It’s a start, but will it be enough?
Keegan Bradley, noting that the members of the U.S. Ryder Cup team dined together, stayed together, and even played together in the first two rounds of the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship in Napa, California, said, “It’s the closest team I’ve ever seen.”
Heck, Captain Keegan elected not to even play in the Procore, the second most selfless thing he’s done after his decision not to play in the Ryder Cup itself.
All of which seemed to be a tacit admission that the U.S., which has lost 10 of the last 14 Ryder Cups, has paled in comparison to Europe in its team building. (The exception being Paul Azinger’s scrappy 2008 squad.)
What is Europe doing right? Its secret weapon in its 16½-11½ romp at the 2023 Ryder Cup at Marco Simone outside Rome was something many won’t want to talk about, but one that bears mentioning anyway: vulnerability.
American males, especially athletes, welcome that word as happily as one might welcome baby alligators in the toilet. In sports it’s invoked as a bad thing, as in: “We showed too much vulnerability in the run defense.” Stroke-play golf is like that – minimizing weaknesses, i.e. vulnerabilities – and the Americans with their lone-cowboy ethos dominate. But in the Ryder Cup, vulnerability is a good thing. When the walls come down, a team comes together.
“I always say a team beats a roster, as long as the team has clarity of purpose with what it’s trying to achieve,” said Bhrett McCabe, a clinical and sports psychologist who works with University of Alabama teams, the Milwaukee Brewers, and PGA Tour pros like Billy Horschel. “Last time the U.S. had a roster. Europe had a team.
“The vulnerability comes in because athletes have egos,” continued McCabe, who was in Rome, “and they’ve got to drop their guard to be where they’re told, and when. When the best players are locked into team activities, that is a very strong predictor of success, and it seemed like Luke Donald created a master class.”
Bradley is off to a solid start here, for in declaring that he would not play in the Ryder Cup (by selecting himself as a captain’s pick) he called it “heartbreaking.” That’s vulnerability, and his selflessness seemed to filter down to his players as Bryson DeChambeau went to the Procore, for which he was ineligible as a member of LIV Golf, just to bond with his U.S. teammates.
“It’s the ability to walk through those gates and those doors and forget about who you are outside of this week. What you have done or what you may do afterwards really, truly doesn’t matter.”
Jon Rahm
Meanwhile, however, European captain Donald is bringing back a genetically identical team to the one from two years ago. (The only roster change: Rasmus Højgaard replaces his twin, Nicolai.) And this European team is as bonded as most any Ryder Cup team we’ve ever seen, which goes back to their vulnerability in Rome. Jon Rahm, whose CV surpassed those of many teammates, let the walls down when he minimized his individual record.
“It’s the ability to walk through those gates and those doors and forget about who you are outside of this week,” said Rahm, who went 2-0-2, earning three points. “What you have done or what you may do afterwards really, truly doesn’t matter.”
Then Ryder Cup rookie Bob MacIntyre (2-0-1) admitted to Sky Sports that he was so terrified that he nearly cried on the way from the driving range to the first tee Friday. (Vulnerable.) Justin Rose tended to his four-ball partner with the loving care one normally associates with a wet nurse. (Tender.)
“When we had done all the TV cameras and all that,” MacIntyre said, “he comes over, put his arm around me and goes, ‘Everything is going to be alright, this will be over in two-and-a-half minutes.’ He was brilliant – he’s so experienced, he kept me calm, he trusted me, he believed in me.”
Most vulnerable was Donald, who was surprised at the winners’ press conference when asked what his late parents would have made of his captaincy. Donald tried to gather himself as a hand came down and squeezed his shoulder, the hand belonging to Europe’s Shane Lowry.
“I miss them, of course,” said Donald, who won the press conferences all week over U.S. captain Zach Johnson. “I would have loved to share this moment with them. I think some of the things that we talked about as a group was it’s really, really important to not just play for each other but play for those that mean the most to you. I think that’s super powerful.”
Donald’s response was raw, honest and human; he embodied Europe’s strength. They play for those who came before, for their loved ones, and for each other.
Although stars such as Rahm could have traveled with their entourages, every player on the European team flew together from Marco Simone, where they had gone for a scouting trip, to the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth in England. Noting this, Sepp Straka (1-2-0) said later, he knew they would win.
Meanwhile, the U.S. team in Rome was rallying behind Patrick Cantlay’s right to not wear a hat amid reporting that he was protesting the event’s pay structure.
This year’s American side will be buoyed by the home crowd at Bethpage, of course, but also, perhaps, by Bradley’s decision not to pick himself as a player. His team-first move recalled Rahm’s quote two years ago, that whatever you’ve done individually, even if you’ve all but earned the right to play, doesn’t matter.
Teams are just a series of relationships, which are only as strong as individuals’ willingness to be vulnerable, and that strength is needed under duress. If you don’t believe the example of Donald and company in ’23, consider the 1999 U.S. Ryder Cup team, which faced a 10-6 deficit going into the singles but came together like never before at their team meeting Saturday night.
Payne Stewart teared up as he talked about wishing his father could have been there, the emotion spreading to Tom Lehman. Hal Sutton got choked up as his wife talked about how much she loved him. Robin Love, wife of Davis, had everyone wiping away tears as she invoked the late Harvey Penick, lifelong teacher to U.S. captain Ben Crenshaw and others, and Davis Love Jr.
“You guys go out and take dead aim for Davis’ dad and for Harvey,” Robin Love said, per an oral history in Golf Digest, which noted, “The entire room was crying.”
The U.S. won 8½ of 12 points the next day to win the Ryder Cup, 14½-13½.
After the 2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National in Paris, Patrick Reed complained to The New York Times that he hadn’t played with Jordan Spieth (who partnered Justin Thomas). And at the 2010 Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor in Wales, the U.S. team began to fray amid talk of faulty rainsuits, among other distractions.
Not all winning Ryder Cup teams need to come together like that, but when they’re on the road they usually do. On the road, the pressure to be perfect is such that any hairline fracture in the building of a team can turn into a gruesome implosion.
Exhibit A: the 2014 Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, Scotland, where Phil Mickelson called out U.S. captain Tom Watson in the cringe-worthy losers’ press conference. The wreckage of that flawed American team can still be found strewn about the Scottish countryside if you know where to look.
Europe’s Rory McIlroy has posited that to win a Ryder Cup on the road is one of the hardest things in sports, requiring an unimpeachable cohesiveness as the team comes up against forces that mean to tear it apart.
Bradley, acutely aware of the importance of such even as the home team, was clearly emphasizing it in his wine-country “off-site” with his players.
“When I was named captain, this was something that I wanted,” he said in Napa, “but, like, they wanted it more than I did.”
The degree to which that togetherness means anything remains to be seen, for team building is more than just a bunch of guys sitting around the fire. That’s a beer commercial. (Or a wine commercial, in this case.) Team building is about what gets shared, who has the courage to go first, and whether others follow their lead, creating the all-important momentum that the Ryder Cup is famous for before even a single shot is struck. In a word, it’s about vulnerability.
Europe embraced it in 2023. Can the Americans play against type and match them? At the Ryder Cup, part golf, part social experiment, the answer to that question will be revealed in due time, and most likely on the scoreboard.
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Top: Luke Donald and the Europeans have become masterful team builders.
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