Hello, and welcome to the Frida Egg Podcast. I'm Garrett Morrison and this episode is brought to you by Dream Golf. If you are a longtime listener to The Friday Egg, you probably know about Dream Golf, though you may not know them by this name. They are the people behind Bandon dune'es Cabot Cape, Breton, Sand Valley, basically the best golf destinations in North America. Big things are happening at
those places right now. Bandon Dunes recently announced that it will host a bunch of USGA Amateur championships over the next twenty three years, starting with the twenty twenty two us Junior Amateur. And over in Wisconsin, the Ledo Golf Club is being restored near Sand Valley. We wrote about
the Lido on our website. It was considered the greatest golf course in the world by many historians and by many players at the time, and right now Tom Doak and his team are trying to bring it back in Wisconsin. So to celebrate these exciting developments, Dream Golf is hosting a giveaway that gives you a chance to win a trip to either Bandon Dunes or to Sand Valley. Next July. You could either be among the first to preview the lido or you could be on site at Bandon Dunes
during the twenty two US Junior Amateur. The Dream Golf Giveaway is open to all subscribers. Enter by September thirtieth for your chance to win a four day, three nights stay. Visit dreamgolf dot com Slash Giveaway to submit your entry. That's dreamgolf dot Com Slash Giveaway, all right. So the twenty twenty Ryder Cup of twenty twenty one is in the books. The US team won by a score of nineteen to nine, so it was not really close. It was a historic blowout, but it was still fun to
watch this team matchplay. Team matchplay is always magical and Whistling Straights I thought showed out pretty well. It was an interesting venue. So there's lots of cool stuff to talk about. What went wrong with the Europeans, what went right for the US, Whether this tells us anything about the future of the Ryder Cup. That kind of stuff so plenty to synk our teeth into. And to do that,
we are trying a new format in this episode. I'm going to call up three different people and to ask each of them to give me their biggest takeaway from the week. Two of these people you've heard from recently on this podcast. Shane Ryan, came on in July to talk about various things, including his book on the writer Cop that he's working on. Shane is a writer for Golf Digest and he was at Whistling Straits this week to cover the tournament. Another voice you'll recognize is Joseph Lemanna,
who's a very smart data analyst. Earlier this month, Joseph joined me on the podcast to discuss the strategy of team matchplay. But the first guest you'll hear from in this episode is Ben Coley. Ben writes for the UK based Sportinglife dot com and he is an outstanding writer. As Brendan Porath has said, he's delightfully British in his prose style, which is a compliment. So I was eager to get his biggest takeaway from this very tough week for European golf, So let's get right to him.
I miss the green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.
Ball in a fried egg Friday Egg, the dreaded Frida egg Frida, egg, Frida, egg, Brian egg Frida, egg.
Bride egg Lie. I'm about ready to run off the ump course.
All right. So this is less of a big takeaway moment and more of an instant reaction because the Ryder Cup has just concluded. We've just gotten the final score of nineteen to nine. They're probably doing the trophy presentation right now. I don't know. The TV is not on, but I have Ben Coley with me. Ben, First of all, how you doing?
Yeah? Good, thank you. It's been a long week, you know, you know how it is, and the late nights don't necessarily seem worth it when you when you get a pummeling as Europe have had. And I am I'm not particularly patriotic person actually, but when it comes to the Ryder Cups, I suspect a little bit like we saw with Rory McRoy today, albeit obviously on a different level, something switches, some sort of switch and it becomes very important.
So it's been a chastening few days. But look, I think Europe have just been beaten by one of the greatest teams in golf history. So I guess we shouldn't lose too much sleep over it.
Yeah, so do you find yourself kind of going into a ryder cup thinking I'm not going to get emotionally involved this time, and then it just happens to you somehow.
Pretty much, although the emotions are different this time, you know, there's been a lack of Jeopardy, hasn't there. I think from a very early stage, I think most of us felt that the tide was going to turn significantly back in favor of the US this week. And it's just a real shame that for me anyway, I'm sure for American less so, but it's just a shane that Europe
never really got a foothold. You know, it was always going to be hard without the fans there, and to not in any way do anything to really silence the American fans or at least give them pause was a shane. The writing was on the wall from I don't know the time I went to bed on Friday.
So.
Maybe even before that, it just felt like, in that very first session, like it was just the US players were in good form. In the European players, you could just see it. None of them were playing well except for the Spaniards.
That's it. I mean we arrived, we arrived within an aging side, four players in their forties and you know, just straightforwardly not as good a team as the USA. And I think when I guess it's a bit simplistic, but when you have that, you need them to underperform first and foremost, and you need to be absolutely on it.
And if you look back to Paris, I mean, I know there are obviously some big problems in the US camp, but as well as that, I think it was lost a little bit in the aftermath and all the Patrick Reid fall and Tiger and feel and and Bryce and even that, Europe got everything right and their form players, you know, really produced and the player who had the best summer for Europe, Francesco Molinari, went and made history for Europe. And that's how much has to go right
for Europe to win. You know, it felt like that was a dominant win. Well, there's a whole new definition of dominance just just been written this afternoon, and that underlines the scale of the challenge for Europe. They have to get so much right and the US have to get so much wrong. And fortunately for US, over the last twenty years, the US have played their part in getting things wrong, but I think they've just figured it out maybe.
So so what is your one big takeaway?
