SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Given another lopsided alternate-shot effort, perhaps the Ryder Cup task force should have mandated some sort of foursomes curriculum for all potential U.S. players.
Following a blazing start to this week’s matches the Americans tumbled over a familiar hazard on Friday, dropping all four afternoon matches to head into the weekend in a 5-3 hole and still searching for an alternate-shot alternative.
It was a disturbing déjà vu for an American team that appeared to have all the answers after taking a 3-1 lead in the morning fourball frame. Foursomes play, however, continues to be as foreign to the visiting team as a French menu.
Although this was the first time since 1989 the American side was blanked in a team frame – and the first time the Europeans swept an alternate-shot session – the foursome folly is very much real. Since ’02, the Europeans hold a 10-5-1 advantage in alternate-shot sessions, including a 7-1 edge in ’14 in Scotland, a spread that exceeds Europe’s margin of victory (16 ½-11 ½).
“We have to shore things up, and I’m guessing we’ll switch things up in the afternoon tomorrow. We’ve already been thinking about that,” said U.S. captain Jim Furyk, whose eight foursomes players were a combined 11 over par compared to a collective 4 under for the four European pairings.
For all the progress the American team and its much-talked-about task force has made since losing the ’14 matches, foursomes play remains a mystery. With the exception of the U.S. team’s Day 1 sweep of the foursome session in 2016, the U.S. team has been victims of bad pairings, bad play and a European team that relishes the unique challenges of the format.
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“Foursomes on a day like this is very tough to play,” said Rory McIlroy, who paired with Ian Poulter to roll over Bubba Watson and Webb Simpson, 4 and 2. “You have to put the ball in the fairway, you have to put the ball on the green and you have to make some putts.”
The Americans didn’t check off any of those boxes.
The rout began early for the United States, with the power pairing of Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler combining to play 16 holes in 3 over par to drop a 3-and-2 decision to Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose.
McIlroy and Poulter, who combined for six birdies through 14 holes, closed out their match next followed by blowouts for Sergio Garcia-Alex Noren and Francesco Molinari-Tommy Fleetwood, with both teams rolling to 5-and-4 victories.
“You turn it around and look at the Presidents Cup, and our foursomes record is really strong,” said Furyk when asked the reason for the U.S. foursomes’ woes. “There’s a thought that in Europe they grow up playing foursomes a little bit. We have a lot of experience in that format, and other than the fact that we didn’t play our best golf today, I don’t know.
“We can look at things in the past about the way our pairings were placed. Maybe about golf balls, the way we thought about foursomes. But I have a lot of confidence in our guys, and I think in the events in the Ryder Cups, some of them we’ve been successful in; we’ve had a good foursomes record, as well.”
As a point of fact it should be noted that Furyk sent out what were arguably the American roster’s two worst foursome pairings in Phil Mickelson-Bryson DeChambeau and Bubba Watson-Webb Simpson.
Mickelson is now 5-8-4 in his career in alternate-shot play and if his recent resume is any indication he didn’t exactly bring his best stuff to play what is widely considered the game’s most demanding format. It was a tough spot to put DeChambeau in, both metaphorically and practically, considering some of the places Lefty had the Ryder Cup rookie play from on Day 1.
In a perfect world both Mickelson-DeChambeau and Simpson-Watson – who are 0-2-0 in foursomes play when teamed together compared to 2-0-0 as a fourball team – would have been better served in the morning format, but then that wasn’t the plan.
Those involved in these matches, either as players or captains, always revert to the most transparent of thresholds between victory and defeat.
In 2012, following the U.S. side’s worst singles meltdown, then-captain Davis Love III pointed to the pin position on Sunday at the 17th hole on the right portion of the green. The U.S. team, Love reasoned, was mostly liked to draw the ball and the hole location didn’t allow them to be aggressive.
Tiger Woods had a slightly different take, explaining this week that it often comes down to how you finish.
“The teams that we’ve been a part of in the Presidents Cup win, at least that I’ve been a part of, we’ve handled the 18th hole well,” Woods explained. “In the Ryder Cup, we haven’t. The blowouts that we have received in the Ryder Cup, we didn’t play the 18th hole well.”
Sound advice – if any of Friday’s afternoon matches went the distance. It’s a testament to the European’s dominance that none of the foursomes matches even made it to the 17th hole.
On the eve of the matches Furyk was asked what would make him nervous on Friday and his answer was priceless: “I have seen some ‘Oh, sh**’ faces in the Ryder Cup. I’m sure I’ve had a couple myself. Yeah, that would make me nervous. I don’t expect that to happen,” he said.
As his team walked off Le Golf National windswept and winless in a format that continues to confound, there were certainly some “Oh, no” faces.
Another American power outage in foursomes is neither a surprise nor a reason for the red, white and blue side to panic, but the difficult task of winning a road game Ryder Cup for the first time in 25 years has certainly become more challenging.
And it probably doesn’t fill the U.S. team room with confidence that there’s still one more such session to endure on Saturday.
