10 Thoughts on the 2023 Ryder Cup

Edition No. 35 | October 4, 2023

Hey,

I’m back in the United States after the week of a lifetime in Rome. I’ll give a few (of my 900) thoughts on the week in this newsletter and a few more on Friday, but two other things real quick.

1. Ryder Cups are probably what you think they are for those of us who cover them. Tons of time staring at a computer or running around a golf course, trying to convey exactly what is happening or what we think we see. But there are moments of reprieve, too, where we get time to enjoy the presence of one another in, for example, Italy with people who have become not vacation friends but something adjacent to it.

On Monday, after Europe won, Sean Martin, Will Gray and I just wandered around Rome for 10 straight hours. We saw Big Stew Cink and his calves at the Colosseum. We went to the Vatican. We ducked in and out of bookstores and gelato shops. We played Immaculate Grid on the subway. “This is our stop. It’s time to see the Pantheon, which was built 1,910 years ago” “I know, but can you really not think of someone who had 300 saves for the Mets?”

At dinner, SMartin — who has forgotten more about modern and distant golf history than I will ever know — introduced us to a sort of Immaculate Grid but for golf. It’s homemade and as sicko as it gets. Something I enjoy but absolutely 100 percent SMartin’s wheelhouse.

We played it after we ate, and one of the boxes was “won an Open Championship and is also a World Golf Hall of Famer.” If you haven’t played Immaculate Grid, the point is to enter the most obscure name possible who you believe fulfills the box. SMartin confidently said to me and Will, “Ted Ray, we’re going with Ted Ray.”

It was wrong.

He pointed into the air like Rory pointing past Bones on Saturday night and started hollering: “I GUARANTEE YOU TED RAY IS IN THE HALL OF FAME!! THEY GOT IT WRONG!” Absolute sociopathic behavior. I was crying laughing. Ted Ray is not in the Hall of Fame, but that moment was perhaps the funniest to me in a trip full of great ones.

2. This week’s newsletter is sponsored! Holderness and Bourne is a personal sponsor of mine (I wear their gear for my work at CBS Sports), and this week they’re giving away a $500 package of Ryder Cup gear to one of our readers (drawing at the beginning of next week).

To enter, all you have to do is be subscribed to this newsletter (which you are) and comment on this tweet with your favorite 2023 Ryder Cup moment. If you don’t have Twitter, you can just put your email and favorite moment in this form.

If you haven’t already checked out H&B and their Ryder Cup collection, you should get involved! We’re talking “Europe in foursomes at European Ryder Cups” quality from the best clothing brand in golf. The gray ward sweater (pictured below) is 🤌, by the way.

Onto the news.

Rohm

As I did last week, I’m going to eschew some of the normal newsletter beats and just dive into some of the thoughts I had last week in Italy. We’ll do a big chunk today and several more on Friday to close out the week. Feel free to skip around.

I’m sorry that I’m not sorry for how lengthy this will be.

1. An event that’s barely about the golf: The thing I love most about the Ryder Cup is that it’s only partially about the golf. I love golf, sure, but the intersection of humanity, sport, team culture, atmosphere and psychological struggle is the place I love the most.

Has Europe won eight of 11 because of [gestures at a thousand golf-related reasons that explain the U.S. struggles on the road and sometimes at home] OR because Europe has a culture that nearly always wins the day?

The answer is almost certainly both, but if you force me to choose the one that is most important, I will almost always pick the latter because I believe deeply that the camaraderie and energy present on the Euro side explains inexplicable things like Nicolai Hojgaard going ham, Bob Mac outscoring Scottie Scheffler (!!) and Rahm holing out from everywhere but the Spanish Steps (and he probably would have if given the opportunity!).

How can intangibles explain these things?

Well, when you cannot explain how a thing is happening and how it continues to happen with such regularity and consistency, it certainly isn’t magic but rather it might be the very thing that the data boys and the analysts (myself included) don’t believe that it could be. It might be that all of those things happen because Europe’s culture helps its players believe that they are even better than reality would suggest.