I guess despite all that, my big takeaway is that Europe has some questions to answer, but that Europe should not necessarily panic about what might be over the next four or five ryder cops, because I think, first and
foremost we shouldn't underestimate home advantage. And although I know, you know, nineteen nine, you can probably argue that it flatters Europe because they'll, you know, for a good while today twenty two six appeared to be on the cards, and I think there was probably a lack of real intent among those later matches, which is normal. But despite the scoreline flattering Europe, I think it would be remiss to dwell too much on it and to think that it means US will go and run up a sequence here,
because two years is a long time in golf. I think you look at that twelve and you think, well, yeah, the US would probably be very very happy if that's the twelve in Italy, but it won't be. You know, it almost certainly won't be, and we've been in that situation Europe. You know, when we've won Madina say you know that, you kind of think, well, yeah, we'll take those twelve again at Glenn Eagles and there was some
turnover and we were lucky. We got Victor Debuisson just happened to be in that eighteen month window where he was good enough to play in a Ryder Cup, and not only that, where he looked like he was born to playing a rde A Cup. And Europe could find those players again, right, I mean, I think back to Francesco Molnary and I think for the overwhelming majority of his career, I have not thought he would be a particularly effective match play player. I think he said himself,
he'sn't like it, he's not mean enough. But for that month, those months, he was virtually unbeatable, and I don't think you can always plan for that. You can't, so, you know, I mean, so much is said about how Europe have outthought the United States, and you know, with Paul McGinley and the use of data and all those things which will remain important, but I thought the best thing America could do here was just simplify and let their players play.
And I think in having a I mean I love what Strika said about all twelve of them having better resumes than him, because it just showed what his role had to be there. And I think I've gone off on a tangent there, but I think the real point is that Europe have got some very difficult questions to answer,
which I'm happy to talk about. But I think I think panic would be the wrong way to do it, because you know, we have good young players coming through we have now that added reason to that sort of shock to say, look, you guys, aren't Europe aren't better at this than USA. They just were for a while, and hopefully that will shake us up and we can come out fighting in Rome. I'm convinced we'll do that.
Yeah. Well, So, to put a finer point on the argument that you're making here, there are those right now who are saying this is the beginning of a new era. You know, this is the beginning of an era of US dominance that we all thought was coming, you know, a few years ago, but now it's arrived and Europe is going to lose the next fifteen Ryder Cups. So you would say that's an overreaction. We don't know what the landscape is going to look like in two.
Years, Yeah, which is a little bit sitting on the fence, and I'll give you some of the problems Europe have got, Like, there are problems. I think never more so has the European Tour been a feeder tour to the PGA Tour. And I think we're probably seeing the end of that era of players and some of them talking about it in these videos that europe have put out earlier in the week, you know, with the number of when they got their first cap or whatever, a lot of them
will say, we play for the European Tour. Well, is Victor Hovlin playing for the European Tour. He's never experienced it, you know, he's come over and won on it because he can, but he's not a European Tour player. He's a European player and that's a big difference, and it is a problem for Europe because as you see, you know, if I think about one of maybe the more promising young Europeans, a kid called Vincent Norman who's turned pro this year, He's played really really well in a few
European Tour events. Where was he playing last week? Stage one corn Ferry Tour qualifying school. There's no question where he wants to be if he can choose. And that is a problem for Europe because as we lose Poulter, which I think we may, as we lose Westwood, which I think we have, we lose that belief that the European Tour means something. And that's a big, big problem, right, But US might have their problems too, and I think one of them, I'll be honest. One, you know, maybe
Patrick Reedal does a favor and qualify for the team. Two, maybe Tiger Woods will captain it. And Tiger could be a great captain. But I think the dynamic they found for this one and maybe they'll they'll let Steve Stricker have another go. I think that really helped America to not have someone there on the sidelines who is better than you and better than you will ever be, you know, I think that helps. I think we've seen any number of players struggle to play with Tiger, but I think
it could be hard to be captained by it. Obviously, he did it in the President's Cup and they won, but it was tight and he was still a player, and it's the President's Cup, right, I think in the Ryder Cup. That would add a new dimension that would not necessarily work. And it's things like that that can go wrong, you know, you know, any number of things can happen to the players as individuals and the other thing.
I mean, if we're talking about a perfect storm here, we've got no Tiger, no read, no European, a big golf course, and out of sorts European team. Everything went right, and you know that will happen from time to time. But no way is the Rider Cup going to turn into a processional contest where one team is dramatically overshadowing
the rest. I just don't see that. I think Europe will remain really competitive in Europe, and especially if they can start going to some of the courses which would suit the more than Marco Simone might, which is a bit of a worry. But we'll see about that in a couple of years, right.
Yeah, I'm not sure anybody knows quite what to expect from that course. I think the Americans will probably be annoyed by it, based on what some of the European tour players have said about it. Lots of blind shots, et cetera. In any case, some of the European players might be more familiar with it, assuming that the members of that team play on the European Tour in twenty twenty three, which is not entirely guaranteed as you're saying. But you know, I completely agree with you, and I
think that people forget. You know, you're saying that a lot has to go right in order for Europe to win, and that may be true. Obviously America has the US has the more talented players right now, but I think also a lot went wrong for Europe this week. I think that there just were an extraordinary number of really good players who just were not in good form, and so you know that explains the blowout. But you know, two years from now, you don't know who's going to
be on a hot streak. I think we all knew who Francesco Mullinari was in twenty seventeen, twenty sixteen. You know, he was a great player, but he was nowhere near the player that he was in twenty eighteen, specifically when for a bit there he was like the best player in the world. You don't know who on the European team is going to emerge that way potentially in twenty twenty three, and there are some younger players among the Europeans who could all of a sudden kind of level
up and get to that next level. I look at the Hoyguard twins, Rasmus and Nikolai Hoygard. I think I got the name right there, I hope. So in any case, those two are are sensational players. They're winning on the European two are at a very young age, and they have games that you know, sort of resemble their American counterparts to a great degree. So if Simone, Marcus Simone ends up being a course that suits an American style quote unquote American style of play, then that might not
be too much of a problem for them. Who knows what they're going to be doing in twenty twenty three, those kids might be, you know, on another level by that point. So I think you're right to put out that note of caution that two years is a long time for younger players to emerge. It's also a long time for established players to all of a sudden find something more.
