Underdog Americans biting back
sport.scotsman.com
BY TOM ENGLISH
Sun 17 Sep 2006
TOM Lehman told a story in New York last week about his team's recent visit to Ireland and their night of bonding, over a gallon of stout, in a small pub in the hushed environs of the K Club. There they were, Tiger and Phil and the rest, supping Guinness on the high stool, yanking each other's chains about this and that, about their fishing, about somebody "losing their butt" at poker, about some 3am prank they tried to pull on Tiger while the great one was asleep in bed.
"The Guinness was flowing very freely," said Lehman, "and [at the end of the night] somebody reached in their pocket to give the bartender a credit card for the bill and he says, 'well, we don't take credit cards.' OK, no problem, cash. 'Anybody have any euros?' Not one guy on our team had euros."
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The comedy of the situation was lost on no-one. The combined wealth of the Americans would have sunk a battleship, but a bill of a few hundred euros was causing their captain some embarrassment. Much to the hilarity of his team, Lehman approached four locals, exchanged some currency and then departed in laughter, the precise sound he was hoping would reverberate around his men in their few days across the water. So often held back by their own earnestness, there is a mellow air to the Americans this time around and it hasn't come about by accident.
Jack Nicklaus once said that Ryder Cap captaincy was overrated. "Just show up, keep up and shut up. Being captain is kind of easy," said Jack. Even one as incident-prone as Ian Woosnam can manage that much. But if Jack is wrong and proper leadership actually means something, then America will win this week.
Two years ago, Hal Sutton drew widespread praise for his meticulous preparation as America's captain. In the phoney war, Hal was king. Lehman has it all to prove but the work he has done so far has been strikingly impressive. Lehman has been talking to coaches and motivators from other sports, a "star chamber" of American winners as one writer put it. For months, he's been on the phone talking to his team, giving the senior players a sense of ownership, giving the younger guys a feeling of belonging. Together they have spoken about the issues that have held America back in recent years, the absence of enjoyment and the reasons why.
Getting all 12 players to go to Ireland was a coup but, more than that, getting all 12 to bond and enjoy each other's company was a revelation given the difficulties that exist in some of the relationships. Woods went back home and straightaway brought the four rookies to dinner. Maybe it was the world number one's idea, but the seed from which the invite grew was planted by Lehman and it blossomed into an evening that appears to have done the under-fire quartet a power of good. Few observers think Brett Wetterich, Vaughn Taylor, Zach Johnson and JJ Henry are up to it, but Woods reminded them that they all qualified on merit. They didn't need the charity of a captain's pick. They left the meal feeling 10ft tall.
Lehman's thorough approach reminds you of the way Bernhard Langer did things two years ago and Woosnam's awkwardness is a throwback to Sutton. Before the last Ryder Cup Sutton went on an eight-hour seminar in New York on how best to come across in the media, then forgot how many children he had in his speech in the opening ceremony. Woosnam would not have been short of media training either but, still, he made a bags of his wild card announcement and sparked a wounding controversy. The European captain is one-down before a ball has been hit in anger.
But remember Nicklaus's words. Woosnam doesn't necessarily need to be a good leader to win the Ryder Cup for he has, possibly, the most complete team any European captain has ever had and he's coming up against a group of Americans that have been derided by their own people.
Where are the discernible weaknesses in Woosnam's side? Robert Karlsson might have left you cold, but his destruction of Jim Furyk at Wentworth on Thursday fairly warmed the blood. Paul McGinley is the one guy who's been struggling with his game for any meaningful period of time, but McGinley is a magnificent exponent of matchplay golf and he revels in the Ryder Cup. There are not a lot of chinks in the European armoury.
There is pressure on Woosnam, though. Pressure not to stuff it up. The Americans, on current form, are in a state. Scott Verplank has missed two cuts in his last three tournaments, Chad Campbell has missed four in his last seven, Wetterich has missed five in his last nine. DiMarco, Johnson and Taylor are not on song and even Mickelson hasn't made the top 15 in his last five events.
But we've been here before, of course. We've seen apparently no-mark European teams beat vaunted opponents and it is the possibility of the nice winning scenario that everyone in this part of the world envisages being turned on its head that must be keeping Woosnam awake at night. In some ways, he has little to gain and everything to lose.
Matchplay is an animal like no other, and America, which initially wrote off its team's chances, is now, slowly, beginning to see a way in which they can win. The K Club is an American course plonked in the middle of Kildare. It is also an American course that has been heavily rained upon, so it will be wet and receptive. The Americans can play the kind of target golf they love so much.
Revisionists are appearing now. Studies of the stats of the individual members of Lehman's team show a group of men who are largely off-form but who, amid all the bogeys, are still making mountains of birdies. Wetterich is a case in point. He's a prodigious hitter and a birdie-fiend. He's as likely to make a 7 as a 3, but in fourballs that hardly matters much. Not all of Lehman's rookies are going to be dead-losses. Not all of Woosnam's go-to men are going to deliver. Weird and wonderful things tend to happen in these matches.
What if Tiger is all he can be? What if he finally cracks matchplay and defeats some totems of the European team on the opening day on Friday? The psychology of momentum is paramount. Europe has never had to face a Tiger in full cry in these matches and you wonder about the dynamics of the event if Woods does manage to reproduce his greatness this week.
Previous European captains have stressed the danger of the underdog and in a sign of how different things are this year it is Lehman who is doing the preaching now. "I remember one time playing in the Presidents Cup [in a fourball] and we played Brad Hughes who might have been a fill-in for somebody else," he said. "Brad Hughes shot 10-under with his own ball for 14 holes and just clobbered us. By himself, he beat us. So you don't need to be a star to beat someone.
"I feel really good about the way we have prepared for this. I know the guys have poured their heart and soul into it and they are going to play hard and that's all you can ask. You're probably not going to believe me, but I don't really feel much pressure at all. I don't. I feel very confident in our team."
Woosnam hasn't spoken much to his team, but he says the same thing. He's confident. He's ready. He's got faith in his boys. He's probably right. Strength-in-depth should win the day for Europe, but Lehman's force of will and the spirit he has fostered within his team can take it to the wire. |
