The European teams of recent years appear to have genuinely enjoyed playing in the Ryder Cup, whereas the American players appear to view the event as a burden on their normal routine or their time off from tournament play.
Tom Lehman tried various tactics two years ago, such as making a team trip to the K Club a few weeks prior to the Ryder Cup in the hopes of building team unity.
Needless to say, Lehman’s efforts fell disastrously short of regaining the cup for America.
Even more important than Azinger’s captain's picks will be his ability to promote team unity and motivate his team full of multi-millionaires to go out and play their hearts out to regain the cup.
In this day of huge purses, $10 million dollar FedEx Cup playoffs and massively lucrative sponsorship deals, motivating a team to go out and play their best in an unpaid tournament to win a little cup is a lot more difficult of a task than it was for captains 20 to 30 years ago.
Expect this year’s European team to be nothing short of the solid, consistent teams we have become accustomed to seeing over the past decade.
The American team's ability to compete will largely depend on the performance of the team’s rookies and captain Paul Azinger’s ability to motivate and promote team unity, the success of which will not be seen until the first drives begin flying off the tee next week at Valhalla.
One thing is for certain though; the Ryder Cup will provide fans with some much-needed excitement after a mind numbingly boring FedEx Cup and golf’s first dark week of the season.
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