Exactly that exactly that I mean, Nicola, I just you wan to Marcus Simony a few weeks ago.
So there's a nice thing that's right, Yeah, extly there you go.
Into the future, and I think, I mean, that's the obvious thing. Like people will probably turn it around and say, well, okay, what's your succession plan? You know who? Who are these players? And I think that's the point. You don't have to know, you know, there's no way I know. Okay, he wasn't the most important player on the American team by any stretch, But Harris English was not a Ryder Cup player had
this taken place as scheduled. Jordan Speith wasn't a Righter Cup player had it taken place as scheduled, right, which Fowler might be back on the team in two years, don't you know, Let's not assume that we know everything because what we learned over the last three days and to your point around things going wrong, I mean, ultimately Europe needed their best players to perform. And you know, I don't want to get hung up on the Rory thing.
I think people stopped listening to what I say about Rory McRoy, to be quite honest with you, But I think if there are parallels, you look back to Port Rush. I've seen Rory like that twice one port Rush, where his valiant effort to make the cut was in vain on the Friday and he burst into tears.
And today and you're talking specifically about the interview he gave after winning his singles match when he was in tears and saying, you know, I don't think I did enough this time, and this means a lot to me.
Yeah, somebody on Twitter tells me it wasn't actually crying, but they isn't it. He certainly, he certainly broke down. He was overcome with emotion, and so was the impoulter at points, probably for different reasons. But Rory, you know, he's fascinating, isn't he. But we'ld do another podcast maybe. But at Port Rush in twenty nineteen he realized what
home meant and all these other things. And although okay, it's not translated into what I hoped it might, which is the Masters and everything else that we demand from him, he did return to the top of the sport in the six months after that, right, he was languishing, but that period, you know, Okay, won the Players that spring, but from he went on, he won the FedEx Cup, he won a World Golf Championship, and he really reminded himself of what he was capable of and maybe in
two years. I mean, this will have been humiliating for Rory McElroy this week to not play every session, to contribute one point, and to know that everywhere people like me and others are on Twitter saying oh yeah point when it doesn't matter Rory McRoy, here we go. You know, it's the equivalent of what happened at the Master's last night November. He'll know that, and it will it will spark something and John Rahm and Sergio I hope can
we can see that again? And you know there was talk of a bad relationship there, but I would hope this week solved it if it needed solving. And as you say that, there are many more players who come through. Hopefully Sam Horsefield won't defect. That'd be a problem.
In Florida.
He's been in Florida since he was five years old. Yeah, worried about that. We've got loads of good players. I just they need to find a way to make sure the European Tour retains purpose. I think that's the number one thing. And one of the things they'll talk about is getting another team competition back up and running. We
had the Sevy Trophy. We had the Eurasia Cup and okay, a lot of the best players didn't play, but Eurasia Cup twenty eighteen, Tommy Fleetwood was there, Alex Norrin was there. They both played important roles in Paris, and I think they've got a feel for it and that would really help in somewhere or another. It would help connect them because I think there's been a lot said in the past out how well europe do connect that sort of shared bond of being outsiders on the PGA Tour or
whatever it may be. They come from very different countries and different backgrounds, but that shouldn't be taken for granted. That things need to happen to make sure that remains. You know, you need Rory to be taking people like Bob McIntyre under his wing on the PGA Tour week to week. You know, you need that. You need players to look out for each other and to form those bonds that Americans, and particularly this set of Americans have
formed in college. You know, I know it's not you know now they all love each other because they've won. I know there's probably more to it there, and there certainly is on some levels, but fundamentally, there's a lot to be said for that. They've grown up competing against them with each other, and Europe won't have that same experience, so they need to find other ways to bridge that gap and to form the bonds that have worked for the US this time.
Yeah, if the great European players of the future are not going to be playing as much on the European Tour, then that has its drawbacks in the sense that one of the things that Team Europe had going for it in the past is that a lot of these players knew each other pretty well from extensive experience on the European Tour. So perhaps there needs to be a new milieu in which they are interacting with each other and bonding with each other, though some would argue that that
is American universities and the PGA Tour. At this point for Europe, that's a much more common path for those players than it has been in the past.
Yeah, it certainly isn't it. I'm sure it will continue to be. Certainly when I look down the best amateurs coming through for Europe that invariably now in the college system in the US. But there are other ways to
do it, you know that. I think Padrick Harrington doesn't need to be criticized for the things he did prior to this week, and even picking apart his decisions now after a result like that would be futile really, But I think they need to just be thinking about that, and they will be, but I think they'll do it in a measured way. You know. The one thing as well is that, yeah, these guys who are leaving now they become captains. And I know Steve, it doesn't always translate.
Steve Stricker was not a very good I had a Cup player. You know, he is by definition of good captain because they've won nineteen nine. But hopefully the things that Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter and Graha McDowell and so on can bring to that team room can have some significance, you know. And also it was not, you know, in any way a massive factor, but Europe will get to the next Ryder Cup having been five years out from the last time. They got proper support and that's
going to make a big difference. And you throw all those things together and the fact that there will be people like the Hoyguard Twins watching these Americans, you know, rightly enjoying themselves on the eighteenth Green. It's gonna be hugely motivating in the same way that when Justin Thomas sat and watched the Miracle at Madonah when he was what, you know, twenty years old, he wanted to go and
be the one who got redemption for that. And I guess they have it in a form, so game on, I suppose, But I'm certainly not resigned two years of Europeans struggle. I get enough of that from my other sports. But where Europe Team Europe are concerned, they can be really to want to figure it.
