CHASKA, Minn. – This wasn’t about being maybe the best team ever assembled. The Americans were simply a team, and they finally won back the Ryder Cup.
Phil Mickelson led the Americans behind the scenes. Patrick Reed powered them with his passion on the golf course. And it was Ryan Moore, the final captain’s pick who wasn’t even on the team until a week ago Sunday, who delivered the cup-clinching point at Hazeltine.
Moore finished eagle-birdie-par for a 1-up victory over Lee Westwood, and the celebration was on.
“When put in the right environment, the U.S. team brought out some amazing golf,” Mickelson said. “And we’re bringing back the Ryder Cup because of it.”
There was no meltdown like Medinah four years ago, when the Americans blew a 10-6 lead under captain Davis Love III.
Europe never really had a chance.
Reed outdueled and outshouted Rory McIlroy for a 1-up victory, and by then the back end of the scoreboard was filled with American red.
The final score was 17-11, the biggest rout for the United States since 1981. That U.S. team is considered the best team ever assembled with 11 major champions. In a radio interview going into the Ryder Cup, Love was trying to explain that the Americans didn’t have to do anything “super human” when he said, “This is the best team maybe ever assembled.”
Ultimately, this wasn’t about measuring against the past as much as it was building to the future.
The Americans lost for the third straight time in 2014 at Gleneagles, and it was team divided over everything from how the captain was selected to how the team should be built. Mickelson put his image on the line by publicly challenging captain Tom Watson at the closing press conference in Scotland, and he was the strongest voice among five players on a task force that was assembled to figure out why the Americans couldn’t seem to win.
Mickelson was under pressure all week and delivered 2 1/2 points, including a halve with Sergio Garcia in which both birdied the final two holes.
“You keep losing, you feel like you have to do something different,” said Love, who avoided becoming the first U.S. captain to lose the Ryder Cup twice. “They had a lot of pressure on them for the last two years. And every time we picked a guy, there was more and more pressure on the team and more and more questions. And I’m just proud the way every one of them played. It was a great team effort.”
The golf was equally great.
Reed faced the tallest order in the leadoff match with Rory McIlroy, and the quality of golf was as high as it gets. Reed squared the match by driving the fifth green to 8 feet for eagle, and he kept the tee until the 18th. Reed matched McIlroy’s birdie on No. 6, McIlroy matched Reed’s birdie on No. 7 and the par-3 eighth hole was as sensational as it gets in a Ryder Cup.
McIlroy holed a 60-foot birdie putt, leapt into the air and cupped his hand to his ear, mocking the American crowd to yell even louder. Reed then holed a birdie putt from 35 feet, charging the crowd before turning to wag his finger at McIlroy. They bumped fists and patted each other on the back, both 5 under through eight holes.
Their standard of gold dipped after that, perhaps because they spent so much energy pumping fists, and Reed finally took his first lead when McIlroy bogeyed the 12th hole. McIlroy’s putter went cold, and Reed closed him out with a 7-foot birdie on the 18th.
Mickelson made 10 birdies, and Garcia made nine birdies against no bogeys in their match.
Among the lone bright spots for Europe was Thomas Pieters, the Belgian rookie who had the best debut of any European rookie by going 4-1. He took down J.B. Holmes in the third match, right after Henrik Stenson dismantled Jordan Spieth. By then, it was ominous.
There would be no comeback like Medinah. There would be no celebrating for Europe, which it had done eight of the last 10 times.
The Americans stood atop a bridge to the left of the 18th green and sprayed champagne on themselves and the crowd, an enormous gathering that sent endless cheers of “U-S-A” and “Red, white, blue” across Hazeltine for three straight days.
Every U.S. player contributed a point.
For Europe, Westwood was among four players who ended the week without a point.
The Ryder Cup Task Force was dismantled after Love was named captain for the second time, though Mickelson and Tiger Woods remain on a committee for the next Ryder Cup in 2018 in France. Europe has not lost consecutive Ryder Cups since 1993.
CHASKA, Minn. – Patrick Reed took over his match and the rest of the Americans followed suit. Now they need to win only five of 12 singles matches to win the Ryder Cup.
