Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett
Speaker 1: Morrison and this episode is brought to you by Dream Golf.
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Speaker 1: That's dreamgolf dot Com Slash Giveaway, all right. So the
Speaker 1: twenty twenty Ryder Cup of twenty twenty one is in
Speaker 1: the books. The US team won by a score of
Speaker 1: nineteen to nine, so it was not really close. It
Speaker 1: was a historic blowout, but it was still fun to
Speaker 1: watch this team matchplay. Team matchplay is always magical and
Speaker 1: Whistling Straights I thought showed out pretty well. It was
Speaker 1: an interesting venue. So there's lots of cool stuff to
Speaker 1: talk about. What went wrong with the Europeans, what went
Speaker 1: right for the US, Whether this tells us anything about
Speaker 1: the future of the Ryder Cup. That kind of stuff
Speaker 1: so plenty to synk our teeth into. And to do that,
Speaker 1: we are trying a new format in this episode. I'm
Speaker 1: going to call up three different people and to ask
Speaker 1: each of them to give me their biggest takeaway from
Speaker 1: the week. Two of these people you've heard from recently
Speaker 1: on this podcast. Shane Ryan, came on in July to
Speaker 1: talk about various things, including his book on the writer
Speaker 1: Cop that he's working on. Shane is a writer for
Speaker 1: Golf Digest and he was at Whistling Straits this week
Speaker 1: to cover the tournament. Another voice you'll recognize is Joseph Lemanna,
Speaker 1: who's a very smart data analyst. Earlier this month, Joseph
Speaker 1: joined me on the podcast to discuss the strategy of
Speaker 1: team matchplay. But the first guest you'll hear from in
Speaker 1: this episode is Ben Coley. Ben writes for the UK
Speaker 1: based Sportinglife dot com and he is an outstanding writer.
Speaker 1: As Brendan Porath has said, he's delightfully British in his
Speaker 1: prose style, which is a compliment. So I was eager
Speaker 1: to get his biggest takeaway from this very tough week
Speaker 1: for European golf, So let's get right to him.
Speaker 2: I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 2: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 2: And when I find my.
Speaker 1: Ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida
Speaker 1: egg Frida, egg, Frida, egg, Brian egg Frida, egg.
Speaker 2: Bride egg Lie. I'm about ready to run off the
Speaker 2: ump course.
Speaker 1: All right. So this is less of a big takeaway
Speaker 1: moment and more of an instant reaction because the Ryder
Speaker 1: Cup has just concluded. We've just gotten the final score
Speaker 1: of nineteen to nine. They're probably doing the trophy presentation
Speaker 1: right now. I don't know. The TV is not on,
Speaker 1: but I have Ben Coley with me. Ben, First of all,
Speaker 1: how you doing?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Good, thank you. It's been a long week, you know,
Speaker 3: you know how it is, and the late nights don't
Speaker 3: necessarily seem worth it when you when you get a
Speaker 3: pummeling as Europe have had. And I am I'm not
Speaker 3: particularly patriotic person actually, but when it comes to the
Speaker 3: Ryder Cups, I suspect a little bit like we saw
Speaker 3: with Rory McRoy today, albeit obviously on a different level,
Speaker 3: something switches, some sort of switch and it becomes very important.
Speaker 3: So it's been a chastening few days. But look, I
Speaker 3: think Europe have just been beaten by one of the
Speaker 3: greatest teams in golf history. So I guess we shouldn't
Speaker 3: lose too much sleep over it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so do you find yourself kind of going into
Speaker 1: a ryder cup thinking I'm not going to get emotionally
Speaker 1: involved this time, and then it just happens to you somehow.
Speaker 3: Pretty much, although the emotions are different this time, you know,
Speaker 3: there's been a lack of Jeopardy, hasn't there. I think
Speaker 3: from a very early stage, I think most of us
Speaker 3: felt that the tide was going to turn significantly back
Speaker 3: in favor of the US this week. And it's just
Speaker 3: a real shame that for me anyway, I'm sure for
Speaker 3: American less so, but it's just a shane that Europe
Speaker 3: never really got a foothold. You know, it was always
Speaker 3: going to be hard without the fans there, and to
Speaker 3: not in any way do anything to really silence the
Speaker 3: American fans or at least give them pause was a shane.
Speaker 3: The writing was on the wall from I don't know
Speaker 3: the time I went to bed on Friday.
Speaker 4: So.
Speaker 1: Maybe even before that, it just felt like, in that
Speaker 1: very first session, like it was just the US players
Speaker 1: were in good form. In the European players, you could
Speaker 1: just see it. None of them were playing well except
Speaker 1: for the Spaniards.
Speaker 3: That's it. I mean we arrived, we arrived within an
Speaker 3: aging side, four players in their forties and you know,
Speaker 3: just straightforwardly not as good a team as the USA.
Speaker 3: And I think when I guess it's a bit simplistic,
Speaker 3: but when you have that, you need them to underperform
Speaker 3: first and foremost, and you need to be absolutely on it.
Speaker 3: And if you look back to Paris, I mean, I
Speaker 3: know there are obviously some big problems in the US camp,
Speaker 3: but as well as that, I think it was lost
Speaker 3: a little bit in the aftermath and all the Patrick
Speaker 3: Reid fall and Tiger and feel and and Bryce and
Speaker 3: even that, Europe got everything right and their form players,
Speaker 3: you know, really produced and the player who had the
Speaker 3: best summer for Europe, Francesco Molinari, went and made history
Speaker 3: for Europe. And that's how much has to go right
Speaker 3: for Europe to win. You know, it felt like that
Speaker 3: was a dominant win. Well, there's a whole new definition
Speaker 3: of dominance just just been written this afternoon, and that
Speaker 3: underlines the scale of the challenge for Europe. They have
Speaker 3: to get so much right and the US have to
Speaker 3: get so much wrong. And fortunately for US, over the
Speaker 3: last twenty years, the US have played their part in
Speaker 3: getting things wrong, but I think they've just figured it
Speaker 3: out maybe.
Speaker 1: So so what is your one big takeaway?
Speaker 3: I guess despite all that, my big takeaway is that
Speaker 3: Europe has some questions to answer, but that Europe should
Speaker 3: not necessarily panic about what might be over the next
Speaker 3: four or five ryder cops, because I think, first and
Speaker 3: foremost we shouldn't underestimate home advantage. And although I know,
Speaker 3: you know, nineteen nine, you can probably argue that it
Speaker 3: flatters Europe because they'll, you know, for a good while
Speaker 3: today twenty two six appeared to be on the cards,
Speaker 3: and I think there was probably a lack of real
Speaker 3: intent among those later matches, which is normal. But despite
Speaker 3: the scoreline flattering Europe, I think it would be remiss
Speaker 3: to dwell too much on it and to think that
Speaker 3: it means US will go and run up a sequence here,
Speaker 3: because two years is a long time in golf. I
Speaker 3: think you look at that twelve and you think, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: the US would probably be very very happy if that's
Speaker 3: the twelve in Italy, but it won't be. You know,
Speaker 3: it almost certainly won't be, and we've been in that
Speaker 3: situation Europe. You know, when we've won Madina say you
Speaker 3: know that, you kind of think, well, yeah, we'll take
Speaker 3: those twelve again at Glenn Eagles and there was some
Speaker 3: turnover and we were lucky. We got Victor Debuisson just
Speaker 3: happened to be in that eighteen month window where he
Speaker 3: was good enough to play in a Ryder Cup, and
Speaker 3: not only that, where he looked like he was born
Speaker 3: to playing a rde A Cup. And Europe could find
Speaker 3: those players again, right, I mean, I think back to
Speaker 3: Francesco Molnary and I think for the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 3: his career, I have not thought he would be a
Speaker 3: particularly effective match play player. I think he said himself,
Speaker 3: he'sn't like it, he's not mean enough. But for that month,
Speaker 3: those months, he was virtually unbeatable, and I don't think
Speaker 3: you can always plan for that. You can't, so, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, so much is said about how Europe have
Speaker 3: outthought the United States, and you know, with Paul McGinley
Speaker 3: and the use of data and all those things which
Speaker 3: will remain important, but I thought the best thing America
Speaker 3: could do here was just simplify and let their players play.
