In early September 2006, I attended a corporate golf outing at the Duke's Course in St. Andrews hosted by Colin Montgomerie. (No, I wasn't being punished.) The Ryder Cup was being held at the K Club in a few weeks, and I was the only person in attendance who would be rooting against Team Europe; thankfully I've repressed much of what happened that day, but I do remember that my foursome played a par 3 with Monty, and as we walked from tee to green I asked him what he thought of the four rookies in the American squad.
"To be honest, I've not really heard of them before," he smirked.
That year’s rainy slog through an Irish bog may have ended my obsession with the Ryder Cup. 2002 was bad, losing at the Belfry (again); 2004 was hopeless, but it felt like a freak one-off facilitated by Hal Sutton’s captaincy, and at least Oakland Hills was a proper golf course. 2006, at an unworthy venue with little history or drainage to speak of, was just depressing. And of those four rookies, Zach Johnson won the very next major championship and has become an excellent Tour Pro, but the other three…well, you’re a better man and bigger golf geek than I am if you still remember the names J.J. Henry, Vaughn Taylor and Brett Wetterich.
I’ve dredged up these memories because somehow, as I began writing this column, I felt even less optimistic this year than I did in 2006. Rory McIlroy is apparently the new Tiger Woods after all; McIlroy, Henrik Stenson, Sergio Garcia and Justin Rose are 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th in the latest World Golf Rankings; the highest-ranked American player, Jim Furyk (7th), last won a tournament in 2010; and most importantly, Europeans almost always raise their games for the Ryder Cup, while Americans often lower them. If the USA can’t win when it has the better squad on paper, how can it win when it doesn’t?
And yet, and yet...the more I think about it, the less depressed I actually feel. Here’s why:
1) The Ryder Cup is a three-day sprint, not a referendum on two years of worldwide results – anything can happen. It often does.
2) Form is temporary – and the form which Team USA lacks is the sort you need to be consistent in 72-hole strokeplay events, not matchplay shootouts. Much ink will be spilled in hyping the recent form, or lack thereof, of the 24 participants before the event. Ignore it all.
3) Class is permanent – and strength in depth matters. As of the start of September, the average World Ranking of the 12 US players is 16.25; the European average is 18.58. By comparison, the average ranking of the 2006 US team was 29.41…and that team included the three best players in the world. This Ryder Cup feels like a mismatch – it isn’t.
4) The captains always somehow matter more than they ought to – and Watson vs. McGinley in Scotland feels like Hannibal vs. Varro in Italy. I like this matchup a lot.
But really, nobody knows anything about the Ryder Cup. It’s a crapshoot which screams “small sample size”: don’t get sucked into thinking a few tosses of the dice have any predictive value for the next one. Tom Watson won’t, and he’ll make sure his players won’t either. Team USA will be fine. It’s on, y’all.