The Americans won three of the four afternoon matches for 9 1/2 to 6 1/2 lead Saturday.
Reed holed out a wedge from the fairway for eagle on the par-5 sixth hole to take a lead that he and Jordan Spieth never relinquished against Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose.
Phil Mickelson delivered the key putts for another point, and Lee Westwood gave the Americans help they didn’t need by missing a 2-foot putt on the final hole.
Not even the undefeated partnership of Rory McIlroy and Thomas Pieters could dig Europe out of a hole.
The next challenge for the Americans is history. They led 10-6 at Medinah four years ago only for Europe to rally for another victory.
CHASKA, Minn. – Henrik Stenson tracked the flight of his shot from the middle of the 11th fairway and didn’t like where it was headed. The ball had barely settled into a greenside bunker when he flipped the fairway wood end-over-end into the air like a baton.
“Welcome to America, Henrik!” someone in the gallery howled with delight.
Never mind that Stenson and his family have lived in a very exclusive enclave in Orlando, Florida, for four years now. More important is that it was the Swede who had the last laugh Friday at the Ryder Cup.
He teamed with Englishman Justin Rose in the afternoon’s fourballs to begin the comeback that Rory McIlory and rookie Thomas Pieters finished in grand style to pull Europe to 5-3 by the time the gates at Hazeltine National Golf Club were closed.
The closing flourish was something to see.
Like Stenson-Rose, the McIlroy-Pieters duo got beat handily as the Americans rolled out a 4-0 sweep of the morning foursome. No U.S. team had managed to sweep a session since 1981, which may explain why Captain Davis Love left his opening and anchor pairings intact. So did Darren Clarke, his European counterpart, and his turned out to be the better gamble.
No sooner had McIlory’s 20-footer dropped for eagle to seal a 3-and-2 win over Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar, than he pumped his fist, then stopped and bowed deeply to the sometimes-raucous and overwhelmingly hometown crowd ringing the 16th green.
“I wanted to put an exclamation point on that session for us,” McIlroy said. “I thought about that celebration before I hit the putt.”
It was the kind of gesture we’ve come to expect from Spaniard Sergio Garcia. He teamed with countryman Rafael Cabrera Bello to win his afternoon match and has often served as the emotional engine for the European side, a role he inherited from the late Seve Ballesteros, another of his countrymen.
But Garcia was relatively subdued after his win and, if McIlroy, as well as Stenson and others whose style is less demonstrative, step forward and claim a leadership role, these Ryder Cup matches will be something to see.
With six rookies on his side, Clarke opted to pair the Olympic medallists – Rose won gold at Rio and Stenson grabbed silver – and put them out as his leadoff pair for both the foursomes and fourballs. They managed just one birdie through the 16 holes in the alternate-shot format and got beat 3 and 2 by Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed.
“Obviously, Jordan and Patrick made a few more putts and got the momentum early,” Stenson said.
But the Swede had an inkling he’d get the chance to square things.
“Jordan just told me he would see me this afternoon,” Stenson added, and Spieth turned out to be right.
But this time, the Europeans got some traction early, turning a 1-down deficit around with three straight birdies by Stenson and leading 2-up before they turned for the back nine. When Stenson dumped that fairway wood at par-5 11th into the bunker and wound up making par, Rose stepped up and halved the hole with a nervy 6-footer for birdie. That fueled another run as Stenson and Rose took the next three holes and closed out the match 5 and 4.
“Makes it sweeter when you beat the guys you lost to in the morning,” Stenson said.
The Ryder Cup is known for rowdy galleries. A vocal heckler walked the walk after talking the talk during the practice round on Thursday.
Rory McIlroy and Andy Sullivan took multiple cracks at a 12-foot putt on No. 8 and missed every time. David Johnson, of Mayville, North Dakota, let them know about it, saying he could make the putt. Henrik Stenson pulled Johnson from the gallery and Justin Rose laid a $100 bill right next to the ball, daring Johnson to make it.
After wisecracking that the putter he was handed was too short, Johnson muttered, “home soil, right?” Then he drilled the putt , eliciting a roar from the crowd. Johnson pumped his arms wildly and earned high fives from the entire Euro foursome as they exited the green.
CHASKA, Minn. – Momentum means everything at the Ryder Cup.
