When you come to think of it that is the secret of most of the great holes all over the world. They all have some kind of a twist. C.B. MACDONALD
Yet more brilliance by the European Tour’s social team following up on Thomas Bjorn’s tattoo pledge if his team won the 2018 Ryder Cup. I’m not sure this was the location his players hand in mind but it’ll do…
A promise made. A promise kept 🖊#TeamEurope pic.twitter.com/nWp9EfRJEL
— Ryder Cup Europe (@RyderCupEurope) December 24, 2018
With the European Tour’s 2021 schedule announced this week noticeably missing the French Open, Alistair Tait reminds us of the many perks the 2018 Ryder Cup would bring to French golf.
It was a tremendous event and Le Golf National will host Olympic golf’s far-less captivating 72-hole stroke play events in 2024, but Tait highlights the ostentatious claims made by organizers in bidding for the Cup. Besides the securing a prime date and purse for the French Open, there were grow-the game numbers that seemed outlandish at the time. Because they were.
And don’t forget the very noble dreams of 100 par-3 courses that hasn’t happened.
Still, it’s a bit surprising given the huge economic impact of the Cup and European Tour win suggests it was a one-off. Just a year after the Cup, the French Open was downgraded by the European Tour and as Tait points out, the game is not declining in France, but the one million golfer number dreamed up as a result of the French Open-Ryder Cup combo is not happening.
According to KPMG’s Golf Participation Report, there were 410,377 registered golfers (golf club members) in 2010. One year before the match, the same Participation Report showed a slightly lower figure of 410,171. Last year, KPMG reported a French participation figure of 412,726, a 0.62% growth year on year.
It might be a wee while before Levet realises his one million golfers dream.
There was talk of a plethora of new courses opening thanks to the successful Ryder Cup bid. Latest figures show there are 607 courses in France. There were 574 in 2010. An increase, but hardly a golf course construction boom.
What does this have to do with the French Open? Good question, but I would have thought Ryder Cup success would have had companies queueing up to sponsor the French Open. The tournament, one of the oldest on the European Tour calendar, wasn’t played this year for obvious reasons. Perhaps it’s not surprising it isn’t on the 2021 schedule considering its fall down the European pecking order last year.
After two years as a $7 million Rolex Series tournament, it came with a $1.78 million prize fund last year. The 2018 French Open featured Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, Sergio Garcia, Ian Poulter, Matthew Fitzpatrick, Graeme McDowell, Tommy Fleetwood, Rafa Cabrera Bello, Matt Wallace, Lee Westwood and winner Alex Noren. It had a strength of field rating of 288, fifth strongest European event outside the majors and WGCs. Last year that rating fell to 51, joint sixth lowest on the schedule, as Nicolas Colsaerts won in a field short name players.
With the constant uncertainty of the Italian Open and 2022 (now 2023) Ryder Cup in Italy, it is hard not to wonder if the pandemic will bring an end to how Europe packages its Cups from a highest-bid approach to going with the best courses and letting the economics fall into place? I know, absurd.
As the European Tour returns this week to Le Golf National a bit more than a year after the 2018 Ryder Cup, Iain Carter considers what has happened to past hosts of the European Tour’s breadmaker.
To put it bluntly: host a Ryder Cup, and they move on. Which normally should not mean much, except that the European Tour packages the event with normal tour stops.
Not that many fans or players are longing for more golf tournaments at most of the venues, which bought their way onto the international stage. But it’s still remarkable to see how quickly so many of the once-vaunted locales either no longer host events, or become lesser stops. In the case of this week’s French Open, once a Rolex Series event, the field’s headliners are Martin Kaymer, Jose Maria Olazabal, Thomas Bjorn and Jamie Donaldson.
But about those past venues, Carter writes:
The Belfry hosted the Ryder Cup on four occasions between 1985 and 2002 and whatever you think of the course, which does have its critics, the layout in the English midlands became a big part of the fabric of European golfing history.
But the Brabazon Course has not staged a Tour event since the 2008 British Masters. Celtic Manor in south Wales disappeared from the schedule in 2014, four years after its Ryder Cup.
The K Club, which hosted the 2006 match in County Kildare, was the continuous home of the European Open between 1995 and 2007. It then disappeared from the calendar other than in 2016 when it held the Irish Open.
Gleneagles staged the 2018 European Team Championships and this year's Solheim Cup but its deal to hold tour events expired the year before putting on the 2014 Ryder Cup.
Only Valderrama (1997 Ryder Cup) in southern Spain has remained a regular stop for the continent's leading players in the wake of holding one of the biennial jousts between Europe and the US.
A similar fate likely awaits Rome’s 2022 Ryder Cup venue, currently undergoing a renovation despite rumblings that a host role was in jeopardy.
Meanwhile at least the Old Course is hosting the 2023 Walker Cup!
