The recent Ryder Cup stats make depressing reading for US golfers and golf fans. The fact is that Europe have won 80% of Ryder Cups over the last couple of decades. These days, the US team goes into each Ryder Cup not expecting to win.
The bookmakers and betting exchanges like Betfair always have the European golfers in the favorite’s position for the Ryder Cup.
So what’s going wrong with American golf and why? Do we need to worry? What needs to be done – and will team USA win the 2016 Ryder Cup that is due to be held at the Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota?
Well we’ll come back to those questions in a moment, in order to first get a little perspective on this European dominance – because it certainly didn’t used to be this way.
Old US dominance
In days gone by, the Ryder Cup was pretty much a foregone conclusion; the US would win. Those days must seem like a distant memory now for younger US golf fans who can only really remember a time when Europe had the edge. But anyone in their late 40s or above will be able remember a time when the bi-annual transatlantic international golf competition was, well, a little on the boring side.
It’s true that this was at a time when the US used to play a team drawn exclusively from the British Isles – and it was also at a time when British and Irish golf was somewhat in the doldrums. But it’s still true.
So to make things a little more interesting and exciting, the event was changed in 1979 so that players from across Europe could now compete for a European side. It’s true that golfers from the British Isles have continued to dominate the European side – but the change in rules was crucial in allowing the other countries to compete. Perhaps more than any other single golfer – it was the late great flamboyant Spanish player Seve Ballesteros that made the Ryder Cup organizers decide on changing the rules.
Bur we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves – so let’s first take a brief look at where the Ryder Cup had come from – and what the stats used to look like.
Ryder Cup beginnings
The competition was first organized back in 1927 between Great Britain and the United States. This first event occurred at the Worcester Country Club, in Massachusetts. The 1929 second Ryder Cup was then held at Moortown Golf Club in Yorkshire, England – and both these events were won by the host country – as were the next three Ryder Cups. The US then became the first nation to win away from home at the Southport and Ainsdale Golf Club in Lancashire, England in 1937.
But when the teams started to play again after a ten-year absence caused by the Second World War, the US really began to dominate proceedings. Team USA won five in a row until 1957 when the British team won at home. But this was a brief break from American dominance. In fact, Team USA then won ten Ryder Cups in succession up to the time when it was decided to make the eastern side of the Atlantic Ocean’s team a European one.
European perspectives
As previously stated, it was perhaps the success of the Spanish golfers – spearheaded by the great Seve Ballesteros and others like Antonio Garrido – that helped usher in the new era.
Back in 1973 the official name for the UK side had been altered from that of simply “Great Britain” to “Great Britain & Ireland”. This was to acknowledge that golfers from Eire had been competing on behalf of Great Britain’s Ryder Cup team since 1953. Players from Northern Ireland, meanwhile, had been part of the Great Britain side since 1947.
Interestingly, it was the greatest golfer in the history of the great game of golf, Jack Nicklaus, who was responsible for the change to a European team more than any other golfer. The initial suggestion to make the change followed a conversation between the “Golden Bear” himself and the Earl of Derby in 1977. The Earl was then the President of the Professional Golfers’ Association. Jack Nicklaus proposed the change to make the Ryder Cup more competitive – acknowledging the Americans’ dominance. Clearly, the rest of the golfing world agreed and the event was changed.
Straight away, the change worked, making the Ryder Cups of 1979, 1981 and 1983 far more interesting than previous events had been – not least due to the inclusion in the European side of golfers including Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer.
But despite the “new” event generating quite a bit of media and public interest in both Great Britain and the rest of Europe – the first two still saw the US dominating proceedings by a wide margin.
The watershed moment
But the 1983 Ryder Cup suddenly became a far more interesting proposition than any had been for a long time. Team USA won again on home turf at the PGA National Golf Club, Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, but only by a single point. The writing was very much on the wall here. The Europeans had come perilously close to achieving what had previously seemed unachievable and when the Ryder Cup resumed two years later, this time at the Belfry’s Brabazon Course, in Warwickshire, England, in 1985 – Europe won. In fact, Europe won convincingly by a resounding five-point margin.
The winning team was still dominated by players from the British Isles and captained by the legendary Tony Jacklin, but it also included four Spaniards in the shape of Seve Ballesteros, Manuel Piñero, José Maria Cañizares and José Rivero – along with one German; Bernhard Langer.