Shot to shot, match to match, even era to era, it’s swung back and forth between the United States and Europe, sometimes at a glacial pace and occasionally with head-turning speed.
This time, it’s the visitors who arrive with the wind at their backs. Europe has won the last three, six of the last seven and eight of the last 10.
But if the history of that small gold trophy that English seed merchant Samuel Ryder first put up for grabs in 1927 proves anything, it’s that momentum is hard to catch and even harder to hold onto.
Here are five key swings in momentum at past Ryder Cups:
1967: “The finest golfers in the world.”
Golfers don’t come any tougher or more taciturn than Ben Hogan. The United States had largely dominated Ryder Cup play in the preceding four decades – against teams drawing players only from Great Britain and Ireland – but captain Hogan must have sensed his side was about to step on the gas. He listened as counterpart Dai Rees introduced his team at length and in glowing terms to the audience at the Champions Golf Club in Houston. Then Hogan asked his team to stand, read their names and said simply: “Ladies and gentlemen, the United States Ryder Cup team … the finest golfers in the world.” The Americans won 23 1/2-8 1/2 and kept their grip on the cup for the next eight matches in a row.
1987: First European victory on U.S. soil
Players from continental Europe joined the fray in 1979 and first made their mark with a rare, lopsided home win at The Belfry in 1985. Many of the young golfers who would become Europe’s “golden generation” – Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Jose-Maria Olazabal, Bernhard Langer and Ian Woosnam – were just hitting their stride. But they had to prove their mettle by scoring a first-ever win on U.S. soil – at Muirfield Village, no less, on a course Jack Nicklaus designed. Trailing after two days, a U.S. charge in singles was blunted when Ben Crenshaw, frustrated by a missed putt, broke his putter in half and used his 1-iron or sand wedge on the greens the rest of the way. He lost to Ireland’s Eamonn Darcy on the final hole and Europe appeared to be set for a long run of success.
1991: “War by the Shore”
American golf fans didn’t care much about the Ryder Cup when their countrymen were dominating. But the galleries at the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, for the “War by the Shore” let Europe know how much they wanted it back. Rowdy and close enough to the players on most holes to let those sentiments be heard in explicit terms, the matches came down to the final putt on the final hole of the final singles match between Langer and Hale Irwin. Langer missed a 6-footer for par and a chance to retain the cup.
1999: What are all those people doing on the green?
The swing in momentum at Kiawah turned out to be short-lived. The U.S. team won in 1993, but returned to Brookline Country Club after back-to-back losses in 1995 and 1997, and were down 10-6 heading into the final-day singles. Captain Crenshaw wagged his finger at reporters as he walked out of a news conference, saying “I’ve got a good feeling about this.” In the team room that night, future U.S. President George W. Bush read the famed “Victory or Death” letter penned by Col. William Barrett Travis to the team. Americans won the first seven matches, Justin Leonard made a 45-foot birdie putt at the 17th green as teammates, caddies and even some wives stormed onto the green and soon after, the greatest final-day comeback in Ryder Cup history went into the books. Unfortunately for the U.S. team, this swing was even shorter-lived.
2012: “It ain’t over until we say it’s over!”
Europe arrived on a roll, having won four of the last five. But back on home soil, it was the Americans who were rolling, leading 10-5 late Saturday and 2-up in the last match on the course. But Englishman Ian Poulter had other ideas. He birdied the last five holes to make it 10-6 and a suddenly resurgent Europe mowed down the Americans 8 1/2-3 1/2 in singles. German Martin Kaymer faced a 6-footer – the same length from which countryman Langer had missed almost 20 years earlier _ to clinch the win. “I did think about him, especially when I walked around the hole and read the putt from the other side,” Kaymer said. He poured it into the cup.
BAD GRIESBACH, Germany – French golfer Alexander Levy wasted a four-shot lead but beat Ross Fisher of England in a playoff to win the shortened European Open on Sunday.
Levy had bogeys on the 16th and the 18th and narrowly missed a birdie putt on the 17th to finish the day at 2-under 69 and 19-under overall.
Fisher shot 7-under 64 on the final day but also missed a birdie putt on the 17th and tied with Levy on 19 under. Levy then made a birdie on the second playoff hole to claim the title.
