Inside The Ryder Cup: Cheeseheads. Autographs. Brooks Koepka & Bryson DeChambeau?
By Martin Rogers
FOX Sports Columnist
The core Team Europe belief system for the Ryder Cup, from its players and caddies to its vociferous fans, goes something like this.
The American team doesn’t like each other, or at least not enough to function as a cohesive group. The United States squad is a bunch of individualists who are unable to effectively switch gears to team competition. The Europeans are tighter-knit for a variety of reasons, one possibly being that the European Tour by nature is more social and friendly than its PGA counterpart.
And, that all these things add up to the reasons why Europe has won four of the past five Ryder Cups and nine of the past 12, despite having a weaker squad on paper virtually every time.
The European theory holds some water, given how things have played out over the past quarter-century. For so long a relatively meaningless exhibition dominated by the U.S. every two years, the event has turned into — more often than not — a party with a blue and yellow (the colors of the European flag) hue.
"Passion for the Ryder Cup was never something that I had to learn or gain," Europe’s Lee Westwood, preparing to play the competition for the 11th time, told reporters. "Pretty much like European team spirit is not something we have to work on. It's just there."
In modern times, Team Europe has generally done a far better job of meeting the unique pressure of the Ryder Cup and handling its intense demands. Four sessions over two days of pairs play will be followed once again by Sunday singles, a gauntlet played out this time at Whistling Straits in Sheboygan, Wisconsin.
The representative aspect of the action typically leads to scenes more reminiscent of a college football game, with the constant accompaniment of noise, missed putts cheered raucously and in all probability, a good number of alcoholic beverages consumed as the days wear on.
Some players thrive upon it, while others, even some of the best in the world, cower. Tiger Woods’ all-time record is 13-21-3. Phil Mickelson, a non-playing vice captain on the U.S. team, is 18-22-7. Meanwhile, Europe’s Ian Poulter, currently No. 50 in the world and with no majors to his name, who has needed a captain’s wild-card pick for five of his seven appearances, is 14-6-2 and raring to go again.
"I hate losing," Poulter said. "When you play match play, you know what you have to do when you tee up on the first hole. You can control a match. You can dictate a match. You can play certain shots to try and put your opponent under pressure.
"It's just a fun game of chess, to be honest, to enjoy what that means, that you're under pressure right from the get-go."
There has been plenty of speculation as to why and how things have gone so wrong, so frequently, for the American team over the past several renditions. Mickelson spearheaded a Ryder Cup task force after the 2014 defeat, and it seemed to work with a revamp of the selection system pre-empting victory at Hazeltine two years later.
By 2018 on the outskirts of Paris, however, the Europeans took control once more with a lopsided 17.5-10.5 triumph.
One of the criticisms leveled at the Americans is that they expect victory to "just happen." That it’s just about the golf.
"They just play better," Dustin Johnson said. "It’s really simple. Whoever plays better is going to win. I mean, it’s not rocket science."
However, there is some science to the European approach, with use of various team bonding and motivational tactics. This year’s captain, Padraig Harrington, has implemented devices both meaningful and frivolous.
Months in advance, Harrington decided to have each player’s golf bag embossed with a number that represents where they fit in Europe’s (or previously Great Britain and Ireland’s) Ryder Cup history. Sergio Garcia, for example, is No. 120, meaning he was the 120th player ever to have played for the team.
"Five hundred seventy people have been into space," Rory McIlroy said. "I think over 5,000 people have climbed Mount Everest. When you sort of break it down like that, it's a pretty small group and it's pretty cool."
Another example came when European players arrived at the first tee wearing cheeseheads and began handing out signed Green Bay Packers caps as a cheeky way of trying to get the Wisconsin crowd to temper its patriotism.
It is an irony that all this talk of togetherness, and who does it better, comes amid a time when the two best known current players are locked in a spicy public feud. Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau have made no secret of their antipathy toward each other, and it has been one of the talking points of the season.
It gives rise to a delicious possibility — that they could be paired together. U.S. skipper Steve Stricker has so far rebuffed any such talk and seems disinterested in what could be a distracting sideshow.
However, could that be part of the ruse? For what better way to show that this American group, featuring eight of the world’s top 10, is united than having two alphas put their differences behind them to win together?
"[Brooks and I] had some great conversations during [Tour] Championship week when we had dinner and when I sat down to dinner with him last night," DeChambeau said. "It was fine and I think there might be something fun coming up here, but I won’t speak too much more on that."
Pair selection is always shrouded in secrecy, and there is always plenty of subterfuge to try to get the opposition guessing. Perhaps DeChambeau was just playing a mental game, but given how things have gone recently for the U.S., despite being a -188 favorite with FOX Bet, the Americans might feel there is little to lose.
Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports and the author of the FOX Sports Insider Newsletter. You can subscribe to the newsletter here.
