SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – A brisk wind began to buffet the media center Sunday evening at Le Golf National, just as the Americans arrived for their obligatory post-mortem after a shockingly sound defeat.
One by one they shuffled into the room, some toting unidentifiable beverages and others speaking softly to each other, before grabbing seats at center stage to take their licks.
But while the questions could have gone well into the night after the strongest team on paper in Ryder Cup history got trounced by seven points, the session lasted only about 20 minutes. During that time, five different team members sat in front of microphones without saying a word. Two more spoke only briefly about their rookie experience.
The vast majority of the queries fell into two camps: the simmering Jordan Spieth-Patrick Reed drama, which would mushroom shortly after the team exited stage left, and the three most senior members in the room – Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and captain Jim Furyk.
Furyk deservedly faced plenty of fire after turning in a disappointing stint behind the wheel. Woods and Mickelson, two of his four picks, combined to go 0-6. That’ll usually draw some attention.
And so they sat in various positions at the dais, with Mickelson dead-set on avoiding a Gleneagles remix and Woods on the verge of nodding off, and they attempted to spin a result with which they are all quite familiar.
Depending on who you ask, Woods might rank as the greatest player ever and Mickelson might crack the top 10. Few can rival Furyk’s career achievements among those who dared to take on Woods in his prime. But all of that talent has combined for a Ryder Cup stat line so woeful it could take your breath away.
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Add them all up, and the Woods-Mickelson-Furyk trio has accounted for 63 losses in the biennial matches. With relatively little overlap between the three in team formats, those losses have been spread across a whopping 56 different matches that have gone to Europe since 1995.
It’s a startling compilation of futility, and it begs the question: why did we expect this particular portion of the team room to have the answers to a test that so often has proved vexing for each of them?
Equipped with the final score line from Le Golf National, it’s easier to see where things went awry than it seemed before the first tee grandstands filled with Frenchmen. When Furyk added Woods with a pick on Sept. 4, it was a choice above reproach; his subsequent win at the Tour Championship only boosted his bona fides.
And while Mickelson’s form raised a few eyebrows, his addition drew far less scorn than Thomas Bjorn’s choice of Sergio Garcia. Both were viewed as hybrid add-ons, brought in as much for their play as their leadership presence behind closed doors.
Garcia delivered the goods on both sides of the equation. Mickelson shook hands with Francesco Molinari to unleash the European celebration that’s probably still raging.
“This week was not my best,” Mickelson said. “I was not playing my best, and I spent more time hitting balls throughout the week than I have all year trying to find something that would click.”
As the Americans look to rebuild toward Whistling Straits and beyond, Furyk explained that he plans to sit with PGA of America officials and focus on how the team can “keep improving.” But one lesson those higher-ups would be wise to heed is that not all experience is good experience.
That perhaps one reason that Bjorn’s quartet of seasoned picks worked out so spectacularly was because their Ryder Cup experience was almost wholly positive. It allowed them to brush off a sound defeat at Hazeltine without summoning a task force, and it will remain a bountiful resource as heavyweights like Lee Westwood, Padraig Harrington Ian Poulter and Garcia likely take turns as captain over the next decade.
The U.S., meanwhile, boasts a deep lineage of veteran leaders with decorated resumes who, by and large, don’t know how to solve the Ryder Cup riddle.
“I’m one of the contributing factors to why we lost the Cup, and that’s not a lot of fun,” said Woods, whose lone taste of team triumph remains 19 years ago. “It’s frustrating because we came here, I thought we were all playing pretty well, and I just didn’t perform at the level that I had been playing.”
With Reed making waves and reports of a simmering Dustin Johnson-Brooks Koepka feud percolating out of the team room, it’s clear that the Paris problems extended beyond the captain and his two most established players.
But with Woods and Mickelson sure to have captaincies of their own in the near future, those three are the face of a leadership group counseling the next generation of Spieth, Reed and Justin Thomas before passing on the torch.
It’s a model that has produced great results for the Europeans, an endless rotation of interchangeable parts that remains committed to the common goal. But when it comes to the U.S., it’s an exercise in do as I say, not as I did.
While Furyk’s squad might still have lost last week even if equipped with unlimited mulligans, one of his decisions raised eyebrows in the moment and only became more curious in hindsight. That was his call to send out an admittedly erratic Mickelson in Friday’s foursomes session, even when the U.S. had grabbed momentum and a surprising early lead.
It was a decision that, even after the subsequent 4-0 sweep that irrevocably turned the tide of the event, he chose to defend.
“It’s Phil Mickelson, major champion. He’s got a lot of experience, and I put that confidence in him,” Furyk said. “I’ll be honest, I’d do it again. I have a lot of confidence in all 12.”
Part of his response surely came from the belief that a captain can’t admit an error with 20 points still in play. But it’s also rooted in the flawed American notion, still clung to by those who have played a part in far too many losses, that simply putting out the best players time and again will eventually yield the better team.
When Spieth was asked about the 25-year road losing streak before the matches began, he noted that only “the two older guys” bear any scar tissue. That referenced Woods and Mickelson, but he might as well have thrown in Furyk, whose wounds still seemed fresh whenever he was asked to recall his singles’ collapse to Garcia during the Miracle at Medinah.
As it turned out, that was still enough scar tissue to bog down the rest of the team – and perhaps give them each a helping of their own.
With a powerful line of succession about to kick off among European leaders, the task for the Americans won’t get any easier any time soon. But if they’re intent on preventing these Ryder Cup woes from spreading from one generation to the next, they’d do well to embrace the power of a blank slate and a fresh perspective.
Sometimes it’s best to leave more than just egos at the door.
