Today’s modern game of golf has four major championships, namely the Masters, the PGA Championship, the United States Open, and the British Open. There is added prestige that goes with winning one of these 72-hole stroke play events. After all, they are majors. To fans of the game, the fifth most important tournament that is fully capable of moving the needle is the Ryder Cup. Played every other year, it is a team competition with multiple match play formats. There is no purse, the winning team gets to keep a small gold trophy that has been around for just less than 100 years, and yet the Ryder Cup is a really big deal in the world of golf.
Although the next Ryder Cup is scheduled for Sept. 25-27, 2020, a full 19 months from now, it is perpetually front and center in the minds of American and European touring professionals as well as fans of the game. The next Ryder Cup is on American soil although Whistling Straits, a three-time PGA Championship venue and the future Cup host, is more reminiscent of links golf in the British Isles than a parkland course in America.
Ryder Cup news was made earlier this week when the PGA of America named Steve Stricker as the captain of Team USA. He joins Irishman Padraig Harrington, who had previously been named the European Team’s captain.
Stricker and Harrington are outstanding choices for this prestigious appointment and yet their path to this moment in time is remarkably different from the journey most top-notch pros have taken in achieving the Ryder Cup captaincy.
Steve Stricker is from Wisconsin and will be a fan favorite. A decidedly normal person in the world of millionaire linksters, he is the first Ryder Cup captain that does not have a major championship on his golfing resume. Stricker was a two-time All-American in 1988 and 1989 while playing collegiate golf at the University of Illinois. He turned pro in 1990, spent his early years on the Canadian Tour, and was a rookie on the PGA Tour in 1994 at age 27. He won the Kemper Open in 1996, won the Western Open by eight strokes later that season, and won the World Golf Match Play in 2001. He then lost his game. For four years he struggled, got it together in 2006, and was named the PGA Tour’s comeback player of the year. Stricker turned 40 years old the following year and found a second gear as he went on to win nine times on the PGA Tour during the course of the following five seasons, winning a pair of Fed Ex Cup events as well as the prestigious Memorial Tournament. He has 12 career victories on the PGA Tour.
Stricker spent more than 250 weeks within the top 10 of the World Golf Rankings. While he never won a major, he has had top-five finishes in all four of the game’s grand slam tourneys. Steve was a member of three Ryder Cup teams and six President’s Cup teams. An extremely calm player, he was a perpetual partner with Tiger Woods in team matches. His demeanor had a positive effect on Tiger’s game in team events. Unlike others, he was comfortable with Tiger.
Now 52 years old, Stricker still competes on the PGA Tour and dabbles on the Champions Tour for senior golfers. He still has game and won three times on the senior circuit last year, finishing second on the money list. He was the winning captain for Team USA in the 2017 President’s Cup matches and has been an assistant captain on three Ryder Cup squads.
Padraig Harrington wasn’t an instant success in the world of professional golf either. Highly intelligent with a degree in accounting, Harrington was part of the business world into his mid-20s. He played amateur golf and had enough of a reputation in the British Isles that he was a member of three Walker Cup teams. Finally at age 25, with the encouragement of his family, Harrington turned pro and got onto the European Tour in 1996. Ten tournaments into his new career, he won the Spanish Open. Padraig suffered through a period of time where he finished runner-up but missed victory lane. In 1999 during a five tournament stretch, Harrington came in second four times. In 2000 he broke through with a pair of wins and during the course of the next decade Harrington picked up 14 wins in Europe. In 2005 Padraig decided to expand his horizons and also joined the American PGA Tour. Two months into his American career, he won the Honda Classic in Florida and three months later he won at Westchester.
The middle part of the decade brought worldwide acclaim to Padraig Harrington. He won the European Tour of Merit in 2006 and was that circuit’s golfer of the year in 2007 and 2008. Harrington won the British Open at Carnoustie in a playoff over Sergio Garcia in 2007, defended his title with another win at the British Open in 2008, and won the PGA Championship one month later. He also was the PGA Tour’s player of the year in 2008. Harrington has been a member of six European Ryder Cup teams and has served as an assistant captain three times. In an interesting aside, he went to the same high school in South Dublin as Paul McGinley, who is a past Ryder Cup captain. He has 31 worldwide victories with 16 wins on the European Tour, six wins in America, one in Japan, and four on the Asian Tour.
Harrington is 48 years old and has been able to remain competitive into his 40s. He won the Honda Classic for a second time in 2015 and his last win in Europe was the 2016 Portugal Masters. He still finds his way onto leader boards on the European Tour and will probably be an impact player, like Steve Stricker, on the senior circuit.
While the 2020 Ryder Cup Matches scheduled for Sept. 25-27 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin are some 19 months away, points are currently being earned by the professional golfers on each circuit, and now the two captains are in place. Steve Stricker and Padraig Harrington took very atypical paths to achieving this honor. They weren’t “can’t-miss” prospects and some of their greatest successes came about when they were well into their mid-30s and 40s. Both Harrington and Stricker are extremely well-grounded, well-liked by their peers, and are calm, pleasant personalities. When all is said and done, a Ryder Cup captain can’t hit tee shots, stripe irons, chip it close and make birdie putts. However, both men bring an added degree of class to the proceedings. The Ryder Cup is in a very good place with Steve Stricker serving as the American team captain and Padraig Harrington leading the European Tour squad.