Rex Hoggard reports that new U.S. Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker has spoken to Patrick Reed and all has been handled with regards to the Masters champion.
“As far as he's concerned, and I am, too, it's been handled,” Stricker said. “He's apologized and spoke to the players. He spoke to me and I kind of asked him what to expect from him. He's like, ‘You know what, I've got your guys' back. I'm there for the team.’”
Yes he does! Wielding a large knife from behind if 2018 is any indication.
From Dan Kilbridge’s Golfweek story. Who says Tiger doesn’t earn his free Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup gear!
“We spoke after the Ryder Cup for a long period of time,” Woods said. “We talked amongst us and it will stay between us.”
I guess that means we won’t get a new task force to investigate the 218 Ryder Cup communications breakdown alleged by Reed. Darn.
Patrick Reed’s Point Misser World Tour landed in the Bahamas and he opened his set with a stirring rendition of that greatest hit, Captain America And The Three-And-O Cowboy.
Rex Hoggard at GolfChannel.com reports that Reed was asked if he still felt like “Captain America” after his 2018 Ryder Cup struggles.
“No, still 3-0 in [Ryder Cup] singles,” Reed said.
And then there’s this…
“Being 3-0 in singles is something cool because you always want to feel like you can be counted on toward the end, especially during a Ryder Cup.”
I’m feeling a new ad campaign: 3-0.
Maybe a big 3-0 on the golf bag or on the hat or the back of his shirts?
He does have a ways to go if he wants to make the all-time singles points list, not that such things matter.
Golf Digest Italy’s Massimo De Luca files an enjoyable Q&A with Open Champion Francesco Molinari and he talks all things 2018, his incredible breakout season.
Regarding the Ryder Cup, where he went 5-0, Molinari confirms that the Europeans spotted FedEx-fused fatigue when asked why the Europeans excelled.
It’s difficult to pinpoint a specific reason. Undoubtedly the tricky setup of the course was a huge factor. But don’t forget, we lost all three of the first matches on Friday morning. If it hadn’t been for Tommy Fleetwood and me beating Woods and Patrick Reed, we would have been at 0-4, and it would have been really hard. We reacted by winning, 4-0, in the afternoon. But we didn’t kid ourselves. The more-experienced players worried about an American backlash, but with time we felt better on that course, which many of us know [as an annual European Tour stop for the French Open]. The key moment was Saturday morning, when only Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth had earned a point. We saw that they were probably more tired than we were, also because the majority of them had been busy with the FedEx right up until the end. But you know how the Ryder Cup is. In fact, after the 2-2 Saturday afternoon, they attempted a comeback in the singles on Sunday. But we reacted well.
The Guardian’s Sean Ingle considers analytics in sports and, in particular, the role played in Europe’s victorious 2018 Ryder Cup.
Of particular note was this from the analytics team relied upon by Captain Thomas Bjorn…
15th Club’s influence continued in Versailles, with analysts suggesting the ideal fourballs and foursomes pairings for every player based on the format, their strengths, and the course layout – which included the strong recommendation Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood should play together. Crucially they also had enough of Bjørn’s ear to reassure him and his vice-captains to “stick to the plan”’ on the first morning when Europe were about to go 3-1 down and were considering last-minute changes to the afternoon foursomes.
As Wooster relates: “This was a critical moment, and one where all those months spent establishing relationships and trust came to the fore. We knew the foursomes was a very different format and our statistical simulations gave us a high level of confidence the afternoon would be ours.” Bjørn listened and stuck to the plan. Europe won the session 4-0 and never looked back.
Golfweek’s Eamon Lynch reports on the red-hot rumor mill that had players gossiping in recent weeks about a positive test result at the Ryder Cup. Lynch explains on the surprise (Bonjour!) test administered at the team hotels by France’s AFLD, still smarting from the Tour de France issues over the years.
Good news, everyone passed!
“All the results are in and there were no positive tests,” said Maggie Durand, a spokeswoman for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), to which the French AFLD affiliate reported its findings. When asked about the method of testing, WADA confirmed it was urinalysis. And about the players tested?
In the event of a negative test, public disclosure is up to the athlete, WADA echoed.
But drug testing is golf’s third rail that no one wants to touch. That was apparent when I asked managers for every Ryder Cupper if their man had been tested. Even a clean slate of negative results didn’t encourage transparency among the tested.
But it was interesting to see who responded to Lynch about even being tested at all.
In the end, managers for just four of the 24 Ryder Cup players were willing to directly address the events of that Tuesday evening in Paris. Representatives for Tommy Fleetwood and Thorbjorn Olesen said that neither had been asked for a sample. Agents for Rory McIlroy and Ian Poulter confirmed they were among the eight men tested.
From Brian Wacker’s GolfDigest.com story on how the captain and assistants continue to mull what went wrong.
