Bubba Watson is one of the contenders for the final U.S. Ryder Cup captain’s pick.
Advertisement
Maybe this time will be different.
“I think it’s going to be cold, I think it’s going to be wet so there’s no point in us running about freezing”. Woods hasn’t been known as the best team player, so it must be a real doubt whether he will be a positive or a negative force in the locker room.
Everyone knows that Westwood and Darren Clarke have been best pals for years and years. Former world number one Woods, (40) has won only one of the six Ryder Cups he has competed in.”People have always seemed to try to do too much when they have partnered him”, Westwood (43), told ESPN.
“I think we have a completely different attitude and culture this time around”, USA captain Davis Love III said.
Europe goes for its fourth straight victory next week at Hazeltine in Minnesota. They are playing on home soil and before the most raucous atmosphere in golf.
“We’re a great golf team”, Love said. “We’ve got the Masters champion in Danny Willett and the PGA victor from Wentworth in Chris Wood”.
There’s a cloak of golfy decorum over the comments, but make no mistake, this is Ryder Cup sh*t talk and it is wonderful. The player at Royal Troon who took Henrik Stenson to the wire?
It’s too late now but Scotland’s Russell Knox, passed over for a European wild-card pick in favor of Belgium’s Thomas Pieters, is tied for 11th at East Lake and England’s Paul Casey, who gave up his European Tour membership because it was too hard to travel from Scottsdale across the Atlantic with family considerations, is tied for seventh.
The pressure, however, falls to the Americans.
“He has really thought all of this through”, USA 11-time Ryder Cup veteran Phil Mickelson said.
“The colours I have gone for are muted tones, a little bit of navy, bit of grey and white so it’s not as if we are going to be standing out like a beacon”. “And also, the form of the players is not particularly good, outside of Dustin (Johnson)”.
Mickelson was largely responsible for this. Spain’s Rafael Cabrera-Bello and Belgium’s Thomas Pieters will also take their Ryder Cup bows in Hazeltine.
Two years ago, then-captain Tom Watson filled out his roster with three captain’s picks more than three weeks before the tournament began.
For all the talk about playing as a team, the nuances of foursomes (alternate shot) and making the right pairings, the Ryder Cup can be decided by the slimmest of margins. Things improved on Friday – he hit 5 of 14 fairways – but Mickelson finished with a 72 and was tied for 25th in the 29-man field when he completed his second round. Rory McIlroy’s 70, which leaves him five from the halfway lead, was notable for an inward half of 32. The 2002 Ryder Cup came down to Paul McGinley saving par on the final hole with an 8-foot putt (and Phillip Price, the No. 119 player in the world, beating Mickelson).
It’s his first time at the Tour Championship since 2013, and Lefty didn’t mind sacrifice a chance to win to work on his longer driver.
Advertisement
“It’s nearly more special really than the Open or Masters”, he says under blue skies in Milan at his last tournament before spearheading Europe against the United States in Hazeltine. The record, however, is misleading.
