The U.S. Ryder Cup group, as it enters the current week’s 43rd release of this violence rivalry of enthusiasm and focuses, has eight of the main 10 players on the planet rankings on its program. The European side has one.
The normal Official World Golf Ranking of the U.S. group is 8.9. Europe’s is 30.8.
The Americans have home-course advantage at Whistling Straits, 18 holes of TV gorgeous sight that sits hard by Lake Michigan.
That home-soil advantage is amplified by COVID-19 travel limitations that make it extremely difficult for the energetic European fans to make the outing to America. So those consistently perceptible serenades of “Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole” ought to be quieted with immeasurably less devotees this week.
At the point when you consider those variables, it’s hard to envision the U.S. permitting the Ryder Cup onto a plane back to Europe.
However, this is an exceptionally awkward situation for the Americans, since they should win this week.
The assumptions present U.S. commander Steve Stricker’s most noteworthy test as he prepares his side for the matches, which start on Friday.
“I feel like on paper, from head to toe, the world ranking, I would say we’re a stronger team,” Stricker said. “But I don’t think our guys feel we’re better. They know deep down how hard it is to beat them.”
They ought to, considering Europe has won nine of the beyond 12 Ryder Cups, including four of the beyond five, the last being a seven-point defeat in 2018 at Le Golf France outside of Paris.
“We have the best players this year,” Paul Azinger, the lead analyst for NBC Sports who captained the winning U.S. side in 2008, said. “And obviously, they [the Europeans] roll in with the most confidence and maybe the best team.”
In case there’s one thing in these matches that consistently has held as obvious as a 4-foot Tiger Woods putt thriving, it’s that the best group lifts the goblet by the end of the week, not the group with the best players.
“If it was a computer generating the results this week,” European captain Padraig Harrington said, “the Europeans needn’t turn up.”
Splendidly put, obviously, by Harrington, who’s one of the most legitimate meetings in golf.
Stricker’s most open quandary with his group has to do with how he handles Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, two players who loathe one another yet are partners this week. More significant for Stricker is the means by which DeChambeau and Koepka handle themselves — behind the shut entryways of the group room and on the green.
Harrington offered a decent correlation with the Bryson-Brooks grating when he referred to himself and Sergio Garcia, who turned out to be one of his commander’s picks.
“We’ve obviously been competitors nearly all our career [and] it’s well publicized we wouldn’t necessarily have got on,” Harrington said. “The Ryder Cup is bigger than that. I think it’s probably been good for both of us.”
Stricker will trust that whatever issues Koepka and Patrick Cantley — who was called out by DeChambeau for strolling in front of him as they fought in the BMW Championship last month and didn’t look at him without flinching in the wake of vanquishing him in a season finisher — have with DeChambeau, that they will understand that this week is greater than sense of self and trivial rubbish.
Perhaps this week — relying upon the outcome (read: a U.S. win) — defrosts the freeze between Koepka, Cantlay and any other individual who might object to DeChambeau. The Ryder Cup can be that incredible a power.
“I can’t speak for the Americans — I don’t know what happens there — but it feels like when we get in the team room, everyone takes their armor off and puts it aside,” Garcia said. “You can feel that. Everyone is happy to put their arm around everyone else and try to help.”
Three years prior in France, the U.S. entered with a comparable edge on paper to this year, with nine significant bosses in the 12-man group who had joined to win 10 of the past 16 majors.
The outcome: Europe 17.5, U.S. 10.5.
The Europeans want the longshot job the manner in which large numbers of their fans ache for pints of Guinness — notwithstanding the reality they’ve claimed the Americans in these counterparts for over twenty years. With such countless components for the U.S. this week, the Europeans will slurp up the dark horse status like hungry canines.
“That’s our advantage, I guess, in a way, right — that we have delivered when perhaps we shouldn’t have delivered?” Ian Poulter said recently on a SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio interview. “On paper — on paper — the U.S. team should have delivered.’’
Paper cuts once in a while hurt the most and they wait the longest.
