The 2010 Ryder Cup Matches are now in the record books. Decided by a mere half point, the matches featured lots of great golf, 13 hours of lousy weather, and more than the usual amount of drama, intrigue and heartbreak.
The American team came up just short of retaining the cup. In the final match on the final day, U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell, who won a European Tour event at Celtic Manor this past June, played rock-solid golf in defeating Hutner Mahan, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour this year, by a 3-and-1 margin (three holes up with one hole remaining). It wasn”t nearly as intense as the final Jack Nicklaus and Tony Jacklin match of 1969 or the Bernhard Langer and Hale Irwin match of 1991, but they still carried the weight of the cup upon their shoulders.
In the end, Mahan didn”t lose the cup for the Americans, nor did McDowell win it for the Euros. When LeBron James misses a 3-pointer at the end of the game and his team loses at the buzzer, analysts will more than likely point to the poor free throw shooting or the rebounding imbalance that contributed to the defeat. In much the same light, Mahan”s match should never have been for the whole enchilada. When the American team stumbled to five losses and a tie during Session 3, the European lead was basically too much for the USA.
During Session 3, Tiger Woods and Steve Stricker lost to Luke Donald and Lee Westwood by a devastating 6-and-5 margin. The other five matches were much closer, but they still resulted in four losses and a tie. None of the five losses that day ever made it to the 18th hole. It was too much to overcome, regardless of the depth, experience and talent of the American team.
Match play is a combustible format and anything can happen as evidenced by the victory that afternoon by the struggling duo of Padraig Harrington and Ross Fisher over American studs Jim Furyk and Dustin Johnson, winners of the final two Fed Ex Cup tournaments.
When all is finally assessed, it will be easy for all 12 members of the American squad to look back upon those four rain-soaked days in Wales and wonder “what if?” That”s the way you think when a mere half point separates the winning team from the losing team. For the sake of all 12 members of the American team, especially Mahan, a short memory is the one and only antidote. After all, one need only recall what happened to Langer when he missed that final putt on the final hole in the final match in the 1991 Ryder Cup Matches at Kiawah Island, resulting in a European team loss by the same half-point margin as this year. Langer kept his head held high, didn”t make any excuses, and headed back to his day job on the European Tour. Langer won the week after that Ryder Cup at the British Classic.
Several final thoughts come to mind about this year”s cup matches. On an immediate note, it”s fair to say that while captain”s pick Tiger Woods was 3-1, he was inconsistent and downright shaky during Session 3 on Sunday. Because of the condition of his much-operated knee, because of his relative golfing age after 15-plus years in the golfing limelight, because of the distractions of his personal life and his financial life, and because he continues to have a surprisingly minimal understanding of his own golf swing, he finds himself an also-ran in a new world order of international stars and up-and-coming young phenoms.
For Woods to catch and then surpass Jack Nicklaus” record of 18 major championships, he must win as many titles as Seve Ballesteros won over the course of his colorful career. He is no longer the world”s best golfer regardless of the rankings, and while he may win another green jacket or even two, he will fall short of his career-long quest to accumulate a record of 19 major titles.
The Ryder Cup may have marked the end of the Woods-Mickelson-Furyk-Stricker era of American professional golf. Three of the aforementioned are 40 years of age or older, and as earlier stated, Woods has been around about as long as the 40-somethings too. I only have two words to describe what happens to world-class golfers when they get beyond that magical 40-year-old barrier ? Vijay Singh.
Speaking of age, this past weekend”s Lake County Amateur marked a decided changing of the guard as far as the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit is concerned. Champion Brad Pendleton and runner-up Adam Giusti graduated from local high schools in 2002. The third-place finisher, Nick Schaefer, is a member of the class of 2009. Brels Solomon is an old-timer from the class of 1997, and Jose Perez is a class of 2002 alum also. The four-time defending champion, Jonathan Carlson, who was at the United States Mid-Amateur on Long Island, is from the class of 1999. Suddenly, in comparison to the younger set, Juan Lopez and Billy Witt are decidedly middle age and seen as old when compared to Pendleton, Schaefer and the like. Of course, this is very worrisome when you then have to consider the plight of the trio of 50-something coaches, Craig Kinser, John Seed and John Berry, who are still competing. Those guys are really old.
Of course, the Lake County Circuit has been around for 17 years and this changing of the guard makes perfect sense. Kinser, Seed and Berry are from a time when their opponents on the golf course were the likes of Charles Creecy, Gary Bagnani, George Hoberg, John McMillan, Mike Lemmon, Dan Leiva and Jerry Pangle. The Creecy generation is long retired and pushing 70 years of age. If you were to check out the PGA Tour from 17 years ago, Tiger Woods was still in high school and Nick Price was the golfer of the year.
Carlson and Pendleton are the talented faces of the Lake County Circuit because time changes all, and now is their time. It makes sense on the local level in just the same way as it makes sense amongst the top professionals of today.