The tournament was reduced to 54 holes because of fog delays over the first three days.
Levy entered the third and final round with a four-shot lead at 17 under after 36 bogey-free holes.
He had three bogeys in his first five holes as playing partner Fisher kept closing the gap to be one shot behind on the final tee.
The Frenchman put his second shot into the spectators’ area to send it into a playoff.
Levy missed his first three cuts of the season and then had two spells on the sidelines in the summer due to injury. But he has been in fine form since his return at the start of the month, finishing in a tie for seventh at last week’s Italian Open.
Two Swedes, Robert Karlsson (65) and Michael Jonzon (68), tied for third at 16 under.
TROON, Scotland – Henrik Stenson and Phil Mickelson delivered what everyone expects out of a major championship.
They matched birdies and improbable par saves. Momentum could change with any shot. The lead changed four times over four hours of golf at its highest level, played in the cold wind and occasional rain off the Irish Sea. All the British Open lacked Saturday was a winner.
Turns out this was only the preview to a duel at Royal Troon.
Stenson took the lead for the last time with another two-shot swing on an inward par 3, and he kept it with a nifty up-and-down on the 18th for par and a 3-under 68, the second straight day that no one had a better score.
That gave the 40-year-old Swede his first lead in a major, even if it was just one shot over someone who already has five majors and his name on the claret jug.
“There’s only one thing that matters tomorrow,” Stenson said. “I know he’s not going to back down, and I’m certainly going to try to not back down, either. So it should be an exciting afternoon. … I’ve worked hard these first three days to put myself in this situation and I’m going to try my hardest tomorrow to finish the job.”
Links golf can deliver some strange finishes, though this had all the trappings of a two-man race on Sunday.
Stenson had his third straight round in the 60s – no one has ever won at Royal Troon with all four rounds in the 60s – and was at 12-under 201. He is trying to become only the eighth player dating to Old Tom Morris in 1861 to win his first major after turning 40.
Mickelson, winless since he lifted golf’s oldest trophy at Muirfield three years ago, had a 70. His game was nowhere near as sharp as his opening-round 63 that tied a major championship record. Even so, he came up with the rights shots at the right time until Stenson passed him late in the afternoon.
“Some days it’s easy and it looks pretty like the first couple,” Mickelson said. “Some days it’s hard and it looks terrible, like it did today. But either way, I shot three rounds under par.”
He made a 25-foot birdie putt on the 13th hole for a two-shot lead. Stenson answered with a 5-iron to 6 feet for birdie on the next hole to tie for the lead when Mickelson three-putted, only his third bogey of the week.
Mickelson regained the lead with a pitch to 4 feet for birdie on the par-5 16th, only for the Swede to answer again, this time with an all-out 3-iron into the wind on the 220-yard 17th hole to 20 feet. Mickelson lost the lead by missing the green to the left and making bogey.
Everyone else felt like mere spectators.
Bill Haas, a six-time winner on the PGA Tour who is rarely heard from at majors, was solid with a 69 and alone in third. It’s his highest position ever in a major, yet he was six shots off the lead. Another shot back was Andrew Johnston, the Englishman with a big belly and beard to match who goes by “Beef.” He broke par for the third straight day with a 70.
It was unlikely to matter.
This was all about Stenson and Mickelson, two powerful players with different styles and different credentials, mainly the number of majors – five for Mickelson, none for Stenson. Mickelson spoke earlier in the week about not having as much pressure knowing he already has won them.
Not since Davis Love III and Justin Leonard shared the lead and were seven shots clear of the field in the 1997 PGA Championship has the final round of a major took on the appearance of match play.
“I was happy enough to throw two good punches in there on the par 3s and pick up two shots on either one of them to come back out on top at the end of the third round,” Stenson said. “I’ve always been of the thought that it’s better to be one ahead than one behind, because that means Phil’s got to play better than I do.”
Mickelson finished three shots ahead of Stenson three years ago at Muirfield when Lefty closed with a 66 in one of the best final rounds of a major. He hasn’t won another tournament since, and at age 46, it appeared time was running out.
