SAINT-QUENTIN-EN-YVELINES, France – Pick an excuse, any excuse, for why the U.S. Ryder Cup team is now more than a quarter-century removed from its last road victory. But for all of the breathless buildup every four years, for all of the hand-wringing over the captains, for all of the promotional shoots, news conferences, scouting trips, team meetings, qualifying cutoffs, wildcard debates, selection shows, gala dinners and locker-room bonding sessions, one teeny bit of truth often gets overlooked in the biennial battle between these two juggernauts, at least on this side of the pond:
That Europe usually plays better golf over these three days.
How and why generally still escapes the Americans, no matter how many task forces and committees they form, but the European dominance was unmistakable here at Le Golf National.
The final score of this 42nd Ryder Cup was 17 ½ to 10 ½ – an even more lopsided margin of victory than their rout four years ago at Gleneagles, the unmitigated disaster that supposedly set in motion the process to end all of this U.S. misery. Instead, the Americans will head to Rome in 2022 still looking for their first away win in seven tries.
“I take my cap off,” Furyk said Sunday night. “Thomas (Bjorn) was a better captain, and their team outplayed us. There’s nothing more you can say. They deserved to win. They played well.”
That the world-class European players won at home (and for the ninth time in 12 matches) wasn’t a surprise; it was the decisive manner in which they prevailed – with all 12 players earning at least a point – that left Furyk and the rest of the Americans searching for answers.
Match scoring from the 42nd Ryder Cup
Ryder Cup: Articles, photos and videos
Indeed, the blowout was an anticlimactic finish to what was one of the most highly anticipated Ryder Cups ever – not just because of the quality of the two teams, but because, after 25 years of futility, and after a watershed victory at Hazeltine, it appeared as though the Americans might finally have a plan in place to win on foreign soil. Tiger Woods was back. Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed had formed a nearly unstoppable partnership. Dustin Johnson had risen to world No. 1. Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau, though rookies, were proven winners. Their average world ranking (11.17) was the best ever for a Ryder Cup team.
Yet only three of the last 10 Ryder Cups have been won by the team with the better OWGR average, which lends credence to the belief that a captain’s leadership, the camaraderie among teammates and the home venue factor more significantly in the outcome than a player’s individual résumé.
“It just means too much to us,” Rory McIlroy said. “We went through a horrid spell in the 1970s and ’80s where we didn’t win a whole lot, and that’s still pretty recent and fresh in our memories. And when we started to win these things, we got a taste of it and we wanted more and we wanted to keep doing it.”
For this year’s edition, Bjorn and Co. exploited a considerable home-course advantage. The longtime host of the French Open, Le Golf National was a course with which every European player was intimately familiar. Sure, the game’s best usually only have three days to learn a major venue, but one U.S. scouting trip here in July wasn’t going to supersede years of institutional knowledge.
Especially when it’s an inspired choice like Le Golf National, a claustrophobic, hazard-filled stadium course that immediately evokes TPC Sawgrass but with more lush, penal, hack-out rough. Just as Hazeltine’s generous landing areas accommodated the Americans’ bomb-and-gouge style in 2016, this was a track that perfectly highlighted the Europeans’ strength: Six of their players ranked inside the top 82 in driving accuracy on the PGA Tour, while a whopping eight Americans landed in the bottom 82. Bjorn neutralized the Americans’ greatest asset – their mesmerizing power – and forced layups into the same parts of the fairway, but in the swirling crosswinds the Americans still managed to find trouble.
“You have to do what you have to do to give yourself a slight advantage,” McIlroy said.
The Eurocentric setup wasn’t the only correct button pushed by Bjorn. On Day 1, he sent out his five rookies in the first fourball session, determined to get the nerves out of their system and carry out a plan that was weeks in the making. What could have been a disastrous decision seemed to turn in the anchor pairing, however, as first-timer Tommy Fleetwood teamed with Open champion Francesco Molinari to deliver the first point in what would be a perfect week together. (By the end of the week, they were so smitten that they blew kisses to each other in the post-match presser.) In the afternoon, facing an early 3-1 deficit, Bjorn never panicked and hammered home the team’s strength, relying on wind-resistant ball-striking machines like Alex Noren, Sergio Garcia and Henrik Stenson to whitewash the Americans in foursomes and build a 5-3 lead.