The buy-in on the European side is so overwhelming in nature that I truly believe that Rahm believes that he’s Seve in that week, and I believe that Justin Rose believes he’s Faldo. And I believe that Nicolai Hojgaard believes he’s Rory.

We have all played sports or games with people who believed they were better than they actually were, and it was infuriating when that belief actually led to great play, even though that’s the very point of its existence.

All of this sounds like nonsense! I know it does!

But what if it’s true?

One player (I think you can probably guess who) hollered as he walked off 18 on Sunday, “They’ve been calling us overachievers for 35 straight years!”

The implication was obvious: What if they’re not overachieving? What if they don’t have the depth of talent? What if … they just have all of this figured out.

And even if this isn’t true, it certainly makes them easier to root for. That was a big takeaway for me this week. I’m in a position — both as Soly’s partner in our NLU pods and as, you know, an American — where I feel obligated to pull for the stars and stripes. But if I wasn’t and I didn’t, there would be no question which side to back. For even in the losses, there is still terrific joy.

2. But what about those last two U.S. wins at home? That was, by far, the most common rebuttal I heard when I posited bits and pieces of the theory above. Two points …

1. The U.S. is 2-3 at home since 2000. Europe is 6-0 at home since 2000.

2. Since 2000, the European Ryder Cup team has had more top 10 players on its team than the Americans one time (2014). Europe is 8-3 in those 11 Ryder Cups.

Just because you have good culture does not mean you’re going to win them all. What it does mean is that, even as the underdog most of the time, you’re going to be a terror at home and you’re going to swipe a few on the road. Even if you believe we entered the blowout era in 2014, Europe is still 3-2 overall with a favored team in, what, one of those?

Culture matters.

You won’t always win because of it — sometimes you get out-talented — but it’s something you can control that helps you become more than the sum of your parts in this event.

I’m not sure after this year I’ll ever be convinced otherwise.

3. Maximus in Rome: I am shocked that the guy who spoke on Tuesday about being so obsessed with all of this that he was watching YouTube videos of old Ryder Cups in Europe is the one who showed up on Friday, Saturday and Sunday when the points began to count.

Homa has not contended in a major, which has caught him a lot of flak from [gestures broadly at the internet] but he is 100 percent That Dude at these team events. The way he carries himself, plays and speaks is compelling, too, because his entire demeanor is exactly what the collective consciousness of Golf Twitter believes its demeanor would in these weeks.

He is Golf Twitter’s create-a-player.

I think this walk-off match win is evidence of that.

It’s also further proof of how different team match play golf is than everything else. While it’s true that Homa has struggled in the four big ones, he looked for most of this event like he was the only American who both wanted the ball and deserved to get it. A tough week for the bUt maX dOeSN’t hAVe wHaT iT takEs wItH tHe PreSsURe tURnEd uP crowd.

Following his match with Fitz down 18 on Sunday and watching him — with the entire thing hanging in the balance — take an unplayable out of the bunker and then get up and down from an outrageous spot to keep the Cup alive was one of the highlights of my week.

He is our Fleetwood but maybe even better.

4. Luke Donald ruled: At best, I was apathetic about Donald coming into the week. Good player, strong career, got to World No. 1 with a skillset that never foreshadowed it. I respected him, but that was as far as my feelings went. After last week, I think I may be smitten. He hit every note and pulled every lever with confidence He also loved being the European Ryder Cup captain.

Maybe being Ryder Cup captain is not as important as I want to make it seem. Maybe I’m overstating what I thought of Donald because he was pitted against somebody who carried himself with the awkward earnestness of someone who found himself in front of a camera for the very first time. Maybe European captains in Europe are always going to be revered because they never seem to lose.

However, what impressed me about Donald was that he seemed to hold attention to detail, reverence of the position, ownership of his decisions, trust in the numbers and delight in the emotion of the week in equal tension. That, as ZJ showed us, is very difficult to do.

Donald is not an overtly emotional person, but his lack of tears belie what’s going on beneath. Evidence: He started the week by giving each player a very personal video of their friends and family speaking about what they mean as a player and a person. Rahm said he broke down when he watched it. That’s how the week started!