A victory Sunday would give him six majors, same as Nick Faldo and Lee Trevino. He also would be the third-oldest major champion behind Julius Boros (48) and Morris, with whom Mickelson shares a birthday – June 16, albeit 149 years apart. The 1861 Open was played in September.
Stenson was on the verge of falling two shots behind until he holed a 40-foot par putt on the 10th. Two holes later, Mickelson was in danger of losing the lead when he pushed his 2-iron toward trouble and was fortunate the ball deflected off a piece of prickly gorse. He had just enough room to hammer it up the fairway, and then played a shot rarely seen in links golf – instead of running it up along the ground, he spun it back down a ridge to 6 feet for a key par.
“I got lucky that that ball didn’t go into the gorse, even though I didn’t have a back swing,” Mickelson said. “I still had a chance to advance it a little bit. I still hit a good shot to advance it down the fairway like I did, and found a way to get up and down.”
Now, they have one more round, this time with a claret jug at stake.
TROON, Scotland – Jason Day is more motivated by failure than success, which helps explain how he reached No. 1 in the world.
And it all started last year at the British Open.
Day had never felt so calm in the midst of such raging emotion that being in contention at a major can bring. He had an innate sense that it would all work out in his favour, right up until the moment that it didn’t.
He had a 30-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole at St. Andrews to get into a playoff. It was right on line. And he left it short.
But it was that moment he realized he was good enough to win majors, and that he would win them if he had more chances. The following week he won the RBC Canadian Open at Glen Abbey Golf Club. Two weeks later, he won the PGA Championship with such a dominant display of power that he became the first player to finish at 20-under par in a major.
Six weeks later, he reached No. 1 for the first time.
“It was kind of, I guess, the start of my run where everything kind of changed my world,” Day said.
The 28-year-old Aussie arrived at Royal Troon on the weekend and headed out to a links course he had never seen, playing in a wind he might not see the rest of the week.
The intrigue of Troon is that the shorter nine going out typically is with the wind, while the stronger, longer holes coming back are into the wind. It was the other way around over the weekend, and it began to shift on Monday on the first official day of practice with 25 mph (40 kph) gusts straight off the Irish Sea.
“In the last five days, the forecast has changed dramatically,” defending champion Zach Johnson said. “And my guess is, it could change again.”
The forecast for Day has a little more clarity.
He has finished out of the top 10 only twice in his nine tournaments dating to March. What he brings to the Ayrshire coast of Scotland is more motivation – his last golfing memory was more failure.
Day appeared to be firmly in control at the World Golf Championship in Ohio two weeks ago until he three-putted for bogey on the 15th hole, made a mess of the par-5 16th hole on his way to a double bogey, and wound up three shots behind U.S. Open champion Dustin Johnson.
“I learn more when I fail than when I win,” Days. “We’re not going to win every single one. Even though I don’t like losing, it was great to be able to learn something from that and turn this into what I would say a learning experience. … It was really bad. It was a terrible way to lose, and it was frustrating and disappointing. But things like this, you can’t win them all.”
He said the Tiger Woods era spoiled golf fans into believing everyone should win tournaments when given a chance, and no one was better at that than Woods. Seventy times around the world, Woods had at least a share of the 54-hole lead. He won 60 of them.
“That’s what I’m shooting for, to be able to finish off like he did back in the day,” he said. “Will I ever get to a point like that? Maybe not. But that’s what I’m shooting for right now.”
As a kid, Day said the two biggest tournaments were the Masters and the British Open. Australians have a long history with the claret jug, dating to Peter Thomson winning five times and Greg Norman winning twice. Day was only a year old when Norman closed with a 64 at Royal Troon, only to hit his drive on the final hole of the playoff so far that it went into a pot bunker and ended his chances.
Norman still has his name on the jug twice. Woods, whom Day seeks out for advice in golf, is on there three times.
“Coming so close last year was definitely a motivational factor in that I would love to one day hold the claret jug and be able to put my name down in history with the best that have ever lived and played the game,” he said.
The jug for the last year belonged to Johnson, who poured wine from it one last time on Sunday night at a house he is sharing with players. Johnson’s first duty Monday morning was to give it back to R&A chief Martin Slumbers outside the clubhouse at Royal Troon.