Speaker 3: And I think in having a I mean I love
Speaker 3: what Strika said about all twelve of them having better
Speaker 3: resumes than him, because it just showed what his role
Speaker 3: had to be there. And I think I've gone off
Speaker 3: on a tangent there, but I think the real point
Speaker 3: is that Europe have got some very difficult questions to answer,
Speaker 3: which I'm happy to talk about. But I think I
Speaker 3: think panic would be the wrong way to do it,
Speaker 3: because you know, we have good young players coming through
Speaker 3: we have now that added reason to that sort of
Speaker 3: shock to say, look, you guys, aren't Europe aren't better
Speaker 3: at this than USA. They just were for a while,
Speaker 3: and hopefully that will shake us up and we can
Speaker 3: come out fighting in Rome. I'm convinced we'll do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, So, to put a finer point on the
Speaker 1: argument that you're making here, there are those right now
Speaker 1: who are saying this is the beginning of a new era.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the beginning of an era of
Speaker 1: US dominance that we all thought was coming, you know,
Speaker 1: a few years ago, but now it's arrived and Europe
Speaker 1: is going to lose the next fifteen Ryder Cups. So
Speaker 1: you would say that's an overreaction. We don't know what
Speaker 1: the landscape is going to look like in two.
Speaker 3: Years, Yeah, which is a little bit sitting on the fence,
Speaker 3: and I'll give you some of the problems Europe have got, Like,
Speaker 3: there are problems. I think never more so has the
Speaker 3: European Tour been a feeder tour to the PGA Tour.
Speaker 3: And I think we're probably seeing the end of that
Speaker 3: era of players and some of them talking about it
Speaker 3: in these videos that europe have put out earlier in
Speaker 3: the week, you know, with the number of when they
Speaker 3: got their first cap or whatever, a lot of them
Speaker 3: will say, we play for the European Tour. Well, is
Speaker 3: Victor Hovlin playing for the European Tour. He's never experienced it,
Speaker 3: you know, he's come over and won on it because
Speaker 3: he can, but he's not a European Tour player. He's
Speaker 3: a European player and that's a big difference, and it
Speaker 3: is a problem for Europe because as you see, you know,
Speaker 3: if I think about one of maybe the more promising
Speaker 3: young Europeans, a kid called Vincent Norman who's turned pro
Speaker 3: this year, He's played really really well in a few
Speaker 3: European Tour events. Where was he playing last week? Stage
Speaker 3: one corn Ferry Tour qualifying school. There's no question where
Speaker 3: he wants to be if he can choose. And that
Speaker 3: is a problem for Europe because as we lose Poulter,
Speaker 3: which I think we may, as we lose Westwood, which
Speaker 3: I think we have, we lose that belief that the
Speaker 3: European Tour means something. And that's a big, big problem, right,
Speaker 3: But US might have their problems too, and I think
Speaker 3: one of them, I'll be honest. One, you know, maybe
Speaker 3: Patrick Reedal does a favor and qualify for the team. Two,
Speaker 3: maybe Tiger Woods will captain it. And Tiger could be
Speaker 3: a great captain. But I think the dynamic they found
Speaker 3: for this one and maybe they'll they'll let Steve Stricker
Speaker 3: have another go. I think that really helped America to
Speaker 3: not have someone there on the sidelines who is better
Speaker 3: than you and better than you will ever be, you know,
Speaker 3: I think that helps. I think we've seen any number
Speaker 3: of players struggle to play with Tiger, but I think
Speaker 3: it could be hard to be captained by it. Obviously,
Speaker 3: he did it in the President's Cup and they won,
Speaker 3: but it was tight and he was still a player,
Speaker 3: and it's the President's Cup, right, I think in the
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup. That would add a new dimension that would
Speaker 3: not necessarily work. And it's things like that that can
Speaker 3: go wrong, you know, you know, any number of things
Speaker 3: can happen to the players as individuals and the other thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, if we're talking about a perfect storm here,
Speaker 3: we've got no Tiger, no read, no European, a big
Speaker 3: golf course, and out of sorts European team. Everything went right,
Speaker 3: and you know that will happen from time to time.
Speaker 3: But no way is the Rider Cup going to turn
Speaker 3: into a processional contest where one team is dramatically overshadowing
Speaker 3: the rest. I just don't see that. I think Europe
Speaker 3: will remain really competitive in Europe, and especially if they
Speaker 3: can start going to some of the courses which would
Speaker 3: suit the more than Marco Simone might, which is a
Speaker 3: bit of a worry. But we'll see about that in
Speaker 3: a couple of years, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not sure anybody knows quite what to expect
Speaker 1: from that course. I think the Americans will probably be
Speaker 1: annoyed by it, based on what some of the European
Speaker 1: tour players have said about it. Lots of blind shots,
Speaker 1: et cetera. In any case, some of the European players
Speaker 1: might be more familiar with it, assuming that the members
Speaker 1: of that team play on the European Tour in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, which is not entirely guaranteed as you're saying.
Speaker 1: But you know, I completely agree with you, and I
Speaker 1: think that people forget. You know, you're saying that a
Speaker 1: lot has to go right in order for Europe to win,
Speaker 1: and that may be true. Obviously America has the US
Speaker 1: has the more talented players right now, but I think
Speaker 1: also a lot went wrong for Europe this week. I
Speaker 1: think that there just were an extraordinary number of really
Speaker 1: good players who just were not in good form, and
Speaker 1: so you know that explains the blowout. But you know,
Speaker 1: two years from now, you don't know who's going to
Speaker 1: be on a hot streak. I think we all knew
Speaker 1: who Francesco Mullinari was in twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen. You know,
Speaker 1: he was a great player, but he was nowhere near
Speaker 1: the player that he was in twenty eighteen, specifically when
Speaker 1: for a bit there he was like the best player
Speaker 1: in the world. You don't know who on the European
Speaker 1: team is going to emerge that way potentially in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and there are some younger players among the
Speaker 1: Europeans who could all of a sudden kind of level
Speaker 1: up and get to that next level. I look at
Speaker 1: the Hoyguard twins, Rasmus and Nikolai Hoygard. I think I
Speaker 1: got the name right there, I hope. So in any case,
Speaker 1: those two are are sensational players. They're winning on the
Speaker 1: European two are at a very young age, and they
Speaker 1: have games that you know, sort of resemble their American
Speaker 1: counterparts to a great degree. So if Simone, Marcus Simone
Speaker 1: ends up being a course that suits an American style
Speaker 1: quote unquote American style of play, then that might not
Speaker 1: be too much of a problem for them. Who knows
Speaker 1: what they're going to be doing in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: those kids might be, you know, on another level by
Speaker 1: that point. So I think you're right to put out
Speaker 1: that note of caution that two years is a long
Speaker 1: time for younger players to emerge. It's also a long
Speaker 1: time for established players to all of a sudden find
Speaker 1: something more.
Speaker 3: Exactly that exactly that I mean, Nicola, I just you
Speaker 3: wan to Marcus Simony a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: So there's a nice thing that's right, Yeah, extly there
Speaker 1: you go.
Speaker 3: Into the future, and I think, I mean, that's the
Speaker 3: obvious thing. Like people will probably turn it around and say, well, okay,
Speaker 3: what's your succession plan? You know who? Who are these players?