Out, all right, So, Ben, I would imagine that you have some Ryder Cup wrap up content in the works. Tell the people where they can find that when it comes out.
That's kind of you. Yeah, Sportinglife dot com is where I will will put all that on paypers if I have time. I've got to preview the Dunhill Links Championship tomorrow and all the fun that intels goes on.
Yea, I mean, that's a that's a fun tournament though. That's that's cool. I mean to get to see the players go to the Old Course every year. That that's a fun feature of the European Tour.
It is the perfect way to recover from a chastening Rider Cup defeat. You know, great courses, a good field, a significant tournament in European tour terms, and and yeah we can just we can. You know, come Sunday we'll have forgotten all about this.
Yeah, well, get some sleep tonight, Ben, Thank.
You so much, Thank you, Garrett.
Next up, Joseph Lamangna. All right, so Joseph, the Ryder Cup has just wrapped up. What are some of your thoughts about how things went this week? Was it was it fun for you to watch on TV? Before we get to your big takeaway was, what's your situation there? Did you watch the whole thing?
I did. I watched pretty much every shot on Friday and Saturday, I watched most of Sunday. The suspense wasn't quite there, but I really enjoyed it. I thought Steve Stricker did a really good job from his captain's picks press conference onwards. I was really encouraged by everything I was hearing. So it's nice that it panned out well for him and for the rest of Team USA. I was excited to see a victory.
Yeah, this was a pretty solid captaincy. I mean so you know, we've had a previous podcast where we talked about the strategy of team match play of the Ryder Cup, and a lot of what we talked about was the strategy from the captain's perspective, right, because that's the main kind of strategic component of the Ryder Cup that you could make alterations too, really, and so you know, against that kind of rubric that we developed in that podcast, you think Steve Stricker did pretty well.
I do.
I think all of the big concepts that we had talked about, he did a really good job of recognizing the differences in players' skill sets. He did a good job recognizing that some players are better for one format than the other. All of the big points, I think he did a great job. There are a couple small things I might have done differently, though I'm not convinced it would have achieved a much different result. Team USA dominated, and overall, I really think he did a great job.
Yeah, it seems like neither of the captains could do much. Ben said something about this in the conversation I just had with Ben Coley. He said something to the effect of, we might as well not really nitpick Patrick Harrington's performance too. Much because whatever he could have done differently might not have made a difference in the ten point margin that ended up being being there at the end of the day. So it is kind of hard to critique the captaincies.
But you mentioned that there are a couple of things that you might have done differently. I was actually curious about this. I was thinking about this, you know, while I was watching the Ryder Cup. I was like, clearly, this is a good performance by Team USA, but that doesn't mean that Steve Stricker did everything right right. That's one of the fallacies that happens with Ryder Cups is that we assumed that the losing captain did everything wrong
and that the winning captain did everything right. That's not necessarily the case at all. So what were some of the small things that you noticed that you might have done differently.
Again, overwhelmingly think he did a good job, so I don't want to come off as too critical of him. But one example would be on the Saturday four balls he played fee now in English, and I understand those guys played well on Friday, but I still think it's worth of zooming out and saying who gives you a better chance of winning? Here, Shoffley can't Ley or Fein now English, And that's one of those where I'm pretty on the extreme. I want the best players on the
team playing as much as possible. I think that those two give you a better tech chance and female English. Does that change the result? I don't know, We'll never know, but that's the direction I would have gone in particular on that matchup.
Yeah, here's one. I don't like the Jordan Speath Justin Thomas pairing, especially for alternate shot. I just don't like it. And you could see it because I believe Justin Thomas ended up teeing off on the odd holes, which gave him those shots at the par threes. And I guess the reasoning there is that he's obviously a great iron player, and so put him on the par threes. But that ended up putting Jordan Speith on some of the most difficult driving holes on the course, which is not where
you want Jordan Speith. And so I think the problem is not so much that decision to put him on those specific holes, but it underlines the fact that they shouldn't really be paired together. They should be paired with somebody, perhaps who's really strong driving the ball at least speaf should I think.
I agree with you. In four sums, especially at Whistling Straits, I would not have a team of two golfers who are not great at driving the ball. When I created my I didn't put justin Thomas and Jordan's speech together in the forresomes format. Jordan actually drove the ball a lot better than I expected him to. But I don't think that doesn't invalidate the point. Right, If that's not
evidence that that was a good pairing. If Jordan goes out there and drives it poorly, we're having a completely different conversation.
So I'm with you.
I don't love that pairing in foursomes, especially since there are so many good drivers on that team you could have paired those guys with, right.
There's plenty of yeah, exactly, there's plenty of great drivers of the golf ball in the US team. But here we are critiquing the captaincy of somebody who just went nineteen and nine. So so that just shows you the complexity of this job of pairing up players and coming up with a strategy for team match plays.
So well, sorry, one quick point on that as well. When you're talking about, you know, reconfiguring pairings a little bit here and there. Those are small things ultimately, and I think Steve Stricker did the big things very well. He left Dustin Johnson on the golf course for five sessions, and that is crucial captaining. I think he got almost everything correct, and we can nitpick the small things, but overwhelmingly I think he did an excellent job.
Yeah, DJ out there for five sessions was fantastic because the common sense approach to that would have been to say, he's a little bit older, we got arrest him. But no, I mean he was playing wonderful golf and he was. He's so well suited to that course. You called it in our podcast together a couple of months ago when you said DJ could be a star.
