NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. – Golf is skewing younger than ever before, but for some reason Ryder Cup team captains continue to rely on aging warriors in the game’s biggest pressure-cooker.
Experience is the most overused word in a Ryder Cup year, and European captain Thomas Bjorn hammered home its importance again and again Wednesday when he announced his four captain’s picks. Same for U.S. skipper Jim Furyk, who brought 40-somethings Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson back into the fold for the Americans.
In an era of young, fearless players, six of the seven captain’s picks are 38 or older and have made a combined 41 Ryder Cup appearances.
So much for a youth movement.
“These four all bring so much to the Ryder Cup,” Bjorn said when announcing that Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Henrik Stenson and Paul Casey will round out the European squad. “They bring loads of experience, loads of appearances, loads of points won, and they know what it’s like to win and lose. They’ll come in with heart and soul into this.”
With five first-timers already on his roster, Bjorn might also have been scared off by what happened two years ago at Hazeltine, where then-captain Darren Clarke brought six rookies to an away game and watched them go a combined 7-9-1. It’s not a captain’s job to prepare the next generation of talent for the Ryder Cup – his concern is protecting himself for this match – and Bjorn ultimately decided that he’d rather risk his legacy by siding with the proven veterans.
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Fair enough, but that strategy is inconsistent with the trends of the modern game – it’s just the second time in the past two decades that the average age of the Europeans (34.3) is higher than the Americans (32.8), a disparity that would be even greater if not for 48-year-old Mickelson.
So why the need for so many guys who have been there and done that?
Rory McIlroy said it’s mostly for continuity in the team room – a veteran presence can bring a sense of calm and perspective while also offering guidance to the newcomers on what to expect during the week.
“There’s no atmosphere like it,” Justin Rose added. “It’s an atmosphere you can’t really prepare for. It’s an atmosphere you don’t know how you’re going to react until you’ve done it a couple of times. That’s really the only factor – it’s a cauldron like no other that we play in.”
But all of that experience in the cauldron hasn’t been worth much recently, if you recall some of the most memorable Ryder Cup performances.
Though it’s impossible to pinpoint exactly when golf got young, the emergence of Rickie Fowler is generally a good starting point. He burst onto the scene in 2009, after spending only two seasons at Oklahoma State, and was picked for the Ryder Cup the following fall as a 21-year-old. It was an eye-opening ascension, proving to the next generation that they could experience almost-immediate success.
The Ryder Cup has dozens of horror stories, of players feeling nauseas or being unable to feel their hands on the first tee, but ever since Fowler’s debut in the 2010 matches, the young, unproven talent have made the most noise.
It started with Keegan Bradley, who teamed with Mickelson and went 3-1 at Medinah in 2012.
It continued in 2014, with Victor Dubuisson earning a 2-0-1 record and helping the Europeans to victory, while Patrick Reed (3-1) and Jordan Spieth (2-1-1) were the lone bright spots in an otherwise dismal week for the Americans.
Two years ago, Brooks Koepka bashed his way to a 3-1 mark at Hazeltine, perhaps setting the stage for his major breakthroughs, while Thomas Pieters was a revelation, going 4-1 for the Europeans.
The average age of those standouts: 24.
“Based on what you’re seeing on the Golf Channel or what you’re asked by the media, it seems like (experience) is 50 percent of it, but I think it’s 15 percent of it,” Spieth said. “Certainly there’s help to getting started and getting in the mix, but within our team just about everybody has had major-championship experience – and it’s a similar feeling, being in the hunt – so I think that experience is more important overall than just three days.
“I think you can draw on experience, and it certainly can help, but I don’t think to the extent that it is sometimes pushed.”
Europe will trot out five rookies (Jon Rahm, Tommy Fleetwood, Alex Noren, Tyrrell Hatton and Thorbjorn Olesen) in Paris, though there’s nothing naïve about them – they’ve won a combined 30 event around the world.
The Americans, so far, have only two “rookies”: Justin Thomas, who won the 2017 PGA, reached world No. 1 this year and has more Tour victories (eight) than any player over the past two seasons; and Bryson DeChambeau, the hottest player in golf, a three-time winner this season who has already locked up the top seed for the Tour Championship. Combined, they’re one year older (49) than Mickelson and ranked inside the top 7 in the world.
There’s room for another first-timer, Tony Finau, but the most common argument used against him is that he doesn’t have the, ahem, requisite experience in the Ryder Cup arena.
Well, the U.S. rookies – with none of the scar tissue of their predecessors – have gone 20-10-5 in the past three matches.
Because experience isn’t as valuable as playing stellar golf.
