Team Europe Wins the Run Up to the Cup

How can the team that has won 8 of the last 10 Ryder Cups be cast as the underdog in this Cup?

How can the team that has a 3 straight winning streak not be the favorite?

How can the team that’s won 2 of the last 3 contests on foreign soil be touted to lose when they once again play in the USA?

It beats me. But I need to come up with some explanation.

The conventional wisdom looks at the top to bottom Official World Golf Rankings of each team and concludes, once again, that the US club is superior because their players have better rankings. Well, that’s been the case from time immemorial and it’s been wrong most of the time since 1979 (when Team GB& I expanded into Team Europe). And since 1995, Team Europe is 8 and 2, a total domination in the recent past that parallels the early domination of the US from 1927 until 1979.

The individual ranks of the team members are as important and predictive of success as is their individual shoe sizes. They don’t mean a damn thing.

It’s the team dynamic that has given the Euro the edge in the past ten cup competitions. The Europeans believe this but they don’t trumpet it as an edge. They are humble and cagey and continue to cultivate their underdog image, cup after cup, because they know it helps to relive pressure on their side while ramping up the pressure on the US team.

Team USA believes this thoroughly otherwise why would they have formed The Task force and put in place a strategy, structure and practices that copy the successful European template?

Although Team USA are trying to emulate the European recipe in this go round they still haven’t quite got it right.

Significant mistakes of the foot -in – mouth type have been made by both Captain Love and Phil Mickelson, with Love giving fodder to feed the Euro Team Beast with his “Best Team Ever comments” and Phil creating foolish distractions for his own side by taking the hatchet to Hal Sutton.

These suicide by tongue exercises are symptomatic of the deeper dysfunction of the Team USA approach, I think, but that’s another conversation.

To my mind the USA is a significant underdog in this match because they are still searching for the formula of success that is fully ingrained in the Team Europe approach. And the pre-game antics of our Team USA this week in Hazeltine don’t inspire much confidence