That’s harsh stuff from a man gearing up for his 10th Ryder Cup after being selected by captain Darren Clarke.
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The Ryder Cup has produced some truly memorable moments over the years.
Cape Town – Gary Player believes Team USA will break their Ryder Cup duck when they host the event at the end of the month. The fact that Rickie Fowler, J.B. Holmes, and Matt Kuchar were ranked 10 to 12 seemingly points to him taking a conservative stance.
If some have confused a new outlook for a new team, consider that only Brooks Koepka, who qualified for the US squad on points, has never played in the biennial matches.
Love announced his choices Monday, a day after the BMW Championship.
Team chemistry or an elite player? The U.S. side wanted a players’ coach and got Pete Carroll. It just seems to me it’s like a bad golf lesson. According to various sources, the US captain made the final call on the first three of his four picks – you know, leadership stuff that transpired behind closed doors. Is Love blind? No one can say for certain, but when matters are decided exclusively by the heart with little guidance from the head the likelihood for success can prove most hard.
Love went with his heart in selecting Fowler. He might help in foursomes, a format in which the USA went 0-6-2 at Scotland’s Gleneagles two years ago.
Love says that he and his assistants have crunched all sorts of numbers to come up with the selections so far, but the relative success of these newcomers did not come into the equations.
It is also worth pointing out that he has yet to win a match against Europe, but this will be his first home Ryder Cup. I have followed any and all news about “THE” Cup. “We changed the front office and started over again”, Love said.
“There is a standard discount that we give to bookshops and online retailers like Amazon for every book that we sell and we thought that there was an opportunity to structure our sales so that golf clubs could benefit directly from sales of the book – so instead of giving that £5 to a bookshop or an online retailer, we give it to the club”.
Love’s vice captains are either former or future captains, not the normal eclectic collection of friends and family; and the focus has been on treating the matches like one would a major.
No wonder Johnson is considered a lock-in for the Player of the Year honours. “It shows the strength of his team that No 7 in the world is not an immediate pick”, said Westwood. How was it watching Tiger Woods in his prime? “We went through a lot of scenarios”. Get everyone on the same page, have a little continuity and consistency. “[These captain’s picks] added a lot statistically, emotionally, leadership, for a lot of reasons, and so the next guy is going to have to step up and fill a role as well”.
“They’ve lost eight times out of ten”.
Fowler is well liked by a broad range of people within the inner circle of golf’s establishment in America.
A member of last year’s U.S. Ryder Cup task force recently asked who should get the credit for the changes the group has initiated? And so he’ll face the cameras on primetime next Sunday in order to tell all and sundry who got the last seat on the bus, in the process drumming up interest in the exhibition and hoping casual observers take due notice.
In sports, there’s no other way.
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At this point, it’s all a matter of perspective.
