You know when schoolteachers get on their high horse and start spouting the “fail to prepare, prepare to fail” as some sort of fear mongering tactic towards their exam students? Well, the American team would do well to sit up straight and pay attention rather than slouch back in their chairs, roll their eyes and gaze out the window.
Because that’s exactly what they are doing when it comes to foursomes matchplay.
Foursomes is the greatest form of golf. There is no hiding place. No moment to switch off. No chance to be carried by your teammate. There is an art form to the preparation. It sounds too simple but deciding who tees off the even and odd holes, what order to go in depending on par five or par three layouts, long hitters with short hitters, putters with drivers etc. There is a formula to it and it’s one the Americans have struggled to crack.
After Friday night’s foursomes whitewash by the Internationals which has blown this edition of the Presidents Cup wide open it brought into question the American setup. This is back to back Presidents Cups in which the Internationals have whitewashed the Americans in the Friday foursomes. They lost both foursomes sessions in last year’s Ryder Cup, lost both in the 2023 Ryder Cup including an opening session whitewash.
Scottie Scheffler’s performances in team events have been poor and the majority of that has been due to a wretched foursomes record which now stands at one win and eight losses in nine matches.
These type of records are not a new phenomenon, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Jordan Spieth were modest when it came to Ryder Cups. Perhaps the dominance of the Americans in the Presidents Cup – not losing since 1998 – has papered over the cracks. Because just three Ryder Cup wins since 2002 points to a systematic failure somewhere.
Like, how is Brandt Snedeker the captain of the US Presidents Cup team yet Jim Furyk, a losing 2018 Ryder Cup captain, is taking the reins in Adare Manor next year? At least with Europe there is a contingency plan with Luke Donald. A back to back winning team that has been made famous by its statistical planning, it’s quick fire three to six hole matches to prepare for matchplay and comprise pairings.
It’s been suggested that the Europeans just care more. That may well be true as Thomas Bjorn said in 2018 there are no superstars in the team, egos are left at the door as everyone chases the same common goal. There is a sense of doing it for those who came before, Seve, Ollie, Jacklin. The Europeans play for the history of the competition while the USA are famous for chasing compensation.
For the Internationals, the debate over leaving egos at the door or that there are no superstars doesn’t even exist. How can anyone carry an ego when they have been spanked in the Presidents Cup for almost twenty years? Yet it seems that they possess the same passion and love for the competition, a competition that has been unrelentingly cruel to them.
It is still expected that the USA will win the Presidents Cup on Sunday even at 7-3 down at the time of writing. If they don’t then Medinah will forever be a haunted house for American golf. But an eleventh successive victory will do little to suggest that the Stars and Stripes have stumbled on to a formula that can shake the Europeans in Limerick in twelve months time.
The biggest indictment you can thrash at any team in sport is that they look ill-prepared for the task put in front of them and that’s what the USA look, whether they get away with it over the weekend or not.
2014 Ryder Cup winning captain Paul McGinley has questioned how much preparation the USA team has had for the Presidents Cup with the age old debate over competitive action rearing its head.
“The golf course that you play asks a different exam and you know what we do and again I’ve got to be careful I don’t give away too much information from a European point of view but nonetheless this has been well documented,” said McGinley.
“We reverse engineer, start the golf course and come back and where are the skill sets to sit this exam?
“Because this exam is very different than the exam you might have in the FedEx finals or you might have in a major championship.
“Where are the par fives? Where are the par threes? How many drivers on the odds? So you look at it that way [and think] who’s a good par five player.
“So I think that is the backbone of it.”
McGinley added: “I think it’s also a very difficult format and it takes a lot of preparation.Now again I don’t want to criticise the Americans because I don’t know, have they put enough prep into this? Not just in terms of statistics but have they played enough?”
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