Speaker 3: And I think that's the point. You don't have to know,
Speaker 3: you know, there's no way I know. Okay, he wasn't
Speaker 3: the most important player on the American team by any stretch,
Speaker 3: But Harris English was not a Ryder Cup player had
Speaker 3: this taken place as scheduled. Jordan Speith wasn't a Righter
Speaker 3: Cup player had it taken place as scheduled, right, which
Speaker 3: Fowler might be back on the team in two years,
Speaker 3: don't you know, Let's not assume that we know everything
Speaker 3: because what we learned over the last three days and
Speaker 3: to your point around things going wrong, I mean, ultimately
Speaker 3: Europe needed their best players to perform. And you know,
Speaker 3: I don't want to get hung up on the Rory thing.
Speaker 3: I think people stopped listening to what I say about
Speaker 3: Rory McRoy, to be quite honest with you, But I
Speaker 3: think if there are parallels, you look back to Port Rush.
Speaker 3: I've seen Rory like that twice one port Rush, where
Speaker 3: his valiant effort to make the cut was in vain
Speaker 3: on the Friday and he burst into tears.
Speaker 1: And today and you're talking specifically about the interview he
Speaker 1: gave after winning his singles match when he was in
Speaker 1: tears and saying, you know, I don't think I did
Speaker 1: enough this time, and this means a lot to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, somebody on Twitter tells me it wasn't actually crying,
Speaker 3: but they isn't it. He certainly, he certainly broke down.
Speaker 3: He was overcome with emotion, and so was the impoulter
Speaker 3: at points, probably for different reasons. But Rory, you know,
Speaker 3: he's fascinating, isn't he. But we'ld do another podcast maybe.
Speaker 3: But at Port Rush in twenty nineteen he realized what
Speaker 3: home meant and all these other things. And although okay,
Speaker 3: it's not translated into what I hoped it might, which
Speaker 3: is the Masters and everything else that we demand from him,
Speaker 3: he did return to the top of the sport in
Speaker 3: the six months after that, right, he was languishing, but
Speaker 3: that period, you know, Okay, won the Players that spring,
Speaker 3: but from he went on, he won the FedEx Cup,
Speaker 3: he won a World Golf Championship, and he really reminded
Speaker 3: himself of what he was capable of and maybe in
Speaker 3: two years. I mean, this will have been humiliating for
Speaker 3: Rory McElroy this week to not play every session, to
Speaker 3: contribute one point, and to know that everywhere people like
Speaker 3: me and others are on Twitter saying oh yeah point
Speaker 3: when it doesn't matter Rory McRoy, here we go. You know,
Speaker 3: it's the equivalent of what happened at the Master's last
Speaker 3: night November. He'll know that, and it will it will
Speaker 3: spark something and John Rahm and Sergio I hope can
Speaker 3: we can see that again? And you know there was
Speaker 3: talk of a bad relationship there, but I would hope
Speaker 3: this week solved it if it needed solving. And as
Speaker 3: you say that, there are many more players who come through.
Speaker 3: Hopefully Sam Horsefield won't defect. That'd be a problem.
Speaker 1: In Florida.
Speaker 3: He's been in Florida since he was five years old. Yeah,
Speaker 3: worried about that. We've got loads of good players. I
Speaker 3: just they need to find a way to make sure
Speaker 3: the European Tour retains purpose. I think that's the number
Speaker 3: one thing. And one of the things they'll talk about
Speaker 3: is getting another team competition back up and running. We
Speaker 3: had the Sevy Trophy. We had the Eurasia Cup and okay,
Speaker 3: a lot of the best players didn't play, but Eurasia
Speaker 3: Cup twenty eighteen, Tommy Fleetwood was there, Alex Norrin was there.
Speaker 3: They both played important roles in Paris, and I think
Speaker 3: they've got a feel for it and that would really
Speaker 3: help in somewhere or another. It would help connect them
Speaker 3: because I think there's been a lot said in the
Speaker 3: past out how well europe do connect that sort of
Speaker 3: shared bond of being outsiders on the PGA Tour or
Speaker 3: whatever it may be. They come from very different countries
Speaker 3: and different backgrounds, but that shouldn't be taken for granted.
Speaker 3: That things need to happen to make sure that remains.
Speaker 3: You know, you need Rory to be taking people like
Speaker 3: Bob McIntyre under his wing on the PGA Tour week
Speaker 3: to week. You know, you need that. You need players
Speaker 3: to look out for each other and to form those
Speaker 3: bonds that Americans, and particularly this set of Americans have
Speaker 3: formed in college. You know, I know it's not you
Speaker 3: know now they all love each other because they've won.
Speaker 3: I know there's probably more to it there, and there
Speaker 3: certainly is on some levels, but fundamentally, there's a lot
Speaker 3: to be said for that. They've grown up competing against
Speaker 3: them with each other, and Europe won't have that same experience,
Speaker 3: so they need to find other ways to bridge that
Speaker 3: gap and to form the bonds that have worked for
Speaker 3: the US this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if the great European players of the future are
Speaker 1: not going to be playing as much on the European Tour,
Speaker 1: then that has its drawbacks in the sense that one
Speaker 1: of the things that Team Europe had going for it
Speaker 1: in the past is that a lot of these players
Speaker 1: knew each other pretty well from extensive experience on the
Speaker 1: European Tour. So perhaps there needs to be a new
Speaker 1: milieu in which they are interacting with each other and
Speaker 1: bonding with each other, though some would argue that that
Speaker 1: is American universities and the PGA Tour. At this point
Speaker 1: for Europe, that's a much more common path for those
Speaker 1: players than it has been in the past.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it certainly isn't it. I'm sure it will continue
Speaker 3: to be. Certainly when I look down the best amateurs
Speaker 3: coming through for Europe that invariably now in the college
Speaker 3: system in the US. But there are other ways to
Speaker 3: do it, you know that. I think Padrick Harrington doesn't
Speaker 3: need to be criticized for the things he did prior
Speaker 3: to this week, and even picking apart his decisions now
Speaker 3: after a result like that would be futile really, But
Speaker 3: I think they need to just be thinking about that,
Speaker 3: and they will be, but I think they'll do it
Speaker 3: in a measured way. You know. The one thing as
Speaker 3: well is that, yeah, these guys who are leaving now
Speaker 3: they become captains. And I know Steve, it doesn't always translate.
Speaker 3: Steve Stricker was not a very good I had a
Speaker 3: Cup player. You know, he is by definition of good
Speaker 3: captain because they've won nineteen nine. But hopefully the things
Speaker 3: that Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter and Graha McDowell and
Speaker 3: so on can bring to that team room can have
Speaker 3: some significance, you know. And also it was not, you know,
Speaker 3: in any way a massive factor, but Europe will get
Speaker 3: to the next Ryder Cup having been five years out
Speaker 3: from the last time. They got proper support and that's
Speaker 3: going to make a big difference. And you throw all
Speaker 3: those things together and the fact that there will be
Speaker 3: people like the Hoyguard Twins watching these Americans, you know,
Speaker 3: rightly enjoying themselves on the eighteenth Green. It's gonna be
Speaker 3: hugely motivating in the same way that when Justin Thomas
Speaker 3: sat and watched the Miracle at Madonah when he was what,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty years old, he wanted to go and
Speaker 3: be the one who got redemption for that. And I
Speaker 3: guess they have it in a form, so game on,
Speaker 3: I suppose, But I'm certainly not resigned two years of
Speaker 3: Europeans struggle. I get enough of that from my other sports.
Speaker 3: But where Europe Team Europe are concerned, they can be
Speaker 3: really to want to figure it.
Speaker 1: Out, all right, So, Ben, I would imagine that you
Speaker 1: have some Ryder Cup wrap up content in the works.
Speaker 1: Tell the people where they can find that when it
Speaker 1: comes out.
Speaker 3: That's kind of you. Yeah, Sportinglife dot com is where
Speaker 3: I will will put all that on paypers if I
Speaker 3: have time. I've got to preview the Dunhill Links Championship
Speaker 3: tomorrow and all the fun that intels goes on.