This was a real watershed moment in the history of golf and most certainly in the history and development of the Ryder Cup – and ushered in the extremely fierce rivalry that has characterized the tournament in the modern era. It’s probably fair to say that the current popularity of the Ryder Cup on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean which now generates such a huge amount of media and public attention every two years , can be said to date from the first European victory at the Belfry in 1985; quite simply – it changed everything.
European dominance
Now if we look at the cold, hard stats since the change to a Europe-wide side in 1979, then the Europeans have the distinct edge with ten wins to the USA’s seven, with one event (the 1989 tournament back at the Belfry) being tied which meant Europe retained the trophy. During this time, the European side has included players from France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, and Sweden – playing alongside their British counterparts who still dominate the overall numbers.
But the simple wins tally actually flatters the performance of the US team if we look at more recent stats a little more closely.
The awful truth for American golf is that Europe have now won eight of the last ten Ryder Cup competitions since 1995. And the two competitions won by the US during that time were both won on home soil – with the fist coming at the Country Club, Composite Course, Brookline, Massachusetts in 1999 and the next at the Valhalla Golf Club, Louisville, Kentucky in 2008.
All in all, then, something seems to have gone terribly wrong with American golf. Of course, the infamous meltdown in Medinah two years ago – when the US team went into the final day with a four-point lead and still managed to lose – did absolutely nothing for American morale, or for the all-time stats on the Ryder Cup.
2014 damp-squib
But at the same time, the recent Ryder Cup at Gleneagles in Scotland seemed to be over almost before it began. The US team looked great on paper – particularly as it was led by the great Tom Watson who had won four of his amazing five Open Championship Majors on Scottish soil.
The bottom line, though, was that the US team was very soundly beaten by better golfers that received stronger leadership, were better organized and more determined to win. Ultimately, the scoreboard read Europe 16½ points to team USA’s 11½ points. This is a heck of a wide margin in the modern era when most Ryder Cups have gone all the way to the wire.
During the Saturday afternoon foursomes, in particular, the USA team was badly outplayed and out-captained by the Europeans. And after taking three and a half from a possible four points over the course of a bleak afternoon for the US, the hosts took a commanding 10–6 lead into the final day.
This was exactly the same score the US team had taken into the final day at Medinah two years earlier. But there was no dogged, determined fight-back from the US team which went out with much more of a whimper than a bang. On the Sunday at Gleneagles, Scotland, the European team won two of the first three matches – and it was all over. From that opening flurry of wins onwards, the only real suspense and interest was in seeing which European player could make the home victory official.
In the end, this honor fell to Jamie Donaldson, a little-known 38-year-old Ryder Cup newbie from Wales, who managed to close out Keegan Bradley on the 15th green in match number 10.
If anything, the final score felt like it flattered the visitors a little – such was the manner of the US’s capitulation.
So where do we go from here?
So the bottom line is that the Europeans have now won six of the last seven Ryder Cups and an amazing eight from the last 10. To say the American side was and is dispirited is to engage in gross understatement.
Tom Watson has come in for a huge amount of criticism after the Gleneagles event – a little of it justified but most of it not. He simply did the best with the players he had and repeated what every other US Ryder Cup captain visiting European shores has experienced since 1993 – and lost. And who was the guy who was the last US Ryder Cup captain to be victorious on European soil at The Belfry in 1993? Well it was a guy named Tom Watson funnily enough – so he hardly deserves any criticism for his latest efforts.
After the 2014 Ryder Cup, Tom Watson summed things up neatly by saying that the team has to play better and that each player plays a role in that. This may sound like stating the obvious and it is – but then that’s entirely appropriate as the obvious is also the obvious problem!
This is not rocket science. At any sport when 12 guys pull together as a team better than the opposing 12, they’re very likely to win. And most of that stuff is inside the head. When your counterparts and predecessors have kept losing resoundingly or throwing away commanding leads, you can hardly be criticized for going into a tournament not feeling all-conquering.
The main battle needs to be fought in the heads of the American players. The truth is that there are great golfers on both sides of the big pond. The form swings this way and that – but the two are essentially somewhere around equal. In other words, the real difference is all about confidence – along with a good slice of luck.
The U.S. side has got itself into a bit of rut and Gleneagles simply deepened that rut. But by the time 2016 comes around, the home side will be more determined than ever to turn things round and if they can do that – all this negativity despondency and lack of confidence will be forgotten in a flash.
So let’s not overdo the doom and gloom just yet. But the recent stats do make for depressing reading for fans of American golf, it has to be said.
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