Here.
This is his perfect moment to perform really, really brilliantly in a Ryder Cup, and he did, and Stricker just went back to him time and time again and it worked out five ZHO zero exactly.
And I feel that way whether a player is playing unbelievably well or not. The example for me would be Rory McElroy. He wasn't playing great, but I'm still playing him in all five sessions as Team Europe even though he's not playing great because that team is so weak at the bottom, you can't convince me Rory isn't giving you more perform than you know, the tenth eleventh person on Team Europe. So it's a big point. You got to have the best players on the golf course and
rest isn't worth of sacrificing points upfront. That equation doesn't check out all right.
So what's your one big takeaway from this Ryder Cup.
Yeah, my biggest takeaway is that golf is far more compelling when greenside bunkers represent an actual hazard. You know, there was a significant penalty to finding green side bunkers at Whistling Streets, and it makes the entire test far more comprehensive and more compelling from a viewer's perspective and
from a competition perspective. In twenty fifteen, at Whistling Straits for the PGA, it was harder to get up and down out of a greenside bunker than at any other venue on tour by over five percent an up and down percentage. Similar thing this week during the Ryder Cup, really hard to get up and down, and that just makes iron play so much more of a test, and it also feeds into the distance advantage that we're talking about. I think that's the leap that people need to make.
It's a lot easier to control a shot from one hundred and forty yards than from one hundred and fifty five or even as you move back farther, So I think that's almost a necessity to testing professional golfers.
There's a number of directions we can take this, but that's so right. That was so much a part of why this course was fun to watch in this format because we saw a lot of different shots. We didn't
just see the players who were playing well. We saw the players who were missing greens, and we saw what was happening, and what was happening were some really, really strange shots that we just don't see every week on the PGA Tour, where guys were blading it out of bunkers, the shots were rolling past the pin and over the green, and we saw guys hacking out of big bushes and big clumps of grass, and there was just such a variety of terrible lies that they could find next to
the and even on the sides of the fairway. If they hit it arrently enough to actually get off of the corridors at Whistling Straits, which we're fairly wide when you include the short rough. But yeah, especially around the greens, some of those shots were so so hard, and we just did not see players playing out of bunkers and reliably sticking it next to the pen. Yeah.
My favorite example was on Friday four Balls, Bryson had like a three hundred and ninety five yard drive on thirteen into the green side bunker and that was a very challenging up and down. He did nothing with it, ended up, you know, I think he made par. But on the PGA Tour week in and week out, if there's a drivable par four and you put it on a green side bunker, you have a little green to
work with. That's a routine up and down. So it just completely changes the complexion of the golf course when Bryson he can't just hit into those green side bunkers and expect a consistent lie and an easy up and down opportunity.
We saw that a few times from Bryson this week, where yeah, he was trying to drive a lot of greens at Whistling Straits, and we saw him get into some really, really, really hairy positions next to the greens, and again, that's just something we don't see. When he gets the ball up near the green on a par four in a regular PGA Tour event, we are expecting a birdie, and that just wasn't necessarily the expectation this week.
Even though he ended up playing pretty well, I don't think he played quite as well as people thought he did, but yeah, he was. You know, when he was getting up near those greens, part of you was wondering would it have been a better call to just lay back a little bit and guarantee yourself a lie in the fair way or the short rough.
And I know some people have made the point of well, how do you even make bunkers more challenging? I think it's a good example of how really small bunkers can be some of the most effective traps. When you have a really inconsistent lie, your feet are out of the bunker. I'm not an architecture expert by any means, but that seems like something you could replicate on many courses throughout America.
You don't have to have these bowl shaped, large bunkers that provide the same lie every time, so it doesn't seem like you have to have ridiculous terrain to create a difficult up and down.
Well, a lot of the bunkers that we see on TV in these tournaments on the PGA Tour are kind of like, you know, they have a fairly flat bottom to them, and the rest of the bunker kind of feeds to that flat bottom, and so we see a lot of the same kinds of lies out of bunkers where you know, the player's feet are not up on the lip, they're just in the middle of the bunker. That's where they tend to end up. And they have nice, kind of consistent softish sand and they just know what
that shot is. They would rather have that shot than a weird lie in the rough at Whistling Straits. The sand in those bunkers, first of all, is not your regular PGA Tour sand. And then yeah, the crazy bunker shapes there. You have all sorts of different things going on. Sometimes the bunkers are tilted, they're not always flat on
the bottom. Often you're finding your self ending up in these weird little corners of the bunkers because they've got these squiggly shapes to them, and so yeah, all of that factored in, and then you have what's going on outside of the bunkers, which is often even worse.
Yeah, it just creates a much better dynamic players. When a pin is tucked near a bunker, you know, it gives you some hesitation before just taking that flag on right away. It's a much better test. You can see it on other courses on tour where the bunkers that are much more difficult to get up and down out of better iron players succeed. So I think that's a big part of why Dustin Johnson and Calm Morikawa performed
so well this week. There's two of the best iron players in the world, and you know, it gives them a lot more freedom to take on the pins they want to take on, and you know, play a little bit more conservative when they need to be.
So when you have these wild kinds of surrounds with really severe penalties for missing the green, you mentioned, iron play gets emphasized a lot. And that's that's you know, you would assume that right if you hit the green, then you know you're not in the weird position. Are there any other effects that these wild surrounds have on the way that a course plays that are not as obvious as good iron play is rewarded.