Speaker 1: Yea, I mean, that's a that's a fun tournament though.
Speaker 1: That's that's cool. I mean to get to see the
Speaker 1: players go to the Old Course every year. That that's
Speaker 1: a fun feature of the European Tour.
Speaker 3: It is the perfect way to recover from a chastening
Speaker 3: Rider Cup defeat. You know, great courses, a good field,
Speaker 3: a significant tournament in European tour terms, and and yeah
Speaker 3: we can just we can. You know, come Sunday we'll
Speaker 3: have forgotten all about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, get some sleep tonight, Ben, Thank.
Speaker 3: You so much, Thank you, Garrett.
Speaker 1: Next up, Joseph Lamangna. All right, so Joseph, the Ryder
Speaker 1: Cup has just wrapped up. What are some of your
Speaker 1: thoughts about how things went this week? Was it was
Speaker 1: it fun for you to watch on TV? Before we
Speaker 1: get to your big takeaway was, what's your situation there?
Speaker 1: Did you watch the whole thing?
Speaker 4: I did. I watched pretty much every shot on Friday
Speaker 4: and Saturday, I watched most of Sunday. The suspense wasn't
Speaker 4: quite there, but I really enjoyed it. I thought Steve
Speaker 4: Stricker did a really good job from his captain's picks
Speaker 4: press conference onwards. I was really encouraged by everything I
Speaker 4: was hearing. So it's nice that it panned out well
Speaker 4: for him and for the rest of Team USA. I
Speaker 4: was excited to see a victory.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this was a pretty solid captaincy. I mean so
Speaker 1: you know, we've had a previous podcast where we talked
Speaker 1: about the strategy of team match play of the Ryder Cup,
Speaker 1: and a lot of what we talked about was the
Speaker 1: strategy from the captain's perspective, right, because that's the main
Speaker 1: kind of strategic component of the Ryder Cup that you
Speaker 1: could make alterations too, really, and so you know, against
Speaker 1: that kind of rubric that we developed in that podcast,
Speaker 1: you think Steve Stricker did pretty well.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 4: I think all of the big concepts that we had
Speaker 4: talked about, he did a really good job of recognizing
Speaker 4: the differences in players' skill sets. He did a good
Speaker 4: job recognizing that some players are better for one format
Speaker 4: than the other. All of the big points, I think
Speaker 4: he did a great job. There are a couple small
Speaker 4: things I might have done differently, though I'm not convinced
Speaker 4: it would have achieved a much different result. Team USA dominated,
Speaker 4: and overall, I really think he did a great job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like neither of the captains could do much.
Speaker 1: Ben said something about this in the conversation I just
Speaker 1: had with Ben Coley. He said something to the effect of,
Speaker 1: we might as well not really nitpick Patrick Harrington's performance too.
Speaker 1: Much because whatever he could have done differently might not
Speaker 1: have made a difference in the ten point margin that
Speaker 1: ended up being being there at the end of the day.
Speaker 1: So it is kind of hard to critique the captaincies.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned that there are a couple of things
Speaker 1: that you might have done differently. I was actually curious
Speaker 1: about this. I was thinking about this, you know, while
Speaker 1: I was watching the Ryder Cup. I was like, clearly,
Speaker 1: this is a good performance by Team USA, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that Steve Stricker did everything right right. That's
Speaker 1: one of the fallacies that happens with Ryder Cups is
Speaker 1: that we assumed that the losing captain did everything wrong
Speaker 1: and that the winning captain did everything right. That's not
Speaker 1: necessarily the case at all. So what were some of
Speaker 1: the small things that you noticed that you might have
Speaker 1: done differently.
Speaker 4: Again, overwhelmingly think he did a good job, so I
Speaker 4: don't want to come off as too critical of him.
Speaker 4: But one example would be on the Saturday four balls
Speaker 4: he played fee now in English, and I understand those
Speaker 4: guys played well on Friday, but I still think it's
Speaker 4: worth of zooming out and saying who gives you a
Speaker 4: better chance of winning? Here, Shoffley can't Ley or Fein
Speaker 4: now English, And that's one of those where I'm pretty
Speaker 4: on the extreme. I want the best players on the
Speaker 4: team playing as much as possible. I think that those
Speaker 4: two give you a better tech chance and female English.
Speaker 4: Does that change the result? I don't know, We'll never know,
Speaker 4: but that's the direction I would have gone in particular
Speaker 4: on that matchup.
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's one. I don't like the Jordan Speath Justin
Speaker 1: Thomas pairing, especially for alternate shot. I just don't like it.
Speaker 1: And you could see it because I believe Justin Thomas
Speaker 1: ended up teeing off on the odd holes, which gave
Speaker 1: him those shots at the par threes. And I guess
Speaker 1: the reasoning there is that he's obviously a great iron player,
Speaker 1: and so put him on the par threes. But that
Speaker 1: ended up putting Jordan Speith on some of the most
Speaker 1: difficult driving holes on the course, which is not where
Speaker 1: you want Jordan Speith. And so I think the problem
Speaker 1: is not so much that decision to put him on
Speaker 1: those specific holes, but it underlines the fact that they
Speaker 1: shouldn't really be paired together. They should be paired with somebody,
Speaker 1: perhaps who's really strong driving the ball at least speaf
Speaker 1: should I think.
Speaker 4: I agree with you. In four sums, especially at Whistling Straits,
Speaker 4: I would not have a team of two golfers who
Speaker 4: are not great at driving the ball. When I created
Speaker 4: my I didn't put justin Thomas and Jordan's speech together
Speaker 4: in the forresomes format. Jordan actually drove the ball a
Speaker 4: lot better than I expected him to. But I don't
Speaker 4: think that doesn't invalidate the point. Right, If that's not
Speaker 4: evidence that that was a good pairing. If Jordan goes
Speaker 4: out there and drives it poorly, we're having a completely
Speaker 4: different conversation.
Speaker 3: So I'm with you.
Speaker 4: I don't love that pairing in foursomes, especially since there
Speaker 4: are so many good drivers on that team you could
Speaker 4: have paired those guys with, right.
Speaker 1: There's plenty of yeah, exactly, there's plenty of great drivers
Speaker 1: of the golf ball in the US team. But here
Speaker 1: we are critiquing the captaincy of somebody who just went
Speaker 1: nineteen and nine. So so that just shows you the
Speaker 1: complexity of this job of pairing up players and coming
Speaker 1: up with a strategy for team match plays.
Speaker 4: So well, sorry, one quick point on that as well.
Speaker 4: When you're talking about, you know, reconfiguring pairings a little
Speaker 4: bit here and there. Those are small things ultimately, and
Speaker 4: I think Steve Stricker did the big things very well.
Speaker 4: He left Dustin Johnson on the golf course for five sessions,
Speaker 4: and that is crucial captaining. I think he got almost
Speaker 4: everything correct, and we can nitpick the small things, but
Speaker 4: overwhelmingly I think he did an excellent job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, DJ out there for five sessions was fantastic because
Speaker 1: the common sense approach to that would have been to say,
Speaker 1: he's a little bit older, we got arrest him. But no,
Speaker 1: I mean he was playing wonderful golf and he was.
Speaker 1: He's so well suited to that course. You called it
Speaker 1: in our podcast together a couple of months ago when
Speaker 1: you said DJ could be a star.
Speaker 4: Here.
Speaker 1: This is his perfect moment to perform really, really brilliantly
Speaker 1: in a Ryder Cup, and he did, and Stricker just
Speaker 1: went back to him time and time again and it
Speaker 1: worked out five ZHO zero exactly.
