You almost could hear the condescending chatter and chortles from across The Pond the moment news leaked out in advance of Tuesday’s official announcement by the PGA of America that Davis Love III will be the 2016 U.S. Ryder Cup captain.
The Americans, after all, have lost eight of the past 10 Ryder Cups to Europe, including six of the past seven.
And, Love captained the 2012 U.S. team that let a 10-4 lead dissolve into an historic 14 ½ to 13 ½ loss at Medinah — the most crushing Ryder Cup defeat in U.S. history.
Add to that the fact Tom Lehman, the losing captain of the 2006 team, will be one of Love’s assistant captains in 2016 at Hazeltine in Minnesota. It is expected Steve Stricker, one of the primary culprits in the 2012 loss, having gone winless that week and losing the clinching point to Europe’s Martin Kaymer, also will be Love’s assistant.
So you can understand the Europeans feeling a sense of added confidence after hearing this latest bit of news.
But if all parties involved with the U.S. Ryder Cup team take the same unified, enthusiastic approach they displayed in Tuesday’s press conference, perhaps the Americans will have the last laugh in 2016 and beyond.
The 11-man task force that was formed as a result of Phil Mickelson’s bold and controversial comments after the Europeans dusted the U.S. 16 ½ to 11 ½ in September at Gleneagles has spawned a new era for U.S. Ryder Cup teams — an era the Americans hope is a winning period after so many years of being dominated and disappointed.
The players now have a voice, input on who their captain will be. The qualifying system has been tweaked to allow an 11th-hour captain’s pick right before the matches begin to allow the addition of a hot player to the team later in the process — the Billy Horschel Rule, if you will.
Now that the players have more ownership in the process, something Mickelson said on Tuesday they “craved,’’ it now falls on the 12 players who will tee it up in 2016 at Hazeltine to wrest the Ryder Cup from the Europeans.
No excuses.
They don’t have Tom Watson to kick around anymore. Watson, the 2014 captain who was universally reviled by the players for his lack of a clue in creating team unity, had to be bristling somewhere listening to the press conference.
“Winning is a process, and we have never really had a process. … We do now,’’ Lehman said.
“I’m here with the same goal I had in 2012, but not as the same captain,’’ Love said. “The task force has been an open, honest team‑building experience. That will lay the groundwork for future teams.’’
The 50-year-old Love, who was a member of the task force that included Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Rickie Fowler, Jim Furyk and Lehman, among others, will become one of eight men who have captained the U.S. team more than once — joining Watson, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan, Jack Burke Jr., Walter Hagen and Sam Snead.
“Our team will trust each other, and we will have a shared vision,’’ Love said. “I don’t think that we have to make massive changes. We have to make some small changes that add up to half a point here or half a point there.’’
The primary goal of the task force has been to cultivate captains the way the Europeans do, with vice captains groomed for eventual captaincy and captains remaining involved with future teams.
“We’re building a team of captains. We’re building a family that’s going to pull together,’’ Love said.
Love said “trust’’ is the biggest thing he hopes to create as captain.
“These guys trusted me to listen and to take all their advice and assimilate it and then go out and be a leader,’’ he said.
Five months ago, the U.S. Ryder Cup team departed Gleneagles in discord, disillusioned at being so dominated by the tight-knit Europeans and miffed at the me-first way in which Watson captained.
On Tuesday, unity entered the U.S. Ryder Cup team room, and the Americans hope that unity allows them to have the last laugh against the Europeans.