The Europeans extended their cushion to four points by the end of the second day, as Bjorn’s decisions continued to pay dividends. Though the captain doesn’t strike a shot in the matches, his two most critical tasks were putting his stars in the best position to succeed and constructing the bottom of his roster. Which is why Bjorn’s brilliance mostly can found in his wildcard selections: His captain’s picks earned 9 ½ points, while Furyk’s were a combined 2-10.
“They make the difference in the score,” Bjorn said. “I think I got it right.”
Still, there was a level of uneasiness at the conclusion of Saturday’s play. The comebacks (or meltdowns, depending on your perspective) at Brookline and Medinah have forever changed the tenor of a 10-6 score. What used to be cause for celebration is now reason for pause and reflection. In each of those miracle matches the eventual winner got off to a blazing-fast start, winning at least the first five matches, and sure enough there was about a half-hour period Sunday when the Americans were in position to claim the first six matches. They ended up only stealing 3 ½ of the first nine. “There’s always a moment when there’s a spark of light,” Furyk said, “and when that came from us, Europe hit the shots to put it out.”
The Europeans won six of the last seven matches to equal the spread from Hazeltine and hand the Americans their most lopsided defeat in 12 years.
“What this team did was not drop their guard until this moment right here,” said Justin Rose, a flute of champagne positioned in front of him. “This team was relentless in its pursuit of excellence.”
Unlike four years ago, when they were trounced at Gleneagles, the Americans were disappointed Sunday but not on the verge of a hostile takeover. A defiant Phil Mickelson wasn’t about to lean into the microphone and stage a media-room mutiny. It was clear that, in the absence of sterling play, the Americans stood little chance: a fatigued Woods led for only three holes all week and went 0-4 for the first time in his unexceptional Ryder Cup career; Reed, nicknamed “Captain America,” lost his superpowers in team play without sidekick Spieth; Johnson earned a measly point in five matches; and though Thomas was the top U.S. point-earner in his first Ryder Cup, DeChambeau was buried last in singles, reduced to a mere footnote in history.
As tempting as it was to quibble with a few of Furyk’s lineup choices, the U.S. here was overwhelmed and outplayed by (at least in terms of world rankings) the third-strongest European team ever assembled, in front of a partisan crowd and on a course that perfectly suited the home team’s style. Simple as that.
“It was some exquisite golf,” Mickelson said, “and they flat-out beat us.”
Even if the ending lacked any drama, the wild scene afterward was indicative of just how massive this continental clash has become.
No one standing around the 16th tee initially realized that the Europeans had earned the necessary 14 ½ points to reclaim the cup, after both Garcia and Molinari went dormie in their matches. Then the video board to the right of the green showed Bjorn smooching his girlfriend, and the massive galleries started to buzz.
Confirmation soon followed.
Three down with three to go against Molinari, Mickelson – in possibly the final stroke of his Ryder Cup career – pulled his tee shot into the pond, removed his hat and conceded the match. The galleries erupted. The normally stoic Molinari made a beeline for a pack of fans wearing yellow Oxford shirts and flat-bill European caps, and he bounced and danced amid the frenzied crowd, bathing in champagne. His teammates sprinted up the hill to join him, and soon they were hugging and crying and chanting. Tommy Fleetwood was hoisted onto the shoulders of some supporters and carried down a steep hill, where he then climbed atop a European vice captain’s cart, punching the air to the beat of “Ole! Ole!” All hell was breaking loose, as the security guards tried in vain to contain the hysteria.
The Americans, meanwhile, slinked back to their team room to gather themselves, while the Europeans chugged any and everything they could get their hands on, the beginning of a celebration that would extend deep into the night.
A toast to 25 years of home-game dominance.