Speaker 4: And I feel that way whether a player is playing
Speaker 4: unbelievably well or not. The example for me would be
Speaker 4: Rory McElroy. He wasn't playing great, but I'm still playing
Speaker 4: him in all five sessions as Team Europe even though
Speaker 4: he's not playing great because that team is so weak
Speaker 4: at the bottom, you can't convince me Rory isn't giving
Speaker 4: you more perform than you know, the tenth eleventh person
Speaker 4: on Team Europe. So it's a big point. You got
Speaker 4: to have the best players on the golf course and
Speaker 4: rest isn't worth of sacrificing points upfront. That equation doesn't
Speaker 4: check out all right.
Speaker 1: So what's your one big takeaway from this Ryder Cup.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my biggest takeaway is that golf is far more
Speaker 4: compelling when greenside bunkers represent an actual hazard. You know,
Speaker 4: there was a significant penalty to finding green side bunkers
Speaker 4: at Whistling Streets, and it makes the entire test far
Speaker 4: more comprehensive and more compelling from a viewer's perspective and
Speaker 4: from a competition perspective. In twenty fifteen, at Whistling Straits
Speaker 4: for the PGA, it was harder to get up and
Speaker 4: down out of a greenside bunker than at any other
Speaker 4: venue on tour by over five percent an up and
Speaker 4: down percentage. Similar thing this week during the Ryder Cup,
Speaker 4: really hard to get up and down, and that just
Speaker 4: makes iron play so much more of a test, and
Speaker 4: it also feeds into the distance advantage that we're talking about.
Speaker 4: I think that's the leap that people need to make.
Speaker 4: It's a lot easier to control a shot from one
Speaker 4: hundred and forty yards than from one hundred and fifty
Speaker 4: five or even as you move back farther, So I
Speaker 4: think that's almost a necessity to testing professional golfers.
Speaker 1: There's a number of directions we can take this, but
Speaker 1: that's so right. That was so much a part of
Speaker 1: why this course was fun to watch in this format
Speaker 1: because we saw a lot of different shots. We didn't
Speaker 1: just see the players who were playing well. We saw
Speaker 1: the players who were missing greens, and we saw what
Speaker 1: was happening, and what was happening were some really, really
Speaker 1: strange shots that we just don't see every week on
Speaker 1: the PGA Tour, where guys were blading it out of bunkers,
Speaker 1: the shots were rolling past the pin and over the green,
Speaker 1: and we saw guys hacking out of big bushes and
Speaker 1: big clumps of grass, and there was just such a
Speaker 1: variety of terrible lies that they could find next to
Speaker 1: the and even on the sides of the fairway. If
Speaker 1: they hit it arrently enough to actually get off of
Speaker 1: the corridors at Whistling Straits, which we're fairly wide when
Speaker 1: you include the short rough. But yeah, especially around the greens,
Speaker 1: some of those shots were so so hard, and we
Speaker 1: just did not see players playing out of bunkers and
Speaker 1: reliably sticking it next to the pen. Yeah.
Speaker 4: My favorite example was on Friday four Balls, Bryson had
Speaker 4: like a three hundred and ninety five yard drive on
Speaker 4: thirteen into the green side bunker and that was a
Speaker 4: very challenging up and down. He did nothing with it,
Speaker 4: ended up, you know, I think he made par. But
Speaker 4: on the PGA Tour week in and week out, if
Speaker 4: there's a drivable par four and you put it on
Speaker 4: a green side bunker, you have a little green to
Speaker 4: work with. That's a routine up and down. So it
Speaker 4: just completely changes the complexion of the golf course when
Speaker 4: Bryson he can't just hit into those green side bunkers
Speaker 4: and expect a consistent lie and an easy up and
Speaker 4: down opportunity.
Speaker 1: We saw that a few times from Bryson this week,
Speaker 1: where yeah, he was trying to drive a lot of
Speaker 1: greens at Whistling Straits, and we saw him get into
Speaker 1: some really, really, really hairy positions next to the greens,
Speaker 1: and again, that's just something we don't see. When he
Speaker 1: gets the ball up near the green on a par
Speaker 1: four in a regular PGA Tour event, we are expecting
Speaker 1: a birdie, and that just wasn't necessarily the expectation this week.
Speaker 1: Even though he ended up playing pretty well, I don't
Speaker 1: think he played quite as well as people thought he did,
Speaker 1: but yeah, he was. You know, when he was getting
Speaker 1: up near those greens, part of you was wondering would
Speaker 1: it have been a better call to just lay back
Speaker 1: a little bit and guarantee yourself a lie in the
Speaker 1: fair way or the short rough.
Speaker 4: And I know some people have made the point of well,
Speaker 4: how do you even make bunkers more challenging? I think
Speaker 4: it's a good example of how really small bunkers can
Speaker 4: be some of the most effective traps. When you have
Speaker 4: a really inconsistent lie, your feet are out of the bunker.
Speaker 4: I'm not an architecture expert by any means, but that
Speaker 4: seems like something you could replicate on many courses throughout America.
Speaker 4: You don't have to have these bowl shaped, large bunkers
Speaker 4: that provide the same lie every time, so it doesn't
Speaker 4: seem like you have to have ridiculous terrain to create
Speaker 4: a difficult up and down.
Speaker 1: Well, a lot of the bunkers that we see on
Speaker 1: TV in these tournaments on the PGA Tour are kind
Speaker 1: of like, you know, they have a fairly flat bottom
Speaker 1: to them, and the rest of the bunker kind of
Speaker 1: feeds to that flat bottom, and so we see a
Speaker 1: lot of the same kinds of lies out of bunkers
Speaker 1: where you know, the player's feet are not up on
Speaker 1: the lip, they're just in the middle of the bunker.
Speaker 1: That's where they tend to end up. And they have nice,
Speaker 1: kind of consistent softish sand and they just know what
Speaker 1: that shot is. They would rather have that shot than
Speaker 1: a weird lie in the rough at Whistling Straits. The
Speaker 1: sand in those bunkers, first of all, is not your
Speaker 1: regular PGA Tour sand. And then yeah, the crazy bunker
Speaker 1: shapes there. You have all sorts of different things going on.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the bunkers are tilted, they're not always flat on
Speaker 1: the bottom. Often you're finding your self ending up in
Speaker 1: these weird little corners of the bunkers because they've got
Speaker 1: these squiggly shapes to them, and so yeah, all of
Speaker 1: that factored in, and then you have what's going on
Speaker 1: outside of the bunkers, which is often even worse.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it just creates a much better dynamic players. When
Speaker 4: a pin is tucked near a bunker, you know, it
Speaker 4: gives you some hesitation before just taking that flag on
Speaker 4: right away. It's a much better test. You can see
Speaker 4: it on other courses on tour where the bunkers that
Speaker 4: are much more difficult to get up and down out
Speaker 4: of better iron players succeed. So I think that's a
Speaker 4: big part of why Dustin Johnson and Calm Morikawa performed
Speaker 4: so well this week. There's two of the best iron
Speaker 4: players in the world, and you know, it gives them
Speaker 4: a lot more freedom to take on the pins they
Speaker 4: want to take on, and you know, play a little
Speaker 4: bit more conservative when they need to be.
Speaker 1: So when you have these wild kinds of surrounds with
Speaker 1: really severe penalties for missing the green, you mentioned, iron
Speaker 1: play gets emphasized a lot. And that's that's you know,
Speaker 1: you would assume that right if you hit the green,
Speaker 1: then you know you're not in the weird position. Are
Speaker 1: there any other effects that these wild surrounds have on
Speaker 1: the way that a course plays that are not as
Speaker 1: obvious as good iron play is rewarded.
Speaker 4: I would say distance is the other big part of that,
Speaker 4: because again, the difference between one hundred and seventy yard
Speaker 4: shot and one hundred and eighty five yard shot is
Speaker 4: pretty big. That would be true even if the same
Speaker 4: golfer we're hitting each shot, but the golfer who's fifteen
Speaker 4: yards farther is also the player who's longer, so now
Speaker 4: they're hitting an even shorter iron in Then if you
Speaker 4: drop the ball in the same spot for a player
Speaker 4: who hits it shorter. So the difference between hitting a
Speaker 4: nine iron and now potentially hitting a six iron somebody
Speaker 4: who's you know, fifteen twenty yards behind them is really large.
