They just destroyed the Rest of the World’s team by an unprecedented margin. The score of 19-11 flattering the visitors to New Jersey. With the USA winning only 4.5 points of the 12 points on offer over the Sunday’s singles, things could have looked a lot more lopsided. They actually had a shot at closing out the competition on Saturday.
Whilst the Ryder Cup machine, this side of the pond, started warming up its marketing department, letting us know that it’s only one year until the next contest, the exuberant and youthful (a little more on that later) USA team were more than warming up, they were destroying all before them with the Statue of Liberty overlooking. The current US team are on a run, two Presidents Cups and one Ryder Cup and their eyes are firmly focused on Paris. I believe we should now be worried.
I am a huge Ryder Cup fan, my place on the sofa is already booked with a three-day pass. I have loved the contest since watching the Belfry in the mid-eighties. You may remember me saying that the US are getting organised. That damned “Task Force” which was put in place after the Gleneagles mutiny, led by the swashbuckling Mickelson, put to rest the old complacency by saying things had to change.
They thought that turning up and playing was all it took to win. Yet Europe continually punched above their weight, winning more than their fair share. We were organised, and they were not. Now they are.
Just looking alongside the fairways at the USA Captain’s assistants, you could see that they were together and on a mission. Tiger, Fred, Davis lll and 2018 Ryder Cup Captain Jim Furyk all alongside the Captain Steve Stricker. On the other side of the fairway was Nick Price’s team of Vice Captains, Ernie and he is the only person I can refer to on a first name basis because if I carried on and said, Tony, Geoff and Mike you probably would struggle with their surnames (Johnstone, Ogilvy and Weir, if you are curious).
Here is the scariest quote, from the weekend, for all of you Team Europe fans. It comes from the Golden Boy Spieth himself, “What’s really cool for us is, it’s not the dominance of this week. It’s the way this team has really come together, and we recognise that this is a very similar team to what we can see for the next, you know, five to twenty years, potentially. We have got a lot of really young guys on the team that are doing the right things to make their career last a long time and to be at the top level of the game. We feel we can be around each other in these team events for a lot of years to come.”
Five to twenty years, the next Ryder Cup is in twelve months. We haven’t lost on home ground for twenty-four years. Not since the Belfry in 1993. Now I don’t want to be a foreboding soul. I really don’t, but…. you have to see what’s happening. They are now focused on us. We’d better be ready and we’d better be better.
In the PGA Tour Championship two weeks ago, the USA had twenty-one players in the field of thirty. If you count Paul Casey as one of ours, (there is still a chance he may not represent Europe next year) Europe had four. With the notable absentees from that group being McIlroy and Stenson, they didn’t qualify for the top thirty.
The USA has depth, youth and support on their side plus a huge desire to be the first team in the, then, twenty-five years to win on European soil, first to win in France.
We don’t have depth or youth, the support is there and so is the experience. We do know how to get the job done, we do punch above our weight. Is it enough? Who knows? What I do know is that this Ryder Cup is going to be breathtakingly intriguing. No doubt, if we win this one, it will really hurt the Americans. Which makes it even more compelling.