And it ended with him talking about how much his parents, who have passed away, would have enjoyed seeing him win a Ryder Cup as Europe’s captain. He explained that the reason he gave his players those videos is because he believes the Ryder Cup is about playing for each other, sure, but that it’s also about playing for all the people in your orbit, the ones who have cared for you along the way.

But yeah it’s probably just because the U.S. can’t make the putts that it doesn’t win in Europe.

5. Pat’s Hat: Imagine trying to explain Saturday afternoon -- from the hat tweet all the way to Rory screaming his face off in the parking lot -- to somebody who doesn't follow golf.

“So, we need to start with this company called Aramco …”

It would take you two days to even figure out how to explain it all.

As for where I net out, it all feels a little complicated. Do I think the spirit of Jamie Weir’s tweet was correct? Yeah, I do. Do I think every single thing in there was 100 percent accurate? Well, that’s already been proven wrong (players do not get paid to play in the Presidents Cup).

There is loads of gray area in between.

Ultimately, I think Xander and Cantlay are two very good golfers who lack self-awareness (which is not a problem among the rich and famous that is unique to them) and self-forgetfulness. Some people don’t really understand how little they matter — this is more or less how LIV got off the ground — to the bigger picture.

The bigger stories to me are …

1. How silly it is that the U.S. team needed a tweet about a hat to snap itself into this Ryder Cup. Find something (anything!) to get you going from the jump, not on the 13th match.

2. The power of social media is still staggering. From the time that tweet was sent to the end of the day, the news had spread across the grounds and nearly everyone with a hat on at Marco Simone was jeering Cantlay’s group.

Golf Twitter changed the complexion of an entire Ryder Cup, and may have unwittingly nearly given the U.S. team a juice it (somewhat disappointingly) needed to nearly pull off the win.

Lastly, nothing says “no really, we’re totally united!” more than half the team choosing to play hatless on Sunday and half of them not.

6. No more blind draws: This one is fairly straightforward and not an original idea, but get rid of all the blind draws for the Ryder Cup. Get the captains in a room for all 28 matches and make them fire pairings at each other.

Let the road team go first for all 28 matches if you truly believe that there’s too big of a home field advantage. Give each captain a short amount of time to respond (to reward preparation). Even if it didn’t result in dramatic pairings, it would still result in outrageous content: Oh, ZJ led with Cantlay and Donald didn’t respond with Rory that feels kind of soft does Europe have a softness problem is this why global warming is such an issue?

Oh, and let Blockie be the host.

7. Irrational ZJ irritation: OK, I need to get this off my chest because I have been holding onto it for far too long: I was unreasonably annoyed for the entirety of ZJ’s captaincy.

Was ZJ a good captain? I think he was better than people are giving him credit for. I actually liked sitting Spieth and JT early. I liked the team he took. I thought most of his strategy was pretty good.

But man, his entire demeanor grates on me.

I know that doesn’t really matter, or maybe that it shouldn’t. But his overly-earnest aura, his extreme facial expressions and his inability to stay out of his own (or anyone else’s) way honestly make me irrationally frustrated.

So many times last week, I wanted to scream, “JUST BE NORMAL!”

Maybe that’s just a me thing, I don’t know, but this video where he’s trying to figure out what the Twenty First Group (a data analytics and sports intelligence company) does is emblematic of what I’m talking about.

It has a bit of everything.

8. Home advantages are not equal: This was the first time I’ve attended a Ryder Cup in Europe, and I have to say they get it even more than I thought they did. It obviously wasn’t a surprise to hear the songs and see the chants, but everyone (including the players) is so uninhibited all week.

If U.S. Ryder Cups feel like a college football game on a golf course, European ones feel almost like a big tent revival. I legitimately believe that the players, fans, families and team officials (basically everyone) legitimately believe that these events are almost spiritual.

It’s difficult to even describe what it is I felt. Maybe that forever bus ride to the afterparty is a good jumping off point.