Speaker 4: Just allows you to control the ball so much better,
Speaker 4: and that obviously fed into the United States hand being
Speaker 4: such a longer team this week.
Speaker 1: All right, Joseph, thank you so much for coming on
Speaker 1: the podcast. People can find your work at Finding the Edge,
Speaker 1: a substack newsletter. Are you planning to do a kind
Speaker 1: of wrap right cup wrap up kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'll do a Ryder Cup recap, just going over
Speaker 4: some of the decisions Stricker made and talking a little
Speaker 4: bit about where some of the outperformance for Team USA
Speaker 4: came perfect. Thanks so much, thanks for having me, Garrett,
Speaker 4: really appreciate it.
Speaker 1: And finally let's go to Shane Ryan. You just saw
Speaker 1: the press conference, Shane, So what was the press conference?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: What was the vibe like there? I didn't get to
Speaker 1: see it myself. I know it was on TV, but
Speaker 1: I was podcasting during it. So what was going on there?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So you were talking about the American one or both?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean both of them, actually, both of
Speaker 1: them can be interesting. The Europeans the loser's press conferences
Speaker 1: for the Europeans have traditionally been less interesting than the
Speaker 1: Americans loser press conferences. But how were both of them?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the Europeans are very very emotional.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: I think I counted five of their team that cried,
Speaker 2: either be at the press conference or like before after
Speaker 2: the golf ended. Poulter was crying, Rory you probably saw
Speaker 2: on TV, was crying, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood, and Tommy
Speaker 2: Fleetwood all of them cried, and yeah, there, you know,
Speaker 2: it's funny. They love I don't know if they love
Speaker 2: each other. But for this week, it's like they do
Speaker 2: love each other and they definitely love being part of
Speaker 2: Team Europe, and they have this weird bond that it's
Speaker 2: kind of hard to understand, I think for Americans because
Speaker 2: they don't have it in quite the same way. But yeah,
Speaker 2: they sit there like it's very different than when the
Speaker 2: Americans lose, whether either like backbiting or just go home
Speaker 2: with no drama. But the Europeans are crying and saying
Speaker 2: how much they love each other and all this stuff.
Speaker 2: So that's pretty interesting. Like Shane Lowry, you gave a
Speaker 2: really emotional answer about what it meant to play, saying that, like,
Speaker 2: you know, at the time of my life, we're down
Speaker 2: by six points, like how great was to be when
Speaker 2: we're winning, And then the Americans came in We're all drunk.
Speaker 2: Of course, DJ was talking like trying to convince Steve
Speaker 2: Stricker to get a tattoo on his app and he's like,
Speaker 2: I'll do it too, I'll do it too, and just yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, Jordan Speed was the one most in control
Speaker 2: and ended up taking most of the answers because nobody
Speaker 2: else could focus long enough to keive a serious answer.
Speaker 2: And then Steve Stricker's in the backgrounds kind of just
Speaker 2: like being himself, being like, yeah, we tried really hard
Speaker 2: this week. Yeah, humble Wisconsin version of himself. I don't
Speaker 2: even know like if he got drunk at all, but
Speaker 2: if he did, the only effect it had was to
Speaker 2: like make his cheek slightly redder, but didn't change his
Speaker 2: personality when Iota and yeah, then you know, justin Thomas
Speaker 2: forced Brooks and Bryce and to hug in front of everybody.
Speaker 2: It's like he basically wouldn't let it go until they
Speaker 2: had done that. Yeah, So it's just really funny, and
Speaker 2: you know, they're very happy. One thing that's I think
Speaker 2: pretty interesting is they all seemed to understand that in
Speaker 2: order to kind of consolidate this, they do have to
Speaker 2: go win one on European soil, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like that's the next great challenge. And they were already
Speaker 2: according to Davis Love, They're already coming up to him
Speaker 2: and going like, get me to Rome, get me to Rome,
Speaker 2: like I really we run to go win. And the
Speaker 2: funny thing is that Europeans are also like I cannot
Speaker 2: wait for Rome, like we wanted to. We want to
Speaker 2: get this cup back. So already you know, if you're
Speaker 2: if you're a Ryder Cup freak, like I am already like,
Speaker 2: oh man, Rome's gonna be so good. So yeah, it
Speaker 2: was good. You know, they were all happy and it
Speaker 2: was a fun experience, and obviously they just you know,
Speaker 2: wiped the floor with them this week. It was totally
Speaker 2: totally a wipeout.
Speaker 1: One of the reports from the ground at Hazel teen
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen was that the American team was relatively
Speaker 1: subdued in victory, surprisingly so to the extent that Rory
Speaker 1: McElroy was looking at them and saying, hey, guys, come on,
Speaker 1: let's get the party going. Aren't you guys happy that
Speaker 1: you won? Was there? I don't know if that's necessarily
Speaker 1: a perfectly accurate characterization of what happened and after that
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup. But was the American team more joyful this time?
Speaker 1: Was there more of a celebration going on, would you say?
Speaker 1: Or or was it similar?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so, So I missed the trophy ceremony
Speaker 2: when I think they were like in the midst of
Speaker 2: their drinking and stuff.
Speaker 1: But certainly when the drinking started immediately after the matches ended,
Speaker 1: by the way, as soon as somebody finished in match,
Speaker 1: there was a drink in their hand basically right away.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, they give Spith the Ultra and then like
Speaker 2: Xander I think, chougged a high noon.
Speaker 1: In front of the I don't know how you can
Speaker 1: get drunk on michelob Ultra. How is that even possible?
Speaker 2: That would be a great question. I don't know.
Speaker 1: You have to drink a lot of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it would take a long time, no, I think,
Speaker 2: uh yeah. So it was a little weird because not
Speaker 2: everybody was there when Colin Moricala won it on eight.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think the only two players there were
Speaker 2: Schefler and to Shamba other than Marikala, and it was
Speaker 2: like there were a bunch of people around sixteen at
Speaker 2: one point, but it just didn't work out. The Ryder
Speaker 2: Cup's weird that way. You never kind of know, like
Speaker 2: what's going to happen and who's going to clinch the
Speaker 2: winning point. So it actually like more Kawa on seventeen
Speaker 2: made a birdie to go one up and that actually
Speaker 2: guaranteed the US fourteen point five points, and so technically
Speaker 2: that was the like clinching point, and yet it wasn't
Speaker 2: up on the scoreboard yet, so nobody thinks of it
Speaker 2: that way. But at that point, the US had won
Speaker 2: the Ryder Cup, barring morikwa like stripping naked and tackling
Speaker 2: a marshal or something to like to get dec'ed or
Speaker 2: you know, like anything short of like all you have
Speaker 2: to do is like finish the match. And then the
Speaker 2: funny like it was a kind of a weird situation
Speaker 2: where I'm eighteen, Marikawa had a putt to win the match,
Speaker 2: and like the situation was if he made the putt,
Speaker 2: your the US would have fifteen points, which is a victory,
Speaker 2: and if he missed the putt, the US would have
Speaker 2: fourteen and a half points, which is a victory. And
Speaker 2: so he had this weird situation where it was a
Speaker 2: putt to win the Ryder Cup no matter what happened,
Speaker 2: Like like imagine that. It's so funny, like, yeah, make
Speaker 2: or miss your team wins the Ryder Cup, congrats, And
Speaker 2: he missed it. He missed it, and that was the
Speaker 2: winning Ryder Cup moment, and so it was like what
Speaker 2: an anti climax because if you had made it, the
Speaker 2: place would have gone bonkers because that would have been
Speaker 2: like an emphatic like we just won the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 2: This made putt. Instead, you won the Ryder Cup with
Speaker 2: a missed putt, and so everybody was like, oh, then
Speaker 2: then the scoreboard change and then people started cheering. But
Speaker 2: you didn't have the whole team there, So long story short,
Speaker 2: there was no like one galvanizing moment like there was
Speaker 2: at Hazel Team where Ryan Moore kind of secured it
Speaker 2: and everybody was there when he did. Yeah, and then
Speaker 2: they just failed to like know how to celebrate like
Speaker 2: in this case. I think they would have done a
Speaker 2: better job, and they did later, but they like nobody
Speaker 2: was there when it happened, and it was just kind
Speaker 2: of weird that way.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it happened so early in the day that,
Speaker 1: as you say, people weren't waiting around, right, So there's
Speaker 1: there's kind of a weird vibe because most of the
Speaker 1: team is out still playing their matches at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, almost all of them are still playing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it was such a blow.
