Poring over the Ryder Cup entrails.
The headlines have been devastating:
“Dire Straits”
“Slaughter by the water”
And I have to say much of the criticism of captain Padraig Harrington is justified.
In particular his decision to confine himself to three wild cards (previous captain Thomas Bjorn had four and USA skipper Steve Stricker six), thus passing over Justin Rose; he weighted the final event the PGA in Wentworth too heavily which confused those on the border of selection like Matt Fitzpatrick and Lee Westwood; he only found one winning pair – Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia.
This said the European team that could beat the USA one did not exist.
Lee Westwood looks like the man to replace Harrington. This makes sense in view of his Ryder Cup experience – only Garcia has won more games.
The old order of him and Ian Poulter looks over now.
We must look to the younger group of emerging players like the Danish Hojgaard twins that have won two PGA events in successive weeks, Victor Perez the young Frenchman based in Dundee, Sam Horsfield, Bob MacIntrye and Guido Migliozzi for the next encounter in Rome.
With Victor Novland, half the next team could be under 25.
Generally America utilise analytics more in their sports but for this match Stricker followed his gut pairing Californians Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Texans Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth and best of all their veteran Dustin Johnson (five wins) with 2 time Major winner Collin Morikawa.
Their core players – by which I mean no Major winners like Tony Finau – and rookies like Schauffele, Scottie Scheffler, Morikawa, Cantlay and Daniel Berger all made a greater input than their European equivalents,too many of whom were out of form.
Betting-wise I did okay backing the US victory and Cantlay as top rookie.
The magnitude of the victory did surprise me. It’s not the easiest encounter to assess: you don’t know in particular how many matches each team member will play.