This was intriguing from vice captain Davis Love:
“I dropped the ball on two or three things that could have helped, and I apologized to Jim,” Love told Golf Digest last week. “I should have seen some of those things coming.”
Not obtaining Justine Reed’s Twitter and Facebook passwords and changing them?
Too much Polo in the uniforms?
An imbalance of plain, almond and chocolate croissants in the team room?
Please, tell!
So they put on a wildly successful Ryder Cup (well, until the apparently epic disaster that was the Monday-after outing…) and all France now has to show for helping Europe take back the cup?
An October, non-Rolex Series event in a wasteland when stars will likely gear up for the Race to Dubai. That was the buried lede from the 2019 schedule announcement where the Sistine Chapel of Ryder Cup venues—if you listened to Euros the last six years—did deliver in many ways and gets downgraded within a month of hosting the biennial team matches.
From an admittedly shaky English translation of an unbylined AFP story where the word “degraded” is used to describe the move.
The Open de France loses its importance. It's official, the tournament will no longer benefit from its status of "Rolex Series" next year. Moreover, it will not take place in June but in October, from 17 to 20.
Title sponsor since 2017 for a period of at least three years plus two years in option, the Chinese tourism group HNA, entangled in serious financial problems, has failed the organizers several months ago. The replacement of Alstom had allowed the Open de France, oldest tournament in continental Europe, to integrate the eight "Rolex Series", the newly created category grouping the most prestigious competitions of the European circuit.
How quickly—and I mean quickly—they forget.
Paul Azinger brought up this question when discussing the 2018 Ryder Cup with the Morning Drive crew, noting that he was the first American captain in the modern era to influence setup. He said it’s been more of a European tradition to meddle and suggested that Captain Thomas Bjorn exploited the U.S. strength. But the most interesting point: Azinger now agrees with Jack Nicklaus’ view that Captain’s shouldn’t have control over the setup.
While a sportsmanship element certainly seems undermined by course setup gamesmanship, and the 2018 Le Golf National presentation was just plain silly, I think the event is more interesting when the home team attempts to shape the course to their strengths. The move can easily backfire. But since the Ryder Cup seems determined to avoid genuinely captivating match play architecture with strong risk-reward holes, course setup ploys add intrigue.
Azinger’s remarks:
Is he a Hard Brexit guy or more of a Soft Brexit type? Given that he gets a standing ovation these days for walking to a first tee en route to an inevitable round starting in the 70s, the Captain Thomas Bjorn lovefest is now hitting full stride. Comparisons to Churchill seem inevitable.
Alistair Tait of Golfweek on what the victorious 2018 Captain is planning now that he managed to craft winning lineups, drive his buggy without injuring a spectator and keep his players from bad mouthing their week. Oh, and he’s not pulling the I-told-you-so-card on his Sergio selection, as he’s entitled to do.
Take the Dane’s “controversial” decision to select Sergio Garcia as one of his wild-card picks. Bjorn was pilloried from all points – including this one – for picking the out of form Spaniard. If Bjorn had any reason to say “I told you so,” this was his opportunity. Instead, he took a dignified stance.
“I’m not one to sit there and say I told you so, because Sergio could have showed up and not won points,” Bjorn said. “He could have played well and lost matches. That happens in the Ryder Cup.
Now, I’m happy the Europeans are enjoying this victory, but as we discussed on Morning Drive, the excessive celebration flags are about to start flying.
Peter Kaufman restructures distressed assets as an investment banker and takes a businessman’s approach to America’s latest Ryder Cup rout in Europe.
In it he spawns a spectacular phrase that will make Patrick Reed happy, assuming he reads MorningRead.com.
1. End crony captain-ism. Let’s stop the parade of old PGA Tour players as captains. No more, Whose turn is it? Or, Which of my buddies do I want to hang around with in Paris? I hate to pick on U.S. captain Jim Furyk – he seems like a nice-enough fellow – but he is the most recent glaring example of what needs to change.
Furyk chose his pals Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods as captain’s choices, and it’s clear that they had huge influences on everything Furyk did, or did not do. They are a combined 90 years old (really). They also are ranked Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in the category of Most Ryder Cup Points Lost in History.
But they are “very experienced”! Very experienced at losing, actually. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. Their losing Ryder Cup scar tissue has scar tissue on top of scar tissue. They just do not play nicely with others. That is not a recipe for success.
Enjoy it, savor it, hype it a little, but a MoliWood signage build out at the British Masters when your tour is in the red? Too much! The Golf Gods will note this.
View this post on Instagram10 minutes until #moliwood take to the tee! @britishmasters @europeantour #britishmasters
A post shared by Walton Heath Golf Club (@waltonheathgc) on
Geoff Shackelford is a Senior Writer for Golfweek magazine, a weekly contributor to Golf Channel's Morning
Copyright © 2022, Geoff Shackelford. All rights reserved.
