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Thoughts on the Ryder Cup
First on GolfObserver: September 25, 2004
Others have had their say about the recent Ryder Cup matches. Here is what Bob Rosburg thought.
Now as Dave Marr said for almost three decades, "Back to you Rossie."
- GolfObserver editors
--------------------------------------------------The victory by the European team at Oakland Hills gives them four wins in the last five Ryder Cup Matches. I think one reason that they might be better at team golf is that most players on the European Tour travel together, they stay in the same hotels, they eat together. They are a lot more friendly with each other than our guys.
The American players are more aloof. They travel to tournaments on private planes and you rarely see guys go to dinner together. They're 12 individuals and that makes it dificult for the captain to pair players in foursomes and four-balls. It didn't look like Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were enjoying themselves out there.
The other thing is that our points system might not be giving us the players who are playing the best at the time. Points are given out over a two-year period, and this time it was three years because of the delay from 2001 to 2002, so there are some players on the team who piled up their points quite a while ago. Going into the match, it looked like our team wasn't playing as well.
Still, I don't think America losing the Ryder Cup is cause for any great alarm and I think our players and captains shouldn't be so harshly criticized. This isn't what the Ryder Cup should be. It's gotten to be way too much of a media frenzy. When guys are ready to jump into the ocean when they lose a match, I don't think that's quite right. I don't think that's what it should all be about.
I know Curtis Strange had a pretty rough time. He lost as a player and he lost as a captain. It's something he'll never live down. I just don't think it should be that big of a thing.
I only got to play in the Ryder Cup once, in 1959, and I think it's the best thing that ever happened to me. It was a nice, friendly game, where the guys really tried to win, but they also had a great time together. We had dinner every night with the British team. We got to meet some great people, and a lot of them are still my friends. I think that's what Samuel Ryder had in mind when he started the competition.
I would very much like to have been a Ryder Cup captain. That's one thing that really sticks in my craw. I thought I should have at least been considered, and I don't think I was. I had won the PGA Championship and the Club Pro Championship, I was the tournament chairman with the PGA, I was chairman of the policy board. It could have been that I was a little controversial. I don't think they should have ever looked down at you if you backed the split of the PGA Tour from the PGA of America, but I'm not sure that didn't have a little to do with it. I might have been a little controversial.
That's in the old days, though. I wouldn't like being a captain as much the way it is now. It's really a tough thing to be captain. You're subject to so much second-guessing.
I do think it was a little better this year. There was a little more camaraderie between the two teams and the gallery wasn't out of hand. I still think it's too much, though, and it puts too much pressure on everybody. It's gotten too late to scale it back. They sell too many tickets and I think there's too much greed involved as to how much money is made off of it. With the amount of tickets they sell, nobody can see, especially on Friday and Saturday when there are just four matches at a time.
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