Having lost eight of the last 10 Ryder Cups, it’s not surprising the U.S. team is looking to change its approach. What is surprising are the people in charge of making the changes.
The PGA of America on Tuesday morning announced the formation of an 11-member Ryder Cup Task Force. The group includes past captains, players and PGA of America leadership, very few of whom have ever hoisted the Cup in victory.
Europe has won eight of the last 10 Ryder Cups, including a 16 1/2-11 1/2 victory last month at Gleneagles. Out of that loss, post-match criticism and an awkward press conference comes the task force which will meet at a time to be determined by the PGA of America.
Normally announced at the PGA annual meeting in November, the next U.S. Ryder Cup captain will not be named until some time in 2015.
So the Task Force has some time to come up with a plan to knock off the Europeans and saying “play better” won’t be good enough despite essentially being the point. What will they come up with remains to be seen because there isn’t a lot of Ryder Cup success to draw on.
Naming Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to the task force is sure to create buzz but what will it accomplish other than making sure the U.S. Team has the best of the best in ping-pong tables in the team room? It’s not like that duo has been a major factor in any U.S. success and their ill-fated partnership in 2004 at Oakland Hills set the stage for the biggest loss the U.S. team has ever suffered on home soil.
Woods has played on exactly one winning team and that was in 1999. What he will bring to the task force remains to be seen because he is such a force and big name as an individual player while being a relative disappointment as a Ryder Cupper. He wasn’t at Valhalla in 2008 when the U.S. last won due to knee surgery and he wasn’t at Gleneagles either to see all that went wrong.
“This is a great step by the PGA to accomplish what we all want — to win the Ryder Cup,” Woods said in a statement issued by the PGA.
Mickelson, joined by fellow players Steve Stricker, Jim Furyk and Rickie Fowler on the task force, helped bring about this push for change with his part in the awkward post Ryder Cup press conference the U.S. team had after its loss at Gleneagles. Mickelson may have been right about what he said regarding captain Tom Watson’s rigid style and the U.S. team’s refusal to embrace the winning formula Paul Azinger introduced in 2008 and in his criticism of Tom Watson and his handling of the captain’s role last month, but he is still just 16-19-6 in 10 Ryder Cups and has played on just two winning teams.
Furyk has played on two winners, Stricker one and Fowler has earned a number of halves but has yet to win a match in two Ryder Cups (0-3-5).
That brings us to the past captains but you can’t turn there for winning guidance because all three were at the wheel of losing American teams. Davis Love III (2012), Tom Lehman (2006) and Raymond Floyd (1989) are the former captains on the panel and while Love should have been in charge of a winner at Medinah they all will bring the experience of losing to the table.
The co-chairs of the Task Force are PGA chief executive Pete Bevacqua and Derek Sprague, next in line to be president of the PGA of America. PGA of America secretary Paul Levy also joins the group.
Interesting in his absence is Paul Azinger, who won the Ryder Cup captaining the 2008 team at Valhalla where he unveiled his pod-system and guided an underdog squad to a rousing victory. Mickelson pined for the days of Azinger at the post-match press conference at Gleneagles with Watson sitting a few chairs away but Azinger declined an invitation to be a part of the task force.
Whether Azinger’s absence on the committee helps or hurts his chances to be a captain again remains to be seen, but he does have a meeting with the PGA of America planned for next month.
“I’m just not ready to sit down and jump on a task force,” Azinger said. “I have a scheduled meeting with the PGA of America in early November, and I just think it’s too soon for me to commit to jumping on a task force.”
Azinger did not discuss the subject of next month’s meeting, although he has not ruled out returning to the role of U.S Ryder Cup captain.