Speaker 2: Captains were like with DJ by accident or something.
Speaker 1: So right. Well, so obviously, as you mentioned, you were
Speaker 1: there covering the event for Golf Digest, and you're also
Speaker 1: engaged in a long term Ryder Cup project. That's going
Speaker 1: to result in a book, and so, you know, I
Speaker 1: thought it would be interesting to get a big takeaway
Speaker 1: from you about what this Ryder Cup meant. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you want to put it in
Speaker 1: historical context or not. I know you're thinking in that
Speaker 1: way in terms of, you know, what this Ryder Cup
Speaker 1: represents in the long history of Ryder Cups. But in
Speaker 1: any case, what do you think is your big takeaway
Speaker 1: at this moment from this event?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll give you a couple like overarching ideas that
Speaker 2: I'm having is that the first one coming into this
Speaker 2: my theory was that, you know, America can't lose this
Speaker 2: Ryder Cup. It would have been a really bad Ryder
Speaker 2: Cup to lose because they had this task force after
Speaker 2: twenty fourteen. Twenty fourteen was a disaster that could not
Speaker 2: be ignored and so it spawned like this reckoning where
Speaker 2: we go, what the hell do we do? You know,
Speaker 2: that's a US team like going, how do we start
Speaker 2: winning these things? Invented this task force and actually seem
Speaker 2: to have some really like positive developments out of that
Speaker 2: to win at Hazel Team. But then they go to
Speaker 2: Paris and just get you know, absolutely destroyed by the Europeans.
Speaker 2: And so from there, I don't think you can come
Speaker 2: back and lose on home soil and still think that
Speaker 2: you've made any progress or that you have any idea
Speaker 2: how to beat the Europeans. Ever, right, so there were
Speaker 2: those stakes coming in. So what the US did first
Speaker 2: of all was they held serve and they prove that,
Speaker 2: you know, or they at least left the idea open
Speaker 2: that all the things they accomplished with this task force
Speaker 2: are really working. And they won, of course by historic
Speaker 2: margin nineteen to nine. It wasn't just a victory, it
Speaker 2: was a really emphatic good victory. And so what that
Speaker 2: did I think is it sets up a chance for
Speaker 2: the US to win in Rome, and then, you know,
Speaker 2: give weight to this idea that this young generation of
Speaker 2: Americans who grew up watching Tiger Woods and are just
Speaker 2: kind of like these swaggering alpha males, like the entire team,
Speaker 2: like they're like, you know, like watching Shuffler go beat
Speaker 2: Rohm today. It's just an example like nobody is scared
Speaker 2: of anything. And granted Ram is tired and all that stuff,
Speaker 2: but they're really good. And so yeah, they go win
Speaker 2: in Rome, and then you've got a whole narrative switch.
Speaker 2: But the other thing, just on like a sort of
Speaker 2: micro level, is just what a great job Steve Stricker did.
Speaker 2: I just super super impressed with him in terms like
Speaker 2: everything from you know, accepting more captain's picks when it
Speaker 2: was offered to him, knowing that, you know, captain's picks
Speaker 2: play better than the guys who qualify at the bottom
Speaker 2: of the table, usually giving himself that flexibility. The captain's
Speaker 2: picks he picked, you know, the way he set up
Speaker 2: the course and everything like that, which is you know,
Speaker 2: getting to be like pretty normally everybody kind of knows
Speaker 2: how to do that. But then his like leadership style,
Speaker 2: he like squelched the Brooks Brice and stuff right away.
Speaker 2: He knew that these guys didn't need big speeches or
Speaker 2: inspirational videos or anything like that. He cut all that
Speaker 2: stuff out. His whole thing was like, I'm gonna prepare
Speaker 2: like crazy, But as far as the players are concerned,
Speaker 2: all they have to know is like who they're gonna
Speaker 2: play with early, They're gonna know exactly what their role is.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna let them know that there's gonna be no
Speaker 2: curve balls, no confusion beyond that I'm just gonna try
Speaker 2: to make life easy for them so they can go
Speaker 2: out there and be who they are, which is this
Speaker 2: really powerful, great team. And you know, he did everything
Speaker 2: so well. One little thing I learned today was that
Speaker 2: Brooks and Bryson were so willing to like, you know,
Speaker 2: be part of the team that they told him like,
Speaker 2: we'll play together if you want it, and he and
Speaker 2: his vice captains were thinking, like, oh, maybe that would
Speaker 2: be really cool. But then Stricker had the instinct of like, actually,
Speaker 2: if we do that, Brooks Bryson is going to become
Speaker 2: like the over like the overwhelming story instead of the
Speaker 2: team being the story, which he wants. So he had
Speaker 2: the instinct not to do that. He didn't take Patrick
Speaker 2: reed like, there's all this stuff he did that was
Speaker 2: so smart. I think that you look at it, it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: the US was superior and like they were gonna have
Speaker 2: the advantage coming in. But Stricker did absolutely everything he
Speaker 2: needed to do to set these guys loose, to just
Speaker 2: decimate the Europeans, and I thought that was like really cool.
Speaker 2: But speaking more broadly and historically, the fact that he
Speaker 2: is doing all that stuff and that he learned from
Speaker 2: a Dina and he learned from Glenn Eagles very good
Speaker 2: sign for the Americans that they could have a really
Speaker 2: good template moving forward the way the Europeans have had
Speaker 2: for like forty years, and this could be a thing where, yeah,
Speaker 2: in like six or seven years you might be going, oh, man,
Speaker 2: like maybe the US is just going to like dominate.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 1: There seemed to be a building narrative early in the
Speaker 1: week that Steve Stricker wasn't doing well, that he was disengaged.
Speaker 1: He had just been playing on the Champions Tour and
Speaker 1: he didn't do well in the press conference with Patrick Harrington,
Speaker 1: and there there was a little bit of a groundswell. Now,
Speaker 1: maybe it's one of those things where, you know, Ryder
Speaker 1: Cup weeks are kind of like choose your own adventure,
Speaker 1: where you know, reporters have to kind of set up
Speaker 1: a number of different options for where the week could
Speaker 1: go because nobody knows, nobody has any information. You have
Speaker 1: to figure out something to do for those first four
Speaker 1: days of the week, which get to be way too
Speaker 1: long for the media. And so there were some people
Speaker 1: who were kind of casting doubt on Stricker's captaincy. Did
Speaker 1: you have any sense early in the week I know
Speaker 1: from your articles that you are pretty positive about the
Speaker 1: job that he was doing early on, But did you
Speaker 1: censor did you see any indications that things might not
Speaker 1: be going that way?
Speaker 2: You see? You know, there's like to pat myself on
Speaker 2: the back, like I predicted an American blowout. It felt
Speaker 2: like that was was what I did. I got the
Speaker 2: sense ever since, so there's a lot we don't know.
