State Of The Game Podcast 14: Ryder Cup In Review

I'm told by our engineering staff that my eloquent, brilliant and groundbreaking observations suggesting the ending of the Ryder Cup wasn't kosher ended up drowned out by a mysterious buzzing sound (Huggan strikes!) and therefore were relegated to the cutting room floor.

But I can say the rest of the show was super and all about the 2012 Ryder Cup, comprising of Rod Morri, Mike Clayton, John Huggan and I talking all things cup.

As always, you can subscribe or listen below.

Final & Vital 2012 Ryder Cup Question: How Do We Use This Epic Ryder Cup To Get The Dreadful Olympic Format Fixed?

Lorne Rubenstein said "the golf world itself came alive during the Ryder Cup. There’s nothing in golf like a Ryder Cup. Nothing."

Mark Lamport Stokes notes that the Ryder Cup "has never been more vibrant or in better health." And quotes Rory McIlory saying, "This is the most special and unique golf tournament we have, period."

In case anyone did not know it, last week reminded us that match play with a team and nationality component supersedes stroke play. Looking ahead to the 2016 Rio Olympics, longtime readers here know that golf returns with two 72-hole individual stroke play events. One for men, one for women.

And longtime readers know that from day one, I've viewed this as a highly unfortunate decision by the International Golf Federation that looked to players for input. Players who are good at playing golf, not so good in the vision department.

We also know there are also other issues that stuck us with a format that will not excite "the base" nor will it do much to bring in new fans of our great sport. In no particular order:

- There is the IOC's concern about beds in the Olympic Village, which resulted in just 60 players making the Olympic fields. I'm guessing Luke and Diane Donald, for instance, will not be bunking up in a glorified dorm room with the family come 2016.

- There is the dreadful scheduling mess that 2016 brings with the four championships, the ResetCup and the Ryder Cup at Hazeltine National, making anything over four days of competition a concern to the IGF. (It would have been an ideal year for the PGA to be played in the spring, but the PGA of America locked into Baltusrol for PGA anniversary reasons well before Rio was even selected.)

- A field of 60 instead of 64 makes a match play bracket that much more difficult. A small field with limits on the number of players from each country also limits the number of two-player team possibilities.

- There is the time-honored and depressing excuse that match play could leave television with an undesirable final. And that may be true, but as we've seen with the WGC Match Play, television also gets far more compelling action each day of the event instead of only on the final day as you get in stroke play.

- And of course, the relentless, withering, exhausting but consistent resistance to outside-the-box thinking or imagination coming from within the golf establishment's leaders who make up the IGF.

Olympic golf will not move any needle with its current 72-hole stroke play format and the Ryder Cup only reminded us of this. Even before the Medinah Miracle, Nick Faldo reiterated the need to re-think things last week, proposing that a reboot be considered and even mentioned the possibility of a mixed doubles element like Olympic tennis.

This year's Ryder Cup proved that match play, and preferably one with a team element, is more exciting and emotional than any sudden death playoff for the bronze medal will ever be.

So how, intelligent readers, do we begin the process of asking the IGF and the IOC to revisit this dead-on-arrival format so that golf can put its best foot forward in 2016?

"Bernhard's miss crossed my mind for half a second."

There was actually some inexplicable social media criticism of NBC for airing a replay of Bernhard Langer's 1991 Ryder Cup putt right before Martin Kaymer's putt to ensure the cup returned to Europe.

Seems the putt crossed Kaymer's mind, too. From an Graham Otway's Dunhill Links Championship report today:

"I was standing behind the ball and then when I bent down and saw a footprint, Bernhard's miss crossed my mind for half a second. But it didn't have any influence in a positive or negative way. I saw the footprint, thought Bernhard, okay, gone. But it's in the past – it was 21 years ago.

"And if you stick to the facts it was the easiest putt you can have, even though with all the circumstances. It was uphill and inside the right line. There is no easier putt. We have to make that putt millions of times and I had to try to forget about the Ryder Cup."

