Ryder Cup Recap: Five Reasons Why America Lost the Cup
During the course of 28 matches, any number of things can contribute to a team winning or losing the Ryder Cup.
In a Ryder Cup as close as the one that just concluded, you could go back to early Friday morning and nitpick at missed putts, wayward drives, flubbed chip shots, and poor decisions.
It's a team event. Every player and every shot contributes to a team's success or failure.
But here are the top-five reasons why the Americans were unable to hold on to the cup at Celtic Manor.
Stewart Cink
1 of 5
Hunter Mahan happened to be the guy who surrendered the final cup-clinching point to the European side on Monday afternoon, but Stewart Cink was the reason Mahan was put in that situation to begin with.
Cink was one-up on Rory McIlory heading to the 15th hole of his singles match on Monday…not a great time to lose your putter, which is precisely what happened to Cink.
Cink three putted the 15th after driving the green on the 277 yard par-four. Cink then had a chance to go one-up with one to play on the 17th but was unable to convert on a six-foot birdie putt.
Both Cink and Mcilroy pared the 18th thus halving a point that Cink should have secured on the 17th green.
Had Cink not lost his putting stroke coming down the stretch on Monday, Zach Johnson would have clinched the cup for the American side with his 3&2 victory over Padraig Harrington.
Dustin Johnson
2 of 5
Dustin Johnson’s foursome and fourball partners—Phil Mickelson and Jim Furykwere certainly not playing their best golf last week, but Johnson’s horrific putting stroke probably cost the American side at least two, if not three points.
Johnson couldn’t have rolled a golf ball through a basketball hoop from five feet away last week at Celtic Manor.
If Martin Kaymer didn’t play the worst golf he’s played in years on Monday, Johnson would have more than likely gone 0-4-0 for the week.
Had Johnson not left his putter back in Atlanta, or at Cog Hill in Chicago for that matter, the American side might have secured the cup half way through Monday’s singles matches.
Sunday
3 of 5
Europe essentially won the 2010 Ryder Cup on Sunday when they won five-and-a-half out of a possible six points.
Trailing by two and a half points heading into Sunday afternoon’s mixture of foursome and fourball matches, the European side came out firing on all cylinders and just steamrolled the over the Americans to earn an unprecedented five-and-a-half points in a single session.
European Captain Colin Montgomerie attempted to fire up his team between the morning and afternoon sessions, and whatever he said or fed them worked to perfection.
Although the American side put forth a herculean effort during Monday’s singles matches, the hole that they had dug for themselves on Sunday was just too large to climb out of.
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Corey Pavin
4 of 5
Yes, he may have earned the name “Borey” Pavin during the course of the 2010 Ryder Cup matches, but all-in-all, Corey Pavin was not a bad captain.
Let’s be honest here, the Americans haven’t won a Ryder Cup on foreign soil since 1993, which essentially means that Pavin was the most successful American captain to lead a team oversees since Tom Watson at The Belfry in 93’.
Although we place a ridiculous and completely unwarranted amount of pressure on the Ryder Cup captains these days, a captain cannot win or lose a match by himself. Heck, captains don’t even bring their golf clubs with them to the Ryder Cup.
That being said, the decisions made by a captain can CONTRIBUTE to a loss, and Pavin made two notable mistakes that contributed to the Americans losing the cup
1) The rain gear didn’t work properly on Friday. This is just a remarkable oversight. How could you possibly go to Wales in October without the best, most rigorously tested rain gear on the face of the planet? Had play not been suspended on Friday morning due to the weather, the American side might have lost every single one of Friday’s fourball matches as a result of their defective rain gear and leaky golf bags.
2) Although hindsight is 20/20, Mahan should never have been in that anchor match on Monday. The American team needed to get out to a quick start just to ensure that the Europeans didn’t win the cup half way through the singles matches. However, you always need to leave an experienced veteran for the final pairing just in case it all comes down to that final match, which it did. Mahan is a tremendous young talent and has shown an ability to perform well under pressure. But he was in no way experienced enough to play in the final singles match with all the marbles on the line.
The Europeans Were Better Putters
5 of 5
Just in case you didn’t realize, golf more or less comes down to a putting contest each and every week, and that is particularly true in the Ryder Cup where great putters are able to be more aggressive than they normally would.
In the history of golf, there have only been two truly great players that were not great putters—Harry Vardon and Ben Hogan—although Hogan was a fairly good putter until later on in his career.
From tee-to-green, there is not much of a difference between the No. 1 ranked player in the world and the number 214th ranked player in the world. It all comes down to what happens around and particularly on the green.
A great putter can easily turn a 75 into a 72 and a 68 into a 65—ala Tiger Woods.
Plain and simple, the Europeans putted a hell of a lot better than the Americans for most of the week and particularly on Sunday when they won five-and-a-half out of a possible six points.
Considering how well the Europeans performed on the greens and how poorly some of the American players performed with the flat stick, it’s a small miracle that it even came down to the final match on Monday.
It’s extremely difficult to win the Ryder Cup without hot putters, which is why captains tend to lean towards players that can roll the rock when making their captain’s picks.
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