“It was bittersweet,” Johnson said. “More sweet, but the fact that you’ve got to give it back, you know it’s coming. I guess a portion of that sweetness is you still have an opportunity to get it back.”
Day will defend his RBC Canadian Open title from July 18-24, 2016 at Glen Abbey Golf Club.
INVERNESS, Scotland – Alex Noren held off his pursuers in the final round Sunday to win the Scottish Open by one shot for his fifth victory on the European Tour.
All of Noren’s victories have come after he started the final round in the lead and this was another impressive display of front-running from the Swede, who shot a 2-under 70 to finish on 14-under 274.
Tyrrell Hatton, Noren’s playing partner, was the runner-up at Castle Stuart in northern Scotland after a 69, while Nicolas Colsaerts (66), Danny Lee (69) and Matteo Manassero (70) were a further shot back.
Hatton, Colsaerts, Manassero and Richie Ramsay took the final four qualification places for next week’s British Open at Royal Troon.
Noren began the day with a two-shot lead, which disappeared after a bogey at No. 8 that left him tied with Lee. The 33-year-old Noren birdied Nos. 12 and 15 to go two shots in front again, and a two-putt par at the par-5 18th was enough to win.
“I was so nervous the whole day today,” said Noren, who also led after the second round. “When the game doesn’t feel as good as it looks, you just want it to be over and to come out with a win. That’s what happened.”
When Noren birdied the 12th, there were seven players within two shots. Yet the chasers barely made a birdie putt in the closing holes, with Colsaerts the fastest finisher by making eagle with a huge putt on No. 12 and then rolling in birdies on Nos. 13, 14, 15 and 18.
“I don’t even want to calculate the length of putts on the back nine,” the big-hitting Colsaerts said.
Hatton, who was bogey-free in his final round, ended a frustrating run of five straight pars by making birdie at No. 18 to break free of a four-way tie for second. It secured his place at a fourth consecutive British Open but Hatton remains without a professional win.
Americans Phil Mickelson (66), Patrick Reed (67) and Steve Stricker (67) were among the players going low in the final round, with Castle Stuart playing easier because of only light winds.
INVERNESS, Scotland – Alex Noren of Sweden birdied the last two holes to extend his lead to two shots at the Scottish Open on Saturday after a third round that ended in heavy rain at the Castle Stuart links.
Noren shot a 4-under 68 to move to 12-under 204, two clear of Tyrrell Hatton of England (66) and Matteo Manassero of Italy (68).
The top 15 players are separated by six shots in the last event before the British Open at Royal Troon next week. With the weather turning nasty for the final few hours of the third round, this could be good preparation for the third major of the year.
Noren – the second-round leader by a shot – defied the conditions by hitting a 219-yard tee shot to 3 feet at No. 17 and then getting up and down at the par-5 18th for another birdie.
“I’m really satisfied because it was one of the toughest days this year,” said Noren, who is seeking the fifth European Tour victory of his career.
“I’m hoping for better weather (on Sunday) so it’s not a grind.”
Manassero kept up his resurgence to stay in with a good chance of winning his first event in more than three years, since the BMW PGA Championship in 2013. That victory lifted him to No. 25 in the rankings but the one-time prodigy arrived in northern Scotland ranked No. 596.
After birdies at Nos. 1 and 2 and an eagle at No. 6, Manassero wound up taking the lead thanks to a run of three birdies on Nos. 14-16, including chipping in from just off the green at the 15th. A bogey at No. 17 and a missed short birdie putt at the last dropped him behind Noren, just as the Swede was making his strong finish.
Justin Walters, among the earlier starters when the sun was out and the wind wasn’t so strong, shot 65 to tie for the lowest round of the day and share fourth place with Danny Lee (70).
Former U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell was in a two-way tie for sixth place after a 69, which included four birdies in his last eight holes as the weather turned.
“When the weather got bad, I managed to dig in and get some birdies,” McDowell said. “This is great preparation for next week.”
Phil Mickelson shot 70 and is 11 strokes behind Noren.
Four places in the British Open are available for those not already qualified and who finish in the top 12 plus ties. Hatton, Manassero, Walters and Romain Wattel would currently qualify.