It's just a shame Kaymer only made the putt to secure a tie. Unlike Molinari, who won the Cup for Europe!

Davis Love's Ryder Cup Diary: "If you need to blame somebody for this loss, blame me."

I see a published "diary" and I brace myself for spin or few details, but not in the case of Davis Love's detail rich Ryder Cup recollections (presumably ghosted by SI's Michael Bamberger).

There are several fun insights like this:

I said to Scott Verplank, one of my assistants, "Which match do I watch?" You want to do everything, and you really can't do much of anything. You're a baseball manager, and every one of your pitchers is on the mound in the ninth inning of a Game 7. Jim Furyk walked by me after losing the 17th hole. The Ryder Cup on the line. I wanted to say something, but what could I say? He walked by me with that fierce game face of his on, and frustratingly I found myself saying nothing. I turned to Jeff Sluman, another of my assistants, and said, "Well, that was brilliant." But the fact is, in golf it's better to err on the side of saying too little than too much. And I'm sure there were times I said too much.

This is going to give his critics of Saturday afternoon's Keegan/Phil benching some ammunition. Personally, I just love the honesty:

After three sessions we had a considerable four-point lead, with the team of Keegan Bradley and Phil Mickelson winning three times. Fred Couples, another of my four assistants, said to me, "Man, that Keegan Bradley is on fire. Ride him all the way to the house."

In other words, he wanted me to play the Bradley-Mickelson team again on Saturday afternoon in Session IV. I know a lot of fans and commentators were thinking the same thing. But Phil told me he was tired after three matches and wanted to rest for the Sunday singles. There was no reason to play Keegan with a partner with whom he had not practiced. There was no reason to mess with order. Things were going according to plan. In Session IV, Europe, and most especially Ian Poulter, caught fire late and won two matches. Still, everything was good. A four-point U.S. lead. Enter Seve.

Third Ryder Cup Question: Did The Course Setup "Backfire"?

I've seen and heard in several places how the course setup (fast greens and no rough) backfired on Captain Davis Love. Before the matches, there had been suggestions the USA had a few tricks up their sleeves while Lee Westwood said he saw the approach favoring neither team.

Now, the match was decided by a point. The U.S. played particularly well in the foursomes and four-balls where they historically haven't been as strong.

The only impact I saw was in the way the setup tactics possibly inspired the Europeans to overcome a perceived obstacle. There may have been many other instances we'll learn about in time from players about little things that were done to aid the Americans.  Otherwise, Curtis Tyrrell and team's beautifully conditioned Medinah seemed to reward shots from both sides and allowed skill to dictate the outcome instead of rough or the actions of PGA setup man Kerry Haigh.

Thoughts?

If You Watch The Ryder Cup Singles Re-Airing...

...from 4-9 ET Tuesday on Golf Channel, watch the moments immediately after Martin Kaymer sinks the winning putt and pay special attention.

We'll talk about it on Wednesday, class. There might even be a pop quiz.

Meanwhile, historian Cliff Schrock of Golf Digest posed this in a GolfDigest.com column Monday:

But an opportunity was missed for the European team to have a double victory at Medinah. If the final match was allowed to end with a halve on 18 for a Woods victory and 14-14 tie, it would have demonstrated that Ryder's code of fairness has stayed foremost among the minds of players and captains. The Europeans would have demonstrated a respect for the effort and huge advantage the Americans had made to go into Sunday with a 10-6 lead. A tie would have given the home crowd and madly supportive Chicago-area crowd a kiss on the cheek for how much they made the event a success with their financial backing. It would have been a "thank you" to the state trooper who made sure time-zone confused Rory McIlroy didn't miss his tee time.

And the tie would have followed some notable gestures of its kind, such as Jack Nicklaus' famous concession in 1969 with Tony Jacklin, which ensured an overall tie, and, quite interestingly, something that occurred in 1999, the year a team -- the Americans -- first came back from a 10-6 deficit to win.