I would say distance is the other big part of that, because again, the difference between one hundred and seventy yard shot and one hundred and eighty five yard shot is pretty big. That would be true even if the same golfer we're hitting each shot, but the golfer who's fifteen yards farther is also the player who's longer, so now they're hitting an even shorter iron in Then if you drop the ball in the same spot for a player
who hits it shorter. So the difference between hitting a nine iron and now potentially hitting a six iron somebody who's you know, fifteen twenty yards behind them is really large. Just allows you to control the ball so much better, and that obviously fed into the United States hand being such a longer team this week.
All right, Joseph, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. People can find your work at Finding the Edge, a substack newsletter. Are you planning to do a kind of wrap right cup wrap up kind of thing.
Yeah, I'll do a Ryder Cup recap, just going over some of the decisions Stricker made and talking a little bit about where some of the outperformance for Team USA came perfect. Thanks so much, thanks for having me, Garrett, really appreciate it.
And finally let's go to Shane Ryan. You just saw the press conference, Shane, So what was the press conference?
Like?
What was the vibe like there? I didn't get to see it myself. I know it was on TV, but I was podcasting during it. So what was going on there?
Yeah? So you were talking about the American one or both?
Yeah?
Yeah, well, I mean both of them, actually, both of them can be interesting. The Europeans the loser's press conferences for the Europeans have traditionally been less interesting than the Americans loser press conferences. But how were both of them?
Yeah? So the Europeans are very very emotional.
I was.
I think I counted five of their team that cried, either be at the press conference or like before after the golf ended. Poulter was crying, Rory you probably saw on TV, was crying, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood, and Tommy Fleetwood all of them cried, and yeah, there, you know, it's funny. They love I don't know if they love
each other. But for this week, it's like they do love each other and they definitely love being part of Team Europe, and they have this weird bond that it's kind of hard to understand, I think for Americans because they don't have it in quite the same way. But yeah, they sit there like it's very different than when the Americans lose, whether either like backbiting or just go home with no drama. But the Europeans are crying and saying how much they love each other and all this stuff.
So that's pretty interesting. Like Shane Lowry, you gave a really emotional answer about what it meant to play, saying that, like, you know, at the time of my life, we're down by six points, like how great was to be when we're winning, And then the Americans came in We're all drunk. Of course, DJ was talking like trying to convince Steve Stricker to get a tattoo on his app and he's like, I'll do it too, I'll do it too, and just yeah.
I mean, Jordan Speed was the one most in control and ended up taking most of the answers because nobody else could focus long enough to keive a serious answer. And then Steve Stricker's in the backgrounds kind of just like being himself, being like, yeah, we tried really hard
this week. Yeah, humble Wisconsin version of himself. I don't even know like if he got drunk at all, but if he did, the only effect it had was to like make his cheek slightly redder, but didn't change his personality when Iota and yeah, then you know, justin Thomas forced Brooks and Bryce and to hug in front of everybody. It's like he basically wouldn't let it go until they had done that. Yeah, So it's just really funny, and
you know, they're very happy. One thing that's I think pretty interesting is they all seemed to understand that in order to kind of consolidate this, they do have to go win one on European soil, you know what I mean, Like that's the next great challenge. And they were already according to Davis Love, They're already coming up to him and going like, get me to Rome, get me to Rome, like I really we run to go win. And the funny thing is that Europeans are also like I cannot
wait for Rome, like we wanted to. We want to get this cup back. So already you know, if you're if you're a Ryder Cup freak, like I am already like, oh man, Rome's gonna be so good. So yeah, it was good. You know, they were all happy and it was a fun experience, and obviously they just you know, wiped the floor with them this week. It was totally totally a wipeout.
One of the reports from the ground at Hazel teen in twenty sixteen was that the American team was relatively subdued in victory, surprisingly so to the extent that Rory McElroy was looking at them and saying, hey, guys, come on, let's get the party going. Aren't you guys happy that you won? Was there? I don't know if that's necessarily a perfectly accurate characterization of what happened and after that Ryder Cup. But was the American team more joyful this time?
Was there more of a celebration going on, would you say? Or or was it similar?
Yeah? I think so, So I missed the trophy ceremony when I think they were like in the midst of their drinking and stuff.
But certainly when the drinking started immediately after the matches ended, by the way, as soon as somebody finished in match, there was a drink in their hand basically right away.
Yeah, yeah, they give Spith the Ultra and then like Xander I think, chougged a high noon.
In front of the I don't know how you can get drunk on michelob Ultra. How is that even possible?
That would be a great question. I don't know.
You have to drink a lot of it.
Yeah, yeah, it would take a long time, no, I think, uh yeah. So it was a little weird because not everybody was there when Colin Moricala won it on eight. In fact, I think the only two players there were Schefler and to Shamba other than Marikala, and it was like there were a bunch of people around sixteen at one point, but it just didn't work out. The Ryder Cup's weird that way. You never kind of know, like what's going to happen and who's going to clinch the
winning point. So it actually like more Kawa on seventeen made a birdie to go one up and that actually guaranteed the US fourteen point five points, and so technically that was the like clinching point, and yet it wasn't up on the scoreboard yet, so nobody thinks of it that way. But at that point, the US had won the Ryder Cup, barring morikwa like stripping naked and tackling a marshal or something to like to get dec'ed or you know, like anything short of like all you have
to do is like finish the match. And then the funny like it was a kind of a weird situation where I'm eighteen, Marikawa had a putt to win the match, and like the situation was if he made the putt, your the US would have fifteen points, which is a victory, and if he missed the putt, the US would have fourteen and a half points, which is a victory. And so he had this weird situation where it was a putt to win the Ryder Cup no matter what happened,
Like like imagine that. It's so funny, like, yeah, make or miss your team wins the Ryder Cup, congrats, And he missed it. He missed it, and that was the winning Ryder Cup moment, and so it was like what an anti climax because if you had made it, the place would have gone bonkers because that would have been like an emphatic like we just won the Ryder Cup. This made putt. Instead, you won the Ryder Cup with a missed putt, and so everybody was like, oh, then
then the scoreboard change and then people started cheering. But you didn't have the whole team there, So long story short, there was no like one galvanizing moment like there was at Hazel Team where Ryan Moore kind of secured it and everybody was there when he did. Yeah, and then they just failed to like know how to celebrate like in this case. I think they would have done a better job, and they did later, but they like nobody was there when it happened, and it was just kind of weird that way.
