In case you were living under a mossy rock this weekend, here’s a quick 2023 Ryder Cup synopsis.
The US squad came out remarkably flat Friday during their foursomes and fourballs matches. It almost looked like they hadn’t played a tourney round in over a month. But that surely wasn’t the case, right? Heck, they didn’t even scrounge up a 1/2 point until late Friday afternoon, and didn’t earn a full point in a match until Saturday morning when Ryder Cup rookies Max Homa and Bryan Harman bested Shane Lowry and fellow Ryder Cup rookie, Sepp Straka. Unfathomably bad golf was on display. And if for some reason you think we are exaggerating or need proof, watch any match that Jordan Spieth played in.
Down 10.5 to 5.5 Sunday morning, Captain Zach Johnson rah-rah’d his team as best he could and marched his 12 men out one by one against Europe’s 12 finest.
Even though the US put up a fight and the golf was mostly fun to watch if you were a blow-hard fan of the US squad, Team Europe prevailed. You see, no team had ever come back on Sunday from such a large deficit. We suppose a miracle could have happened yesterday, but it just wasn’t meant to be. The Americans had dug too big a hole for themselves.
But at least the US looked good in their Polo garb. What does happen with all the uniforms after the event? Bonfire? In all seriousness, we hope a donation was made and some money was raised. But ZJ probably flubbed that decision too.
The final tally after the last putt of the event had been conceded by Jordan Spieth: 16.5 to 11.5. Ouch.
Congrats to the Euros. The US has now officially gone 30+ years since winning a Ryder Cup on European soil. Next up: back home at Bethpage Black in 2025.
We have a couple of recommendations for the US Ryder Cup task force as they prepare for the next showdown in ’25: 1. Pick Tiger to captain the squad. And then pick him again to captain in ’27 at Adare Manor in Ireland. 2. Either mandate that the players play in a tourney between the Tour Championship and when they tee it up Friday in the Ryder Cup, or, like with USA Basketball and how they prepare for a World Championship or Olympics, stage a behind-the-scenes Ryder Cup-lite event two-weeks out and invite the best college kids in the US to compete against the US stars to help them re-awaken the physical and mental competencies necessary to compete in the biggest team event in professional golf. Now that is a big-boy idea if we’ve ever had one. Something has to change. Let’s go US. Let’s gooooo!