The Europeans have no fear of looking foolish because they — as Rahm said on Sunday — forget who they are for that entire week. They have no fear of man. No concern about whether they look dumb. No worry about who’s watching because literally the only thing that matters is that the other 11 guys know how much you care.

I don’t want to overstate the importance of off-the-course galvanization because I do think it’s possible to give it too much credit (which I actually probably do). However, it is at least a little bit difficult to imagine the Americans being this unbridled (see video above) at any point of a Ryder Cup week.

It’s also tough, after having been there, to believe that this unity — which spills over into and feeds the crowd, which subsequently fuels the players — is somehow not more important than course scouting, pairings math, long layoffs and anything else you want to pin wins and losses on.

There was one other thing that someone pointed out to me: When the Americans talk about Team USA, they’re almost always referencing 12 players. When the Europeans talk about Team Europe, they’re almost always talking about several hundred people, including spouses, caddies, trainers, officials, social media team and even fans. This doesn’t really matter much, except maybe that it does (see point No. 1 above).

9. Scottie’s breakdown: Speaking of caring. Scottie’s mini-breakdown after losing [JT mouthing NINE AND SEVEN] to somebody who played in the Big 12 Tournament earlier this year stood out to me.

The U.S.’ bigger problem (if you even want to call it a problem) is not that it has a bunch of guys who don’t care (although it might have a few of those) but rather that it takes a long time to build a culture. I honestly think we might look back in 20 years and say that the arc of a great U.S. culture started somewhere over the last eight years because of guys like Scottie, JT and Max who grew up as desperate to win Ryder Cups as their European counterparts.

Institutional culture, though, always takes longer than you’d like.

10. I wrote this piece for CBS Sports to end the week: I’m very proud of it.

The premise: Nowhere else.

Memes of the Week (Year?)

Use wisely. All three are all-timers.

Crooked Golf Media

👉️ I have not actually read it yet because I’ve been laboring over my own work, but KVV’s scenes pieces from various events are always tremendous. I’m sure this one from Rome is no different.

👉️ I wrote about Europe’s humility and team culture and why I admire it so much.

👉️ This from KVV I did read about what it means to care about something. Tremendous.

👉️ Here is 11 seconds of several thousand rabid Europeans chanting Rory’s name.

👉️ And here are the 12 Europeans saying their names and countries in their home dialect. Sometimes, the simplest content is also the best.

By the Numbies

4: That’s how many foursomes points the U.S. has won in Europe over the last nine years (NINE YEARS!). Here are your point earners sorted from most to least.

Jordan Spieth: 1.5
Max Homa: 1.0
Brian Harman: 1.0
Justin Thomas: 1.0
Jimmy Walker: 0.5
Rickie Fowler: 0.5
Patrick Reed: 0.5

It kind of says something when perhaps the most unplayable foursomes golfer on this year’s team is also the top point-earner in that format for the last decade.

Also, this is staggering.

How is This App Free?

This honestly might be the perfect Ryder Cup tweet.

And the response was somehow better.

And they did it twice!

I don’t know why this made me laugh so hard, but it truly got me. It’s just the perfect encapsulation of what I think a Roman Rahm statue would look like.

OK, THIS might be the perfect Ryder Cup tweet.

I don’t know when the Blockie jokes are going to get old, but today is not that day.

Former Oklahoma State golfer goes to Ryder Cup without a date and ends up in iconic photo for winning side? Never heard of it.

Yes.

Would pay a Twitter subscription for KVV to go to historic old world cities and make jokes about golf and social media.

Artbutmakeitsports crushed last week, and this may have been the crown jewel.

The CFB-Ryder Cup crossover tweet you didn’t know you needed. 😂😂😂😂

This response to the video of Euros speaking their home dialect with what Pat Cantlay might say destroyed me.

Use the hats.

The Infirmary

Two confessions from me. One, I watched Catch Me If You Can on the flight home, and I could not believe how much Leo looked like Rickie. Especially in this scene. Look at this!

Also, it might not just be a Catch Me If You Can thing. Because this photo of Rickie reminded me of Wolf of Wall Street.

Also, I might need to seek help.