Speaker 2: You know, like a month ago, we didn't know what
Speaker 2: kind of captain Stricker was gonna because we're not inside
Speaker 2: those doors. But from the minute he did his press
Speaker 2: conference after making his captain's picks, all the way through
Speaker 2: this week, I sensed nothing except that he was doing
Speaker 2: a really good job. Now, I am a big fan
Speaker 2: of like reading into history and reading into the right
Speaker 2: information to make like good predictions in terms of the
Speaker 2: Ryder Cup. I like that aspect of it. But as
Speaker 2: you were alluding to, there are people who get absolutely
Speaker 2: lost in the stupidest details and so like, yeah, like
Speaker 2: there was somebody who came up to another reporter, a
Speaker 2: European after their first press conference and was like, oh,
Speaker 2: Patrick Carrington just ran circles around Stripper in that press conference,
Speaker 2: And you're like I think even said like one mil
Speaker 2: to the Europeans or something. You're like that doesn't matter,
Speaker 2: like don't like it's so stupid. And then another thing
Speaker 2: is like the inspirational video came out where it was like,
Speaker 2: you know, only one hundred and sixty four have ever
Speaker 2: played for Team Europe and there's been like three hundred
Speaker 2: astronauts in space or something like. Personally, I always kind
Speaker 2: of find that stuff a little bit cheesy. That may
Speaker 2: just be because I'm a cynic or something, but sometimes
Speaker 2: they're really cool. But ultimately it's a video, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean. Like these things can be good supplements
Speaker 2: if your team responds to that kind of stuff, or
Speaker 2: like in Stricers case, it may be good not to
Speaker 2: do it because it's like your team won't respond to
Speaker 2: that in any case. Like a lot of people extrapolate
Speaker 2: from that and go, look what Europe does. Look look
Speaker 2: at their spirit like this video, like they act like
Speaker 2: the video is gonna make a difference, or like the
Speaker 2: fact that they wore cheese heads, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: out in front of the crowd. You saw that, and
Speaker 2: it's like, look at them, They're getting the crowd on
Speaker 2: their side and it's like, don't get lost in the
Speaker 2: small stuff. Like I guarantee you come Friday, this crowd
Speaker 2: is going to be like hostile, you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: Like to the Europeans, the fact that they wore cheeseheads
Speaker 2: is not gonna make any difference. The video won't make
Speaker 2: any difference. Look at the stuff that actually matters, which
Speaker 2: is how the teams are being managed and how people
Speaker 2: feel and like who's dispensing the right information to their team.
Speaker 2: And then you know broader stuff like you know home
Speaker 2: course advantage, which has become really really enormous in the
Speaker 2: Ryder Cup. So yeah, there was that stuff during the week,
Speaker 2: but you almost just have to laugh at it when
Speaker 2: people bring it up because it's so irrelevant. But people
Speaker 2: love to just like see these little details and go, oh,
Speaker 2: look at this video with the astronauts, like now europe
Speaker 2: can't lose, you know this it's bizarre.
Speaker 1: So I can see, you know, it's always hard to
Speaker 1: predict what's gonna happen in the next Ryder Cup. I
Speaker 1: talked about this with Ben Coley earlier, where you know,
Speaker 1: two years is a long time. A lot can happen.
Speaker 1: Certain Europeans can European golfers can emerge, and we can
Speaker 1: find ourselves in a situation in you know, twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three where the European team is actually favored. That seems
Speaker 1: unlikely at this point, but it might happen. But at
Speaker 1: the same time, it's fun to try to predict this stuff.
Speaker 1: And so I guess the way I'd put it is,
Speaker 1: if you were to build a case that this is
Speaker 1: the beginning of an era of American dominance in the
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup, would you be more able to build a case,
Speaker 1: a convincing case for that, or to build a convincing
Speaker 1: case that home course advantage has become so significant that
Speaker 1: we are simply in a period of the Ryder Cup
Speaker 1: where the home team is just going to have a really,
Speaker 1: really good chance at blowing the other team out.
Speaker 2: I think the latter. I mean you look at two
Speaker 2: thousand or the stat which is that since two thousand
Speaker 2: and six, however many Ryder Cups there have been since then,
Speaker 2: a lot the home team has gone into Sunday singles
Speaker 2: with a lead every single time, and the smallest of
Speaker 2: those leads was nine to seven. There's been a bunch
Speaker 2: of ten six leads. Obviously it was eleven to five
Speaker 2: this year, and so that shows you, like, yeah, the
Speaker 2: home team does incredibly well impairs. We had Madina where
Speaker 2: the Europeans were able to reverse it in this incredible, weird,
Speaker 2: anomalous day. But other than that, the home team is
Speaker 2: one every Ryder Cup, right, So yeah, gun to my
Speaker 2: head right now if like you're asking me to predict,
Speaker 2: Like you make a great point. We don't know what
Speaker 2: the teams are gonna look like in two years. We
Speaker 2: don't know what the captains are gonna be, like you
Speaker 2: know what I mean, that is a huge deal to me,
Speaker 2: Like how will the captains manage? You would like to
Speaker 2: think that there have been enough examples of good captains
Speaker 2: on both sides now that you're gonna have two good
Speaker 2: captains and that would be good. But don't forget that
Speaker 2: the Europeans get to control the course and so they'll
Speaker 2: do everything they can to like make it so these bombers,
Speaker 2: like these US bombers can't go nuts like they were
Speaker 2: in Whistling Straits. So yeah, gun to my head, Like
Speaker 2: I think europe should be favored right now for the
Speaker 2: next Ryder Cup, and I think it's easier to make
Speaker 2: that case. But you can certainly say like, yeah, look
Speaker 2: at the way these US players play, they're fearless. You're
Speaker 2: probably gonna see at least eight of those guys on
Speaker 2: the on the Rome team. Yeah, they could win too,
Speaker 2: but I like the European case a little bit better.
Speaker 1: Yeah all right, So Shane, obviously people can find your
Speaker 1: work on Golf Digest dot com. But I'm curious, is
Speaker 1: there another Ryder Cup Run podcast coming out after this
Speaker 1: Ryder Cup?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I'll keep doing the Ryder Cup Run. So I
Speaker 2: did three episodes from Whistling Straight and then I did
Speaker 2: the last one Saturday night, and it was basically like,
Speaker 2: we don't need to do another one Sunday, and I'm
Speaker 2: sticking by that, like, we know, we knew this Saturday.
Speaker 2: It was over by Saturday, and I hit all the
Speaker 2: main points, and you know, there's a ton of content
Speaker 2: out there for you to consume about this Ryder Cup
Speaker 2: if you'd like. But in terms of like how I
Speaker 2: like to approach it, of looking at the history and
Speaker 2: looking at the tactics, nothing that happened on Sunday was
Speaker 2: incredibly relevant because it was just it was always going
Speaker 2: to be an American win. It was always going to
Speaker 2: be a blowout. Only interesting thing at the end was
Speaker 2: are they going to set the record? And they did so.
Speaker 2: But I will continue to do Ryder Cup run episodes
Speaker 2: for previous Ryder Cups all the way up to the
Speaker 2: publication of my book, which will happen in May, which
Speaker 2: will be a little bit about the Ryder Cup history
Speaker 2: and a lot about the twenty twenty one Ryder Cup
Speaker 2: that we just saw. So yeah, people can find me
Speaker 2: on both places, and my book is available for pre
Speaker 2: order now should anyone.
Speaker 1: Be so wow? Yeah? Yeah right, it's available for pre
Speaker 1: order and you've got to write it the next.
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, yeah. So I'll keep doing that. I love
Speaker 2: the Ryder Cup and it's been really fun to do
Speaker 2: those projects in the podcast. People seem to like it
Speaker 2: so great.
Speaker 1: All right, thank you so much, Shane. Thanks This episode
Speaker 1: of the Friday Podcast was a bit of an experiment.
Speaker 1: You can always rely on us to try new things
Speaker 1: and keep refreshing the format. If you have thoughts about
Speaker 1: what we're doing, maybe throw us a rating and review
Speaker 1: on iTunes. Those really do help new listeners find us here.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.