Europe’s pressing need to nip America’s momentum in the bud

By Adam Schupak

Painted on the wall of the European team room is a quote attributed to former Arsenal player David Rocastle: “Remember who you are, what you are and what you represent.”

For Team Europe, this is a pivotal week to do just that. The Ryder Cup has been dominated by the Euros, who have won seven of the last 10 meetings. But could the tide be turning in favor of a future run of American success?

It makes this a critical week for the Europeans to hold serve at home and prevent the Americans from winning on foreign soil for the first time since 1993.

US captain Jim Furyk has celebrated holing a winning putt to clinch the Ryder Cup and experienced the agony of defeat.

He’s part of a generation of Americans along with Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson who have been tagged with being 12 individuals sitting at 12 different tables in player dining rooms rather than a unified team that traveled and ate together and generally got along.

To this notion, Furyk says hogwash.

“I think my generation got along really well, but we didn’t have a lot of success in the Ryder Cup, so we were pegged as individuals. Some of the best times I’ve had,” he said.

“I hate practice rounds — Tuesdays are my least favorite days — but I really enjoyed practising at the Ryder Cup and learning from the best Americans and feeding off that. Do all 12 guys have to be best buddies? No. That doesn’t happen in Europe. Knowing them all the way I do, I’d say there were a number of years where our team got along way better than theirs did.

“It was the easiest scapegoat for the writers. It didn’t take a lot of creativity and you could beat your deadline. It was like hitting a 7-iron into the middle of the green, really.”

But there’s little doubt that the American side is a more cohesive group that take vacations together and waits at the 18th green to congratulate each other on their victories.

But if Furyk argues the lack of cohesiveness wasn’t responsible for past failures then logic suggests it can’t be given credit for Team USA’s resurgence in 2016.

So why has the US team seemingly turned the corner? A more reasonable explanation dates to the 2014 beatdown the Euros handed out at Gleneagles.

At the post-match press conference, Mickelson aired the US team’s dirty laundry and blamed the US defeat on Captain Tom Watson for straying from Paul Azinger’s winning formula in 2008 at Valhalla.

Ironically, the last man to captain a US victory away from home? None other than Watson, who was celebrated for his leadership in 1993 and thrown under the bus in 2014.

The U.S. fiasco in Scotland led to the appointment of an 11-man US Ryder Cup Task Force and a sea change in the way Uncle Sam approached the Ryder Cup.

In short, it developed a blueprint and leadership structure, not just to end the losing ways at Hazeltine in 2016, but for the next decade of Ryder Cups.

When Rory McIlroy was paired with Mickelson at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February, McIlroy quizzed him on what the Americans gained from the task force’s overhaul.

“Basically, all they are doing is copying what the Europeans have done,” McIlroy said. “That’s what he said.”

The true litmus test for whether the Americans have found a winning formula is to win in France and end the quarter-century skid away from home. And if they do, Team USA could be off to the races.

Why, you ask? On paper, the Americans should have the long-term advantage because of its youthful core of 20-something players, including Rickie Fowler, Brooks Koepka, Patrick Reed, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas.

This group teamed up to win the Presidents Cup in a cakewalk a year ago. Americans hold three of the four majors, the current World No. 1, and when you add in Tiger Woods, who was supposed to merely be a vice captain, but entered the Ryder Cup as the hottest golfer on the US side, there’s a good case to be made that the Americans will be singing Yankee Doodle Dandy down the Champs Elysees when it heads home on Monday.

Sure, the Euros have McIlroy, who is already competing in his fifth Ryder Cup before his 30th birthday, and the $10 million man, FedEx Cup champion Justin Rose, but the backbone of the European side is an aging group: Rose and Sergio Garcia (38), Paul Casey (41), and Ian Poulter and Henrik Stenson (42). It’s simple math that those Ryder Cup lions have an average age of over 40.

The Euros already retired 40-somethings Luke Donald and Lee Westwood to vice-captaincy duties this time around and you have to wonder how many more Cups are in these players’ future.

Rookies Jon Rahm (23) and Tommy Fleetwood (27) do add an infusion of youth, but the likes of Thomas Pieters and Matthew Fitzpatrick, who didn’t make it back to the Euro squad this time, will have to step up.

“I don’t see America losing a Ryder Cup for the next 12 years,” former US captain Tom Lehman told The Athletic earlier this year.

“Seriously, Europe is good, they’re just not as good as us.”

Which is why Europe needs to nip America’s momentum in the bud this week. Otherwise, it could be a long time before Samuel Ryder’s 17-inch-tall golden chalice will need its passport to travel back to European shores.

Whatever it takes to avoid that awful feeling that Furyk has experienced in five road defeats.

“The worst part is you have to wait two years to play the next one,” Furyk said.