Yeah. I mean, it happened so early in the day that, as you say, people weren't waiting around, right, So there's there's kind of a weird vibe because most of the team is out still playing their matches at this point.
Yeah, almost all of them are still playing.
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it was such a blow.
Captains were like with DJ by accident or something.
So right. Well, so obviously, as you mentioned, you were there covering the event for Golf Digest, and you're also engaged in a long term Ryder Cup project. That's going to result in a book, and so, you know, I thought it would be interesting to get a big takeaway from you about what this Ryder Cup meant. And you know, I'm not sure if you want to put it in historical context or not. I know you're thinking in that way in terms of, you know, what this Ryder Cup
represents in the long history of Ryder Cups. But in any case, what do you think is your big takeaway at this moment from this event?
Yeah, I'll give you a couple like overarching ideas that I'm having is that the first one coming into this my theory was that, you know, America can't lose this Ryder Cup. It would have been a really bad Ryder Cup to lose because they had this task force after twenty fourteen. Twenty fourteen was a disaster that could not be ignored and so it spawned like this reckoning where we go, what the hell do we do? You know, that's a US team like going, how do we start
winning these things? Invented this task force and actually seem to have some really like positive developments out of that to win at Hazel Team. But then they go to Paris and just get you know, absolutely destroyed by the Europeans. And so from there, I don't think you can come back and lose on home soil and still think that you've made any progress or that you have any idea how to beat the Europeans. Ever, right, so there were
those stakes coming in. So what the US did first of all was they held serve and they prove that, you know, or they at least left the idea open that all the things they accomplished with this task force are really working. And they won, of course by historic margin nineteen to nine. It wasn't just a victory, it
was a really emphatic good victory. And so what that did I think is it sets up a chance for the US to win in Rome, and then, you know, give weight to this idea that this young generation of Americans who grew up watching Tiger Woods and are just kind of like these swaggering alpha males, like the entire team, like they're like, you know, like watching Shuffler go beat Rohm today. It's just an example like nobody is scared of anything. And granted Ram is tired and all that stuff,
but they're really good. And so yeah, they go win in Rome, and then you've got a whole narrative switch. But the other thing, just on like a sort of micro level, is just what a great job Steve Stricker did. I just super super impressed with him in terms like everything from you know, accepting more captain's picks when it was offered to him, knowing that, you know, captain's picks play better than the guys who qualify at the bottom
of the table, usually giving himself that flexibility. The captain's picks he picked, you know, the way he set up the course and everything like that, which is you know, getting to be like pretty normally everybody kind of knows how to do that. But then his like leadership style, he like squelched the Brooks Brice and stuff right away. He knew that these guys didn't need big speeches or inspirational videos or anything like that. He cut all that
stuff out. His whole thing was like, I'm gonna prepare like crazy, But as far as the players are concerned, all they have to know is like who they're gonna play with early, They're gonna know exactly what their role is. I'm gonna let them know that there's gonna be no curve balls, no confusion beyond that I'm just gonna try to make life easy for them so they can go out there and be who they are, which is this really powerful, great team. And you know, he did everything
so well. One little thing I learned today was that Brooks and Bryson were so willing to like, you know, be part of the team that they told him like, we'll play together if you want it, and he and his vice captains were thinking, like, oh, maybe that would be really cool. But then Stricker had the instinct of like, actually, if we do that, Brooks Bryson is going to become like the over like the overwhelming story instead of the team being the story, which he wants. So he had
the instinct not to do that. He didn't take Patrick reed like, there's all this stuff he did that was so smart. I think that you look at it, it's like, yeah, the US was superior and like they were gonna have the advantage coming in. But Stricker did absolutely everything he needed to do to set these guys loose, to just decimate the Europeans, and I thought that was like really cool.
But speaking more broadly and historically, the fact that he is doing all that stuff and that he learned from a Dina and he learned from Glenn Eagles very good sign for the Americans that they could have a really good template moving forward the way the Europeans have had for like forty years, and this could be a thing where, yeah, in like six or seven years you might be going, oh, man, like maybe the US is just going to like dominate.
Now.
There seemed to be a building narrative early in the week that Steve Stricker wasn't doing well, that he was disengaged. He had just been playing on the Champions Tour and he didn't do well in the press conference with Patrick Harrington,
and there there was a little bit of a groundswell. Now, maybe it's one of those things where, you know, Ryder Cup weeks are kind of like choose your own adventure, where you know, reporters have to kind of set up a number of different options for where the week could go because nobody knows, nobody has any information. You have to figure out something to do for those first four days of the week, which get to be way too long for the media. And so there were some people
who were kind of casting doubt on Stricker's captaincy. Did you have any sense early in the week I know from your articles that you are pretty positive about the job that he was doing early on, But did you censor did you see any indications that things might not be going that way?
