Sunday, September 28, 2014

Ryder Cup: Find A Set of Faults that Work

I got to watch a bit of the Ryder Cup today.  Seems the affair was already over by the end of Saturday afternoon.

Europe is dominating the Ryder Cup the way the Americans did until Great Britain and Ireland finally added Europe and the game was really on.  The Americans had no answers to the depth and strength the Europeans showed during the past weekend.  Rory McIlroy has the look of the best player in the world, and reminds me of Tiger Woods fifteen years ago. He has an excellent chance of completing a Rory Slam should things stay together.   The one thing in his way may have been the way he celebrates victory: he made statement today to the effect that all this winning would be the worst thing for his health.  Tiger had discipline, Rory loves life.  May have a thing or two with how each one is publicly perceived.

Tiger was respected but not loved.  Rory is loved in Europe, anyway, and Americans respect him as the best in the game.  Has a little to do with how each handles the public and the press.  Rory will probably never reach the level of Tiger and Jack, but the star will shine brightly for a couple of years. We'll think of him as a good chap, and watch him captain a Ryder Cup team someday.

Why is the U.S. on the downside in the Ryder Cup now?  I think it has a lot to do with the interest Tiger brought to the game when he turned pro and the Nike marketing machine kicked in.  The money and interest generated not only attracted better athletes, it allowed the players involved to make a better living on the way up.  The hunger it takes to succeed, when not accompanied by suffering, leads to entitlement.

While the road is more comfortable than it used to be for Europeans, it is still much harder than the American road.  College golf to the Nationwide Tour in the U.S. is easier than fighting your way through the Safari Tour or the Challenge Tour, or anything in Asia that leads to the European Tour.  In my day, the Hogan Tour was final funnel and it was fed by the Space Coast Tour, the Dakotas Tour, the Golden State Tour, and a dozen more.  Your home was likely to be an apartment in a warm weather city that you visited when you took a week off, if you could afford to do so.  Gary McCord lived in a storage facility fighting his way up.  You had to love the game to get there.  And you had to be mentally tough,

Inside the PGA Tour TV show shows the home of Nationwide Tour players on occasion, and they are spacious, and very comfortable.  Better than guys I knew who were living out of their cars.  Survival of the fittest leads to survival of species.  In Professional Golf, the fittest are the ones who survive from the neck up as well as the neck down.  Every swing has it's faults, the individual that finds a way into the hole when the swing isn't working wins.  Getting ready to play golf in my hometown this weekend crystalized this into a theory: I was just finding a set of faults that work.

My son is not a golfer, and has some baseball background that leaves him in positions that don't equate good golf shot.  The ball is hit solidly, just 80 yards right of target.  After nine holes on Saturday, he started aiming 80-100 yards left of target and hitting the ball where he wanted to.  He broke 50 for the first time.  Find a set of faults that work.

Jamie Donaldson, the 38 year-old Ryder Cup rookie who clinched the Cup for Europe, had to fight his way there, and won the Czech Open as a final step to get on the team.  He went 3-1 on the week and looked solid when the lights were the brightest.  His opponent in singles, Keegan Bradley, took the typical American route to the Tour and has been highly successful.  Not near as battle tested when it comes to finding a way to eat.

The Europeans success in Foursomes, the alternate shot portion of the Ryder Cup, could possibly be explained this way.  Knowing you need to make a par to pay the hotel bill for the week is a lot different than some sponsor having already paid that bill.   You learn to play from places you're not used to playing from, and finding a way to get the ball in the hole.  At a Ryder Cup, in alternate shot, you play from a lot of places you don't normally see.  Phil Mickelson can do it to himself, but a partner can't always respond the way Phil does.  Why do you think Seve Ballesteros/Jose Maria Olazabal were so successful together?  They both know how play when it really counted through mechanical breakdowns.

Taking care of your caddy out of your own pocket with just a little pool of money is a lot different than letting your game go because coach is gonna drive the van back to campus, where there's still plenty to eat, and classes and parties to attend.

Right now, there is too much money in the game, and it's left a lot of players with tons of talent and little guts when it comes to playing for something that isn't money.  The flag should bring that out, but you had to have done it a few times with real stakes on the table.  Lee Trevino's comment about playing played $20 Nassau with $5 in your pocket comes to mind.

So...am I off base?

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