose on form and compatibility, and to do something that’s impossible with automatic qualifiers: leave at home those openly ambivalent about being here. It would also restore authority to captains, particularly future U.S. leaders, and not leave them hostage to the preferences of the automatics, which is what Zach Johnson essentially admitted has been his situation.

Ummm, Eamon, you make good points, but I don't like where that pushes us.  Right now the only way around the cool kids is to automatically qualify.... Think about the reaction of Keegan Bradley to his "snub".  Do you want to tell him that he'll never be on another Ryder Cup team?   

For all the pablum about continental rivalries, the modern era in the Ryder Cup has always been tour versus tour, PGA against Europe. The old legends — Ballesteros, Faldo, Woosnam — felt disrespected when they traveled to the U.S., which only fueled their determination to stick it to the Yanks every two years. Now, at least half of the European team lives stateside and both Scandinavian standouts this week — Viktor Hovland and Ludvig Aberg — spent their formative years in U.S. colleges. The old enmity is being diluted, and that will only accelerate as the lines between tours are blurred. What the Ryder Cup cannot lose or imperil is its heartbeat, the thousands of spectators who bring the noise regardless of what side of the ocean it is held on.

The concerns voiced in the aftermath of the 44th matches in Rome will be short-term in nature — what went wrong for the U.S., who is to blame, what must be done. However entertaining these recriminations may be for onlookers, those of us who love the Ryder Cup must grasp that the years ahead will bring challenges even more daunting than trying to beat Europe at home.

Eamon seems in denial.  The only way to save this event is also the only way to save the PGA Tour.  To wit, pay Patrick and Xander.

I'm a little short on time, so I'll leave with two amusing bits for now.  Some excerpts have dropped from Shpnuck's new book, but we'll defer those until tomorrow or Monday.  For today, just some silliness.

Dunhill Dreams -  So, we've achieved Peace in our Time and this guy is able to play in a DP World Tour event:

PIF governor and LIV Golf chair Yasir Al-Rumayyan playing in pro-am portion of the DP World Tour’s event at St. Andrews

OK, but Golf Digest got scooped by Golfweek on that one telling detail:

LIV Golf chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan reportedly playing Alfred Dunhill Links Championship under false name

Let me guess.  Did he register as Chaim Yanklebaum?  Nothing says these guys are completely legit quite like an alias....

Fall Follies - You don't need me to tell you what a hot mess the Tour is, not least in their Fall events.  I want to take pity on those sponsors at the mercy of Jay's whims, but you guys really should have known better.

But you'd think that the Ponte Vedra Beach suits would put some effort into ensuring that the Tour doesn't devolve into a Clown Show, but you'd be sadly mistaken:

Lexi Thompson to make PGA Tour debut at Shriners Children’s Open

The concept would seem to be to allow great women players to test their skills against the men, which I agree could be interesting.  Yanno, if only they might have found a great woman player, because we had this about Lexi a while back:

Thompson is No. 138 in the Race to CME Globe and in danger of losing her LPGA Tour card for 2024 without taking a career money exemption. She has 11 tour victories, the last in the 2019 ShopRite.

By my count, there are at least 137 women more deserving of this sponsor's exemption than Lexi.... Good to know the circus is in town.

Also good to know that you will be made to comply with the approved narrative:

PGA Tour player Peter Malnati quickly retracts statement after calling Lexi Thompson's exemption a 'gimmick'

Peter is not just anybody, given his seat on that PGA Tour Policy Board, where he's the last great hope for Tour rabbits...

But, Peter, resistance is futile.  Just repeat after me:

"Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia."

See, don't you feel better, already.

I'll see you all down the road.