You see? You know, there's like to pat myself on the back, like I predicted an American blowout. It felt like that was was what I did. I got the sense ever since, so there's a lot we don't know. You know, like a month ago, we didn't know what kind of captain Stricker was gonna because we're not inside those doors. But from the minute he did his press conference after making his captain's picks, all the way through this week, I sensed nothing except that he was doing
a really good job. Now, I am a big fan of like reading into history and reading into the right information to make like good predictions in terms of the
Ryder Cup. I like that aspect of it. But as you were alluding to, there are people who get absolutely lost in the stupidest details and so like, yeah, like there was somebody who came up to another reporter, a European after their first press conference and was like, oh, Patrick Carrington just ran circles around Stripper in that press conference, And you're like I think even said like one mil to the Europeans or something. You're like that doesn't matter,
like don't like it's so stupid. And then another thing is like the inspirational video came out where it was like, you know, only one hundred and sixty four have ever played for Team Europe and there's been like three hundred astronauts in space or something like. Personally, I always kind of find that stuff a little bit cheesy. That may just be because I'm a cynic or something, but sometimes they're really cool. But ultimately it's a video, you know
what I mean. Like these things can be good supplements if your team responds to that kind of stuff, or like in Stricers case, it may be good not to do it because it's like your team won't respond to that in any case. Like a lot of people extrapolate from that and go, look what Europe does. Look look at their spirit like this video, like they act like the video is gonna make a difference, or like the fact that they wore cheese heads, you know what I mean,
out in front of the crowd. You saw that, and it's like, look at them, They're getting the crowd on their side and it's like, don't get lost in the small stuff. Like I guarantee you come Friday, this crowd is going to be like hostile, you know what I mean, Like to the Europeans, the fact that they wore cheeseheads is not gonna make any difference. The video won't make
any difference. Look at the stuff that actually matters, which is how the teams are being managed and how people feel and like who's dispensing the right information to their team. And then you know broader stuff like you know home course advantage, which has become really really enormous in the Ryder Cup. So yeah, there was that stuff during the week, but you almost just have to laugh at it when
people bring it up because it's so irrelevant. But people love to just like see these little details and go, oh, look at this video with the astronauts, like now europe can't lose, you know this it's bizarre.
So I can see, you know, it's always hard to predict what's gonna happen in the next Ryder Cup. I talked about this with Ben Coley earlier, where you know, two years is a long time. A lot can happen. Certain Europeans can European golfers can emerge, and we can find ourselves in a situation in you know, twenty twenty three where the European team is actually favored. That seems unlikely at this point, but it might happen. But at the same time, it's fun to try to predict this stuff.
And so I guess the way I'd put it is, if you were to build a case that this is the beginning of an era of American dominance in the Ryder Cup, would you be more able to build a case, a convincing case for that, or to build a convincing case that home course advantage has become so significant that we are simply in a period of the Ryder Cup where the home team is just going to have a really, really good chance at blowing the other team out.
I think the latter. I mean you look at two thousand or the stat which is that since two thousand and six, however many Ryder Cups there have been since then, a lot the home team has gone into Sunday singles with a lead every single time, and the smallest of those leads was nine to seven. There's been a bunch of ten six leads. Obviously it was eleven to five this year, and so that shows you, like, yeah, the
home team does incredibly well impairs. We had Madina where the Europeans were able to reverse it in this incredible, weird, anomalous day. But other than that, the home team is one every Ryder Cup, right, So yeah, gun to my head right now if like you're asking me to predict, Like you make a great point. We don't know what the teams are gonna look like in two years. We don't know what the captains are gonna be, like you know what I mean, that is a huge deal to me,
Like how will the captains manage? You would like to think that there have been enough examples of good captains on both sides now that you're gonna have two good captains and that would be good. But don't forget that the Europeans get to control the course and so they'll do everything they can to like make it so these bombers, like these US bombers can't go nuts like they were
in Whistling Straits. So yeah, gun to my head, Like I think europe should be favored right now for the next Ryder Cup, and I think it's easier to make that case. But you can certainly say like, yeah, look at the way these US players play, they're fearless. You're probably gonna see at least eight of those guys on the on the Rome team. Yeah, they could win too, but I like the European case a little bit better.
Yeah all right, So Shane, obviously people can find your work on Golf Digest dot com. But I'm curious, is there another Ryder Cup Run podcast coming out after this Ryder Cup?
Yeah? I'll keep doing the Ryder Cup Run. So I did three episodes from Whistling Straight and then I did the last one Saturday night, and it was basically like, we don't need to do another one Sunday, and I'm sticking by that, like, we know, we knew this Saturday. It was over by Saturday, and I hit all the main points, and you know, there's a ton of content out there for you to consume about this Ryder Cup
if you'd like. But in terms of like how I like to approach it, of looking at the history and looking at the tactics, nothing that happened on Sunday was incredibly relevant because it was just it was always going to be an American win. It was always going to be a blowout. Only interesting thing at the end was are they going to set the record? And they did so.
But I will continue to do Ryder Cup run episodes for previous Ryder Cups all the way up to the publication of my book, which will happen in May, which will be a little bit about the Ryder Cup history and a lot about the twenty twenty one Ryder Cup that we just saw. So yeah, people can find me on both places, and my book is available for pre order now should anyone.
Be so wow? Yeah? Yeah right, it's available for pre order and you've got to write it the next.
Uh yeah, yeah. So I'll keep doing that. I love the Ryder Cup and it's been really fun to do those projects in the podcast. People seem to like it so great.
All right, thank you so much, Shane. Thanks This episode of the Friday Podcast was a bit of an experiment. You can always rely on us to try new things and keep refreshing the format. If you have thoughts about what we're doing, maybe throw us a rating and review on iTunes. Those really do help new listeners find us here. Thanks for listening.