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People ask me what it’s been like AS European captain preparing for the Ryder Cup at Valhalla Golf Club in September. It’s all the things you might expect: enjoyable, fascinating, complicated in some ways, simple in others.
U.S. captain Paul Azinger switched the format so that alternate-shot comes first on Friday and Saturday, with four-ball in the afternoons. That’s where the Ryder Cup gets simple. Zinger made the switch because he thinks the U.S. is better in foursomes than we are. He gets to do that, and I get to say to my guys: “Zinger thinks his side plays foursomes better than you do.” That prospect will pull our players together as a team.
As captain, I’m looking for ways to get our guys past thinking about themselves—their heads will be much clearer. There’s a lot of nervous energy in a Ryder Cup, so you build to that level where it’s still positive. Then you get outside yourself and start playing in honor of something else.
Zinger said I was grinding away at Valhalla—playing the course, taking notes about every shot, getting prepped in my usual, detailed way. Which is true. I think somehow his comment was seen as a knock on me, but I didn’t take it that way.
And as far as detailed preparation goes, sometimes it’s all for naught. One year Colin Montgomerie and I were paired in foursomes and spent two days preparing our strategy. I would hit the tee shot on the first hole, Monty on the second, and so forth, all through eighteen. But that morning on the range, I just didn’t get comfortable with the type of drive I needed to hit on number one. So a few minutes before we went to the tee, I said, “Monty, I don’t feel good about the shot. You hit first here.” He harrumphed all the way to the tee, harrumphed a bit longer, then knocked one out in the fairway. In every Ryder Cup there are going to be some funny things like that, and they’re good icebreakers.
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