KOHLER, Wis. — On paper, it looks like a mismatch.
But you know how painful paper cuts can be.
The U.S. Ryder Cup team, as it enters this week’s 43rd edition of this blood-and-guts competition of passion and points, has eight of the top-10 players in the world rankings on its roster. The European side has one.
The average Official World Golf Ranking of the U.S. team is 8.9. Europe’s is 30.8.
The Americans have home-course advantage at Whistling Straits, 18 holes of television eye candy that sits hard by Lake Michigan.
That home-soil advantage is magnified by COVID-19 travel restrictions that make it almost impossible for the spirited European fans to make the trip to America. So those always audible chants of “Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole” should be muted with vastly fewer followers this week.
When you take into account all of those factors, it’s difficult to imagine the U.S. allowing the Ryder Cup onto a plane back to Europe.
Yet, this is a highly uncomfortable position for the Americans, because they’re supposed to win this week.
The expectations pose U.S. captain Steve Stricker’s greatest challenge as he readies his side for the matches, which begin on Friday.
“I feel like on paper, from head to toe, the world ranking, I would say we’re a stronger team,” Stricker said. “But I don’t think our guys feel we’re better. They know deep down how hard it is to beat them.”
They should, considering Europe has won nine of the past 12 Ryder Cups, including four of the past five, the last being a seven-point rout in 2018 at Le Golf France outside of Paris.
“We have the best players this year,” Paul Azinger, the lead analyst for NBC Sports who captained the winning U.S. side in 2008, said. “And obviously, they [the Europeans] roll in with the most confidence and maybe the best team.”
If there’s one thing in these matches that always has held as true as a 4-foot Tiger Woods putt in his prime, it’s that the best team hoists the chalice by week’s end, not the team with the best players.
“If it was a computer generating the results this week,” European captain Padraig Harrington said, “the Europeans needn’t turn up.”
Brilliantly put, as usual, by Harrington, who’s one of the most honest interviews in golf.
Stricker’s most public dilemma with his team has to do with how he handles Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka, two players who detest each other yet are teammates this week. More important for Stricker is how DeChambeau and Koepka handle themselves — behind the closed doors of the team room and on the golf course.
Harrington offered a good comparison to the Bryson-Brooks friction when he referenced himself and Sergio Garcia, who happened to be one of his captain’s picks.
“We’ve obviously been competitors nearly all our career [and] it’s well publicized we wouldn’t necessarily have got on,” Harrington said. “The Ryder Cup is bigger than that. I think it’s probably been good for both of us.”
Stricker will hope that whatever issues Koepka and Patrick Cantley — who was called out by DeChambeau for walking ahead of him as they battled in the BMW Championship last month and didn’t even look him in the eye after vanquishing him in a playoff — have with DeChambeau, that they will realize that this week is bigger than ego and petty nonsense.
Maybe this week — depending on the result (read: a U.S. win) — thaws the freeze between Koepka, Cantlay and anyone else who may have a problem with DeChambeau. The Ryder Cup can be that powerful a force.
“I can’t speak for the Americans — I don’t know what happens there — but it feels like when we get in the team room, everyone takes their armor off and puts it aside,” Garcia said. “You can feel that. Everyone is happy to put their arm around everyone else and try to help.”
Three years ago in France, the U.S. entered with a similar edge on paper to this year, with nine major champions on the 12-man team who had combined to win 10 of the previous 16 majors.
The result: Europe 17.5, U.S. 10.5.
The Europeans crave the underdog role the way many of their fans crave pints of Guinness — despite the fact they’ve owned the Americans in these matches for more than two decades. With so many elements in favor of the U.S. this week, the Europeans will be lapping up the underdog status like hungry dogs.
“That’s our advantage, I guess, in a way, right — that we have delivered when perhaps we shouldn’t have delivered?” Ian Poulter said recently on a SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio interview. “On paper — on paper — the U.S. team should have delivered.’’
Paper cuts sometimes hurt the most and they linger the longest.
