Ah, the auld alliance. A week spent birling and twirling about the streets of Versailles in the hire car, honking the horn at chaotic, careering scooters and greeting my harrumphing colleagues with a daily peck on two cheeks has only heightened this correspondent’s fondness for the way of life in France. I now feel as French as a gently smouldering Gauloises cigarette abandoned next to a rumpled bed.
The Ryder Cup is done and dusted for another couple of years and Paris put on the kind of eye-opening bonanza you’d get at the Moulin Rouge. The USA, meanwhile, seem happy to descend into a panto you’d see at the Pavilion. In the sighing, head-shaking words of one of my fellow scribes, “they still don’t get it do they?”
While European unity, continuity and clarity manifested itself in a buoyant 17 ½ - 10 ½ victory on Sunday, the USA players were left to lick their wounds. One of them opted to open up some old ones too.
Patrick Reed’s admission in the aftermath that American egos in the team room were part of the problem was so very, well, American. The Masters champion’s criticism of Jordan Spieth - “the issue’s obviously with Jordan not wanting to play with me” – wasn’t quite the grisly public filleting that Phil Mickelson performed on Tom Watson in front of a watching world in 2014 but it was just as savaging.
The US will probably have to form another Task Force to take to task those who dared to disrupt the work of the initial Task Force. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, of course. Four years ago at Gleneagles, Mickelson’s withering critique of Watson’s leadership may as well have been done with a double-edged sword.
On one hand, Mickelson was flogged for his self-serving, dishonourable dissing of a golfing icon as he went against the unwritten code of conduct that states all grumblings of discontent should be kept in the team room.
On the other, the Californian was patted on the back for unveiling the home truths of the USA’s seemingly slap dash approach and instigating the formation of that instantly mockable Task Force.
Calling on just about everything from past players, past captains, past Presidents, songs from the Old West and the ghost of John Wayne, this new all-embracing approach was going to transform US fortunes in the biennial bout. Instead of disaccord and disarray, there was grinning talk of harmony and unity.
Dictatorship had been replaced by democracy and everybody was given a say in the process. No so much my way, more his way and his way, oh, and don’t forget his way. And guess what? The USA won the next Ryder Cup at Hazeltine in 2016 and everything was rosy again.
It seems they are back to square one after this pummelling in Paris, though. There are plenty of reasons why the USA lost the 42nd edition of this transatlantic tussle. The Europeans played better for a start, their big players stepped up to the plate and their wild cards prospered. But, with Reed lifting the lid on the civil unrest, it seems that old American habit of flinging a star spangled spanner into their own works has reared its head again.
Unifying messages pasted on the team room wall like ‘leave your egos at the door’ didn’t have the desired effect. The egos had landed. The Task Force were charged with manufacturing some kind of cheery cohesion but the sticky tape has come loose at the edges. In the Ryder Cup, there can be no place for hubris.
Tiger Woods’s reappearance in the Ryder Cup for the first time since 2012 was hailed to the rooftops but over three days at Le Golf National he looked utterly miserable and once again proved that he is not cut out for the team game. Phil Mickelson, who sat out the entire Saturday, was another who simply looked like he didn’t want to be there. Between them, they lost six matches.
Next month, the Tiger and Phil show will see them playing in a $10 million pay-to-view shoot-out in Las Vegas. If their Ryder Cup showings are anything to go by, they’ll have to do the kind of cut-price deal you used to get with Allied Carpets to get folk to pay up.
The USA took a step forward in 2016 but have stumbled two steps back. For Europe, meanwhile, it’s onwards and upwards.
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