Ryder Cup: Solid Steve Stricker bids to bring balance to a volatile US mix

Ryder Cup captains Steve Stricker and Pádraig Harrington speak to the media at Whistling Straits this week. Picture: Stacy Revere/Getty Images

Steve Stricker understands he’s a head scratcher. He doesn’t fit the traditional American model of Ryder Cup captain. He never won a major. He’s not a likely Hall of Famer. He’s not a fire-and-brimstone motivational speaker.

But when the American blueprint for the Ryder Cup wasn’t delivering desired results match after biennial match, they drafted a task force to rethink the model. Stricker is the culmination of what Team USA believes a captain should be, and he brings more to the table that might be apparent at first glance.

“I’m probably the most experienced captain, really, that’s ever been a captain, if I want to be truthful with you,” Stricker said as Ryder Cup week commenced after three long years preparing to be waged in Stricker’s home state of Wisconsin. “I’ve been a part of every team since I’ve quit playing on these teams, and a captain of the 2017 Presidents Cup team.

“So I’ve seen a lot of different things. I’ve seen some things that worked. I’ve seen some things that haven’t worked. I’ve put all those in my memory bank over the years and hopefully lean on those things that I’ve learned and apply them to this week. Yeah, it’s been fun to get to know the other side of things other than the players’ side, and I’ve definitely learned a lot.”

Stricker possesses a personality about as spicy as Wisconsin milk, so it’s easy to overlook just how ubiquitous he has been in American international team matches going back 25 years. He was a rookie on the 2008 Ryder Cup team that won at Valhalla, and he played again in 2010 and ’12. For the Presidents Cup he played on five winning teams (1996, 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2013) and guided the American team to a victory over the Internationals as captain in 2017 in New Jersey. He’s been a vice-captain for the previous three US Ryder Cups before taking the helm as part of the taskforce’s design to develop continuity.

With a likeability quotient as high as anyone who ever played golf on the PGA Tour, Stricker is precisely the kind of consensus builder Team USA believes it needs to develop a roster of head-strong individuals into a cohesive unit. It’s a process that this time has involved squashing disruptive feuds between key stars like Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, forging a peace in the name of unity.

And he’s gathered his team for dinners and advance practice rounds to build up a comfort that doesn’t always come naturally to PGA Tour players.

“I think I’ve learned a lot being an assistant captain more so than being a player… it’s just learning what works well with the players, what doesn’t work well,” he said.

“I think the biggest thing that I have brought or want to bring is just communication, and I think the hardest part is when you don’t communicate to your players.

“If you throw a guy a curveball at the last second, it’s hard for these guys to adjust. They are a product of…when they are playing on a weekly basis, they are doing a routine, day in and day out. You want to make sure that you don’t get in the way of that routine so much. Give them enough lead time, give them some notice when we are going to play so they can prepare and prepare well to go out and play.”

While he hasn’t officially revealed his game-plan for the matches that begin on Friday, Stricker clearly has developed a plan with his vice-captains that he believes in. He’s tipped his hand with the way he filled out his roster with six wild-card picks and has deployed his players for interviews and practice rounds at Whistling Straits in “pods” that make sense.

Stricker picked players especially suited for a Whistling Straits course he is setting up to take advantage of his team’s strengths of power and aggression. He made the hard call of bypassing controversial “Captain America” Patrick Reed in favour of big-hitting rookie Scottie Scheffler. He considers the fact that he has six Ryder Cup rookies on his team a strength rather than a deficit — something he can understand, considering he was part of a six-rookie winning side in 2008.

That his roster has only 12 previous Ryder Cup starts combined, making it the most inexperienced US team since 1979, isn’t something he’s worried about. Sergio Garcia’s 25½-career Ryder Cup points won is equal to the number of points this entire US roster has combined. Experience, however, hasn’t always been a very good thing for a US team that that have won only two of the last nine Ryder Cups.

“I saw a stat earlier that we are on average about five years younger than the European Team,” Stricker said. “One thing is we come with a lot of enthusiasm and energy, young guys willing and ready to learn. No bad experiences, for the most part, from a lot of these guys. You know, we haven’t been on the winning side too many times… We’re not coming with bad experiences. I see that as a positive. We are using that as a positive and our guys are super fired up and ready to go.”

Scheffler, for instance, is someone Stricker can deploy with long-time friend DeChambeau, alleviating a matchup headache with a unique talent whose style doesn’t suit all tastes.

The captain has carefully fitted other potential partnerships, such as Koepka and Daniel Berger or Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay. He’s got a built-in, proven partnership in Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth. And he has some versatile pieces like Collin Morikawa, Tony Finau, and Harris English who can fit in a wealth of contingency options should the original plan not work out.

Stricker is not going to ask his team to do anything he hasn’t already discussed with them long before they step into the massive arena around the first tee this week. He won’t spring surprises between sessions, suddenly blowing up his playbook just because the morning matches didn’t go as planned.

His stated goal has been to “out-prepare” the Europeans with a plan specifically devised for Whistling Straits. “For every meeting that we’ve had and everything we’ve talked about, it seems, wow, these guys, we didn’t even need to have a practice round and they’ve got a lot of it figured out,” said Spieth.

“I think Strick would tell you it’s a team effort with his vice-captains, and there’s a lot of experience on that board for us. We go out there and try and hit the shots, and wherever they put us and how often they put us there, we’re trusting in them that it’s in our best interest, but they’re also very open to this team to voicing their opinion to them.

“There’s no ego with Strick. He’ll listen to anybody about anything — if you’re comfortable in a setting, if you’re not. I think he’s made the rest of the team feel that way ahead of time. Certainly, I think things can adjust, but as far as how prepared you can be on Tuesday for a Friday start, I would say it’s probably the most that I’ve seen in the four Cups.”

That America has put its hopes for winning back the Ryder Cup in Stricker’s hands is as much of a surprise to Stricker as it is to anyone else. For a guy who won 12 times on the PGA Tour and not once but twice — in consecutive years — won the tour’s comeback player-of-the-year award, it’s not even something he ever dreamed playing as a
kid down Wisconsin’s dairy roads from the Straits course along the shores of Lake Michigan.

“It’s been an unbelievable journey,” Stricker said of a role he was honoured and humbled to accept. “I think back to childhood golf at those two (nearby) courses … and just all the years playing on tour. I personally never thought I would be in this position to captain the Ryder Cup team. … You just look back at all the things that have taken place throughout my career, and this was not on my radar for sure. So extremely happy to be a part of it and we look forward to it for sure.”

This dream job, of course, comes with a caveat. Stricker will be remembered for how his team performs this week as favourites in his home state. That’s pressure he’s ready to handle and hopes he’s prepared his team to handle as well.

“Every time you play at home you realise you’re going to have a home-field advantage, basically, when it comes to the fans,” he said. “So you just go out and embrace it. Let them energise you. Let them pick you up … show off for them, right. It seems like our teams over the years, the teams that have played well, they get to the point of almost like they show off for the home fans, and hopefully that’s what our guys are going to do this week and provide a lot of excitement.”