The United States Ryder Cup team had a Tom Watson problem
The United States lost the Ryder Cup because it was inferior at golf. The United States never had a chance because its captain got torched.
The United States was never going to win the 2014 Ryder Cup. Can we start with that premise?
Oh sure, the Americans might have pulled off a miracle and caught the correct matchups and gotten the full Patrick Reed Experience to carry them home, but the odds were slimmer than Corey Pavin from the moment the teams were set.
They were facing somebody I think will end up being one of the five greatest players ever (Rory McIlroy), a major winner at the peak of his powers (Justin Rose), and the US Open winner by eight strokes this year (Martin Kaymer).
And those weren't even necessarily Europe's three best guys.
The problem I have with how everything happened is that the US could have at least lost better than it did. It got steamrolled in the end, blasted by McIlroy's driver, and blindsided by Mr. Ryder Cup himself, Ian Poulter.
It was utter destruction.
Yes it's true that the US golfers needed to simply play better golf, as Tom Watson said Sunday, but when you're backed into a corner, as the US was, it must take a supreme effort from your coach (captain, whatever) to out-strategize the other side.
And if European captain Paul McGinley was playing chess, Tom Watson wasn't even playing checkers; he was watching somebody else play them.
In 2012 Jason Fried, the owner of a company called 37 Signals, had Amazon owner Jeff Bezos come talk to his company about leadership. Here's what Fried said about Bezos:
"He said people who were right a lot of the time were people who often changed their minds. He doesn’t think consistency of thought is a particularly positive trait. It’s perfectly healthy — encouraged, even — to have an idea tomorrow that contradicted your idea today."
I'm not upset that Watson changed his strategy -- you have to "captain by the seat of your pants," as he said -- I'm upset that he never had one to begin with.
It wasn't "oh, we were going to do this but now things went badly so we're going to do this." It was, very literally, "I don't know who I put in for who at what time."
When asked on Sunday if he still thought he came to Scotland with a "winning philosophy," Watson responded "yes, absolutely."
Except nobody knows what the hell it was.
Did you see what Watson said about the Friday four-ball afternoon pairings after Bubba Watson and Webb Simpson got beat Friday morning?
"Well, they probably changed -- probably changed, obviously with Bubba, the afternoon pairings. Thought I would probably play Bubba twice, but it didn't work out that way."
When he was asked who he replaced Bubba with, Watson legitimately didn't know. The exact question: "Can you tell me who you replaced Bubba with?"
"Well, no -- I mean, it's just -- you know, from the beginning, you had some horses that you looked at, you were going to ride. When they don't perform, you have to make a decision not to play them, and that's what I did."
Huh?
Then Watson tried to absolve himself of all blame in the Sunday press conference by insinuating that the captain shouldn't carry the weight he does to begin with.
When asked if he would change the format so that all the players would play everyday, Watson agreed.
"Yes, I would. I would like to see the change in that format. Then everybody knows they are going to go 36 holes and then everybody knows that they have to be in shape to play."
Of course you would!
Part of what makes the Ryder Cup great is that a great captain can galvanize his nation to the point that it would run through a brick wall (or Thomas Bjorn) to get a half point.
Watson couldn't have gotten Phil Mickelson to run through a life-size paper mache of Tiger Woods.
As Adam Sarson pointed out in this terrific piece, it wasn't the first time Watson tried to take the decision-making out of his own hands. He did it last year by trying to get rid of the captain's picks altogether.
You might as well just let Phil Mickelson fly the plane over!
This squad lacked the accountability of an elite captain, and that was pretty obvious. It likely wouldn't have mattered in the end, but it might in the future.
Was Phil Mickelson wrong for calling Watson out publicly? Probably, but he certainly wasn't wrong about what he said.
It's not Tom Watson's fault the United States lost. It's his fault that the United States never even had a chance.
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