I don’t get the correlation of what @jwfickett and @Soly said about the course to being the only reason the US lost. How I took it was that the course was so drastically pinched in and difficult that anyone outside of a niche set of tour players would be able to get around that course. Not reasonably playable for 99.999% of golfers = “that’s not golf”. The course set up led to this Ryder Cup being one of the most boring Ryder Cups ever. 1 good recovery shot all week.
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Maybe record a new pod where you say “we bow at the feet of our overlords from Europe” and loop it for a good 60 or 70 minutes will satisfy these guys.
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I most definitely do not agree here. We of course will never know, but I maintain that this was probably the best overall collection of talent that the US has had. Put them on a course that plays a lot more like a PGA Tour course, I think they would win it easily. But of course, they had 2 years to prepare for this specific golf course and they looked absolutely shell shocked come Friday afternoon, which is inexcusable.
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Another thing that is understated in this whole debate is momentum. I’ve played on a few of these 12-15 man teams as well as a 2-man teams in best ball tourneys and such. It is all about momentum. Once things start going bad, it is twice as hard to get it back. Players start pushing and have the “now or never” mentality.
If this was at Hazeltine, the US teams momentum would be completely different. That course provides a lot more opportunity to get one back or make 3-4 birds in a row. All of a sudden 1 match flips Friday afternoon and it is an entire different ball game. Momentum swing not as strong in the Euro favor. At Le Golf, a US team would make a birdie or two, just miss your mark off the tee and have no chance for a GIR. All momentum is killed. That never would have happened at Hazeltine.
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Enjoyed the pod, but even I thought using Molinari’s prior record to substantiate course setup arguments was cherry-picking.
The point made was that “A guy that had NEVER WON A MATCH in a Ryder Cup WENT 5-0. CLEARLY, the golf course had an effect.”
Molinari’s played in two other Ryder Cups, 2010 and 2012.
In 2010, he played 8 PGA Tour Events, with 1 Top 10, 3 Top 25s, and went 0-1-2. In 2012, he played 8 PGA Tour Events, with 0 Top 10s, 2 Top 25s, and went 0-2-1. He was a middling player when he played against the best talent, and it showed in the Ryder Cup.
In 2018, he played in 20 PGA Tour Events, had 2 Wins, 1 Major, 5 Top 10s, 11 Top 25s. He’s been one of the 5 best players on tour this year. The thought of Molinari/Fleetwood was terrifying leading up to the cup - nobody said, “yeah but he’s never won a match,” because clearly he was a different player than 2010 and 2012.
I think the course had a big effect on the ultimate result, but Molinari going 5-0 when he’d struggled in past Ryder Cups isn’t the evidence to prove it. Correlation, not causation.
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You just made my point better than I could have.
A strong Molinari performance was very predictable based off his last 4 months of play. If this version of Molinari showed up to Hazeltine, there is a good chance he has a similarly dominant performance. The guy has been nails on courses of all types.
Can’t disagree with anything here. Molinari is clearly a different player than he was in previous Cups. If my comments made it sound like I didn’t think Molinari was a world class player, that was most definitely not the intention.
I could be wrong here, but I think this part of the conversation was in relation to discussion how three of Europe’s best players had .500 or losing records. Molinari is most definitely not in a class above those players, so there is clearly something at least somewhat surprising about Rory getting 2 points out of 5, and Molinari getting 5 out of 5. If they played the Ryder Cup all over again, he’s not going to win all 5 matches again (the same way that Rose is probably going better than .500).
Overall, and I guarantee I didn’t make this point very well, but part of my thinking goes all the way back to '16. I can’t even remember if I made this point in this pod or the previous one, but adding someone like JT going 4-1 to a team that won 17-11, I would have thought the US would have won by 20. But you can’t predict someone like Molinari having a career renaissance at 35. I’m still not making this point very well, but in my head it makes sense, and I couldn’t be much more worn out on this Ryder Cup shit.
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Agreed, but he has been at times this year.
Unfortunately I think the most accurate analysis (which you both emphasized) is the least satisfying to fans: our guys didn’t go out and execute the shots that were required by the golf course. Fans want to analyze golf the same way they do basketball/football, but anyone that’s played competitively knows that golf is too fickle to expect good players to perform like good players every time they go out.
Rickie, DJ, and Brooks, they all have the talent to torch that place but they either didn’t go in with their best, were a bit hurt, or just didn’t approach the golf course with the right mentality.
Plus, we went 3-1 in the opening fourball session - it’s not like we were incapable of winning on that track.
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It was deceptive. Finau/Koepka only won because of that fluke bounce Finau got on 16. Bjorn inexplicably put out his two worst drivers of the ball (accuracy, not distance) together, effectively conceding a point to DJ/Rickie. Spieth/JT won a squeaker against Hatton/Casey by 1. They were 3 up through 10 and almost blew it.
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The talent level between these guys are so close. 18 holes is such a small sample size. Its why golf tournaments are 4 days instead of 1. Its a coin flip whether player A beats player B on any given day. No difference at the Ryder Cup.
Sometimes when you flip a coin 28 times, it lands heads 17 times, tails 10 times, and 1 time it will fall off the table and land on its side.
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Nice to see this pod was more objective. The pod immediately after was incredibly one-eyed, to the point I asked myself if NLU was an American pod for American fans.
So I just listened to the pod and have some takes. There’s a few things that can all be true at the same time about this Ryder Cup.
- The US had more “talent” than Europe. Define talent as you wish but that’s just a fact. It turned out to mean absolutely nothing when the matches started and Europe absolutely deserved the Cup.
- The US played like absolute crap and Europe played great.
- Europe set the course up to their advantage and there’s nothing wrong with that.
- The course setup did not produce exciting matches.
- The US seemed completely clueless about how to play this course and didn’t adjust (save for a few exceptions like JT, Webb and Finau), which is inexcusable.
Frankly, I don’t understand all the angst from the European fans. How can one be so upset about a victory? Your team won and they deserve 100% of the credit for playing absolutely incredible golf. Soly and Job went out of their way again and again to praise the Europeans. And I’m not sure if the European fans just skipped the first 25 minutes of the pod but Soly and Job pretty much spent all of those 25 minutes justifiably slamming the US for basically being a dumpster fire and then crediting the Europeans for their superb play and decision making.
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