FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Shane Lowry jumped and celebrated like a man who knew the outcome had been in doubt, so in that sense, the U.S. pulled off a massive upset Sunday. The Americans rallied to turn a Ryder Cup blowout into a plain old respectable defeat.
It was just too bad that the Americans woke Sunday morning without a single point from the former Texas Longhorn who is three-quarters of the way to the career Grand Slam.
I am speaking, of course, of Jordan Spieth.
And it’s a shame the U.S. got so little out of the former world No. 1 who broke through at the U.S. Open by driving the ball longer and straighter than previously thought possible.
Dustin Johnson, obviously.
Oh, and what might have been if the U.S. could actually count on the guy who won multiple majors with an uncanny ability to summon his best golf when he needed it.
Yup: Brooks Koepka.
The Americans who played showed grit, they finally made more clutch putts and there were some moments that should give them at least a little comfort. Russell Henley missed a putt that would have closed out Lowry, but he hit an epic approach from deep in a fairway bunker to set it up. Cam Young, Justin Thomas, Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele went 4–0 in singles against European stalwarts Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm. Bravo to all.
“I’ve never seen anything like that, and I’ve never felt anything like that—watching golf, playing golf, doesn’t matter,” Young said. “I think it’s really just a testament to how much it means to all of us to be here, and how much we all want to play well for each other.”
The U.S. lost to a better team. No shame in that.
But the U.S. also could have brought a better team.
The Americans fell behind Europe long before they arrived at Bethpage Black. They were staggered by a combination of bad luck, greed, slumping and infighting, along with an epic ongoing distraction.
There are 15 American men who won a major in the last decade and are under the age of 42. That means 15 Americans have delivered on the biggest stage and should still be in their prime, or close to it.
Do you know how many of those 15 were on this Ryder Cup team?
Six.
That is an absurdly low number. Sixty percent of American major champions in their prime did not make the Ryder Cup team.
There were a variety of reasons for the nine absences. Obviously, nobody could anticipate Gary Woodland needing brain surgery; he was here as a vice captain. Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman each won majors in 2023, then fell off. It happens. So that’s three out of nine.
But when you look at the other six, there is a through line, and you can probably guess what it is.
Koepka, Johnson and Patrick Reed started guzzling from the LIV Golf hose in 2022, robbing themselves of legitimate competitive opportunities. They had to earn Ryder Cup spots in the majors, because those are the only events they play that anybody outside of LIV takes seriously. Johnson—a 41-year-old who spent seven years ranked in the top 10 in the world—has been a nonentity. Koepka—a 35-year-old who has won five major championships—has been a ghost of himself. Reed, a 35-year-old self-proclaimed Captain America, has played like a former Masters champion at Augusta National and Captain Kangaroo at the other three majors.
Europeans left for LIV too, but not in the numbers that Americans did. LIV’s Jon Rahm stayed competitive and made the Ryder Cup team; he is Europe’s version of Bryson DeChambeau. Tyrrell Hatton left for LIV but still qualified for the Ryder Cup team on points. If LIV Golf never existed, Europe probably brings the exact same team to Bethpage Black.
Let’s keep going down the list.
Spieth, who once looked like he would be the dominant player of his generation, has failed to make the top 50 for the FedEx Cup playoffs in each of the last two years. Did you ever think that a healthy 32-year-old Jordan Spieth would have no case to be on the Ryder Cup team?
Then there is Webb Simpson, who was also here as a vice captain. You might think his time passed a while back, but he is only 40. Simpson won a U.S. Open and six other PGA Tour events before he turned 35 and none in the five years since.
For what it’s worth, Spieth and Simpson have both served on the PGA Tour’s policy board in recent years. Simpson is still on it. I’m not saying that caused their decline, but I think it’s fair to wonder if it played a role. So much of golf is about being in the right frame of mind. Spending considerable time trying to secure the future of the PGA Tour—some of it battling peers behind closed doors—is probably not good for anybody’s game (though policy board member Patrick Cantlay played his butt off this week.)
The last former major champion in his prime who did not play this week is, of course, Keegan Bradley.
Bradley made the right decision when he left himself off the team. The Ryder Cup used to have playing captains, but baseball used to have player-managers, and nobody is suggesting Aaron Judge fill out a lineup card. The Ryder Cup has become far too big, too competitive and too emotional for a captain to play for his team.
But think about why Bradley was captain in the first place.
For years, the Bethpage Black captaincy appeared to be Phil Mickelson’s if he wanted it. He is one of the best players in history, and New Yorkers adopted him as one of their own whenever he played a major in the area. But Mickelson excommunicated himself from the golf establishment when he helped create LIV.
With Mickelson out, Tiger Woods was the obvious choice. But Woods did not feel he could fully devote himself to the captaincy job—in part because he is busy serving on the policy board, a role he only took because of the PGA Tour-LIV Golf tussle.
Mickelson and Woods don’t agree on much these days (if they ever did). But I’m sure they agree that if either one of them were captain, they would have chosen Bradley.
Imagine a Ryder Cup with Tiger or Phil as captain; peak Spieth teaming with his buddy Justin Thomas; onetime best pals DJ and Koepka forming an imposing partnership; and a fiery Keegan Bradley matching a fiery Justin Rose birdie for birdie.
Not only could it have happened. Most of it should have happened.
I don’t know who would have been left home, or if the U.S. would have won the Ryder Cup, but that isn’t really the point. The U.S. pool of candidates was shallower than it should have been.
The Americans at Bethpage Black fought as hard and cared as much as the Europeans, and this was true before their Sunday comeback:
“When we went to bed (Saturday),” Bradley said, “I was just astonished at how these guys were like, ‘We’re going to win this,’ and they believed it.”
Bradley’s players lost the Ryder Cup. But they defeated the notion that compensating players for the first time would diminish the event.
There are some Americans who care more about getting paid than winning the Ryder Cup.
They just weren’t here.
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