Why Davis Love Is Ryder Cup Captain: PGA from Mars, Fred Couples from Venus

If you've never read the groundbreaking book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus, the idea that the PGA of America is Mars and Fred Couples is Venus might not make sense to you. But trust me, it has everything to do with what the PGA decided to do and why. It just doesn't know it.

First, some background.

Relationship counselor John Gray's No. 1 bestseller Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus was designed to be a guide to help men and women, particularly couples, understand and appreciate each other. It also opened up the idea that men and women really are different in many ways and that's OK.

About that same time, geneticist Ann Moir and BBC TV writer-producer David Jessel published Brain Sex to significantly less acclaim. Some of what they explained had to do with the actual physical differences between the brains of men and women and how they make the sexes different.

In Brain Sex, Moir and Jessel explained that brain functions are located in different parts of men's and women's brains. In men, for instance, spelling, grammar and speech are located in the front and back areas of the left brain. In women, they are concentrated in the front area of the left brain. Because these functions are farther away from each other in a man's brain, he has to work harder to use them.

According to Brain Sex, there is also an important part of the brain called the corpus callosum, which connects the right side with the left side of the brain. Generally speaking, that connector is wider in a woman's brain than in a man's. It gives women an advantage in connecting activities from one side of the brain to the other. It's why women really can multitask.

The left brain and right brain do different things. The right brain rules things such as intuition, creativity and non-verbal feelings and more. The left brain controls language, facts, computation, logic and more. The larger corpus callosum in women allows them a freer flow of information from one side to the other.

Women also have more connections to the emotional center of the brain, which is why women can connect nearly anything to emotion, certainly much more easily than men. Men have a tougher time accessing their emotions because of less connectivity to the emotional area of the brain.

There are other differences that have been proved with research, the Brain Sex duo reported. Women hear better than men and are more attuned to changes in volume. Women see better in the dark and have better visual memories. Men see better in bright light but have a narrower field of vision, yet a better sense of perspective. Women have better peripheral vision. Noses and palates of women are more sensitive than those of men.

In other words, women's ability to collect information with the senses is superior. Is that what gives rise to the concept of intuition? Is it a collection of sensory feelings? It may be.

Now, back to the pick for Ryder Cup captain.

David J. Phillip/Associated Press

Former Ryder Cup captain Paul Azinger knew what he didn't know. He knew he was not a specialist in teams; he'd been an individual golfer his whole life. So he got help from experts in human behavior.

Azinger needed a logical approach so he could understand how to operate in what is basically an illogical situation: pairing up human beings based on personalities and not facts. Azinger even tested players to figure out who was what kind of person. Enter Paul Azinger's "pods." That made sense to his brain, which being a man, was based on logic and was not well connected to emotion.

Azinger apparently was not able to access the information through intuition and feelings, so he had to have a guidebook. Because it worked so well, he actually wrote a book about it called Cracking the Code.

"I divided the 12-man team into small groups, or pods," he said on his website. "Then, with guidance from corporate team-building specialist and licensed family therapist Ron Braund, I placed golfers based on their personality types, rather than their golf games."

The PGA must have liked the Azinger thinking. It gave it the nucleus of a plan. Plus, it was something in writing. The PGA could say to the next captain, "here, do this and this—it should work."

Now, compare that to the king of manly intuition, Fred Couples. Somehow, without a rule book, without a personality survey, without needing pods, without a lot of fuss, Fred Couples still appears to be the kind of person who can take a group of guys and work with them and know who needs what and when. Because of that gift, he was able to get the best out of his Presidents Cup players.

Lenny Ignelzi/Associated Press

Couples seems to be just one of those rare individuals who can walk into a room and figure things out by reading the people. He's going to know who needs a hug and a cookie and who needs a kick in the backside. He knows who needs a laugh. He's knows who is going to be a problem. His sensory receptors must be acute. He doesn't need a pod system to tell him whom he should pair together.

Practically speaking, he would just know if someone needed a rest day by the way he moved and talked and what he didn't say as much as what he did.

However, even though Couples might have emotional radar surrounding him, because he's a man, he's not going to have an easy time articulating it.

Couples is a guy's guy, and he's not a big talker. Being a man, he would probably have a hard time communicating the emotionally charged, intuition-based decisions he made. Plus, he is not, by nature, a guy who likes to make a big deal out of anything, as he has said many times.

The PGA of America task force, being men, were likely focused on logic and strategy. They could not trust what their brains are not wired to understand, which is the intuitive way Couples deals with his teams. The PGA task force needed someone who could explain the unexplainable. Someone who could decode Couples. It probably did not understand the innate people skills Couples has.

The PGA likely could not understand the method that comes so naturally to Couples because nobody could explain it. It was an intangible.

That leaves us with one conclusion: The PGA of America is from Mars. Couples' intuition is from Venus.

It appears the PGA unconsciously took the logic of the Paul Azinger system and applied it to someone it understood, Davis Love III. That's why Love was chosen for 2016 Ryder Cup captaincy instead of Fred Couples.

Kathy Bissell is a golf writer for Bleacher Report. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand or from official interview material from the PGA Tour, USGA, R&A or PGA of America.