To appreciate the flawed thinking behind calls to appoint Tiger Woods as the man to rescue the USA’s Ryder Cup future, we might rewind to last year. “The honour of a lifetime,” Luke Donald said of the captain’s job. “Too busy,” was Woods’s response, in a paraphrase. It was a significant difference.
Woods was offered the job for Bethpage but said he was preoccupied with his roles on the PGA Tour Policy Board, various subcommittees and running his TGL indoor league. “I barely have enough time to do what I’m doing,” he said. Perhaps those were more noble aspirations but the response was in keeping with a man who has rarely thrived in the team environment.
In 2004 he asked a room of journalists if anyone knew what Jack Nicklaus’s Ryder Cup record was. Nobody had it to hand. Then he asked for Nicklaus’s major tally. They knew that one. Priorities proved, the exchange summed up a career that has been a triumph of selfish obsession. A monomaniac with 15 majors and a Ryder Cup résumé of 13 wins and 21 losses, Woods went 0-7-1 in his two most recent appearances.
His backers say he was a hit as Presidents Cup player-captain in 2019 but that is a far lesser role, and the USA have only ever lost once in that competition. If Woods, or the PGA of America, are serious about him being and thriving at Adare Manor in 2027, you may have expected him to be at Bethpage as a vice-captain — or at least show a modicum of interest on X rather than limiting himself to two post-Cup posts about business interests.
The lobbying for Woods progresses the American view that the Ryder Cup captain is still a nebulous, totemic role that is mainly to do with inspiring. It is also why some in US golf conflate the sport with war, why Keegan Bradley was running around Bethpage with a Stars and Stripes flag, and why he recruited the son of a firefighter who died on 9/11 to address his players and tell them they were doing it for soldiers overseas. Really, he would have been better off contemplating the course set-up.
Modern America is still all in on the celebrity leader, so Brandt Snedeker, a Bethpage vice-captain and captain for next year’s Presidents Cup, does not cut it. The celebrity leader feeds faith in the easy fix rather than focusing on creating a culture in which players feel comfortable enough to excel.
Woods’s caddie, Steve Williams, goes fishing for Woods’s nine-iron after dropping it in the water at the 2006 event at the K Club in Ireland
DONALD MIRALLE/GETTY IMAGES
Culture may sound a tad wishy-washy for some, but it works in sport. See the All Blacks’ famous “no dickheads” mantra and the belief in whanau, a Maori word related to extended family. Donald wanted something similar and built an ego-free zone in which everyone was equal, with Seve Ballesteros the beloved patriarch and emphasis on the 37 siblings who had previously won overseas for Europe.
Ridicule some of the details of Donald’s methodology if you want, but the stuff about better shampoo and bedding inculcated players with an osmotic belief that nothing had been left to chance; if he thinks this much about trivia, imagine the attention he gives to the big things.
The continuity of having Donald, middle, as captain is an example the Americans might wish to follow
VAUGHN RIDLEY/SPORTSFILE
Questions about Captain Woods linger. After fighting LIV Golf on behalf of the PGA Tour, would he leave his antipathy at the door and give those players a fair crack? Would he step down from the PGA Tour board? Would he be prepared to give as much of himself as Donald did to a role that pays so little? Perhaps so. Davis Love III recalled that when he was captain in 2016, vice-captain Woods would text him in the middle of the night with thoughts about pairings. People also say he has softened and is more outward-looking now but there is a lot of history to bury if we are to believe he could match the meticulous, PR-savvy and empathetic style of Donald.
He may be an inspiration but could be a liability, adding to the pressure on his players. Bryson DeChambeau said as much when recalling his Ryder Cup debut in Paris in 2018. DeChambeau partnered Woods in the Saturday foursomes against Tommy Fleetwood and Francesco Molinari. “Playing with Tiger was nerve-racking for me,” he said. “He’s an intimidating guy.” They lost 5 & 4.
If Woods is the answer, they are probably asking the wrong questions down at the PGA of America, because better days are not dependent on a new captain as much as an improved system.
At each Ryder Cup sweeping generalisations about the psyche of each team are made based on the result. Seven of the USA team that inflicted a record defeat on Europe in 2021 were in the team well beaten in Rome in 2023, so you would assume they had a decent enough team spirit in at least one of those matches. There is also a trope that the Americans just do not care as much but the fact is that over the past five Ryder Cups, they have led Europe 34½-25½ in the singles and trailed 43½-36½ in the foursomes and four-balls. Clearly, they care on a Sunday.
The practical task for the new man is to find a way to make their pairings perform better, but as someone who had only a 32.5 per cent winning record in Ryder Cup pairings, but almost double that in singles, Woods seems unlikely to have that answer.
And would he be humble enough to outsource a significant part of the decision-making to a statistical sage like Edoardo Molinari? It was Molinari’s data that meant Europe knew which player was more suited to the odd and even-numbered holes last week. The USA say they have their own data experts but, frankly, they are not as good if Scottie Scheffler and Russell Henley were working it out as they went along.
It is missing the point to think Woods, or indeed any single figure, can right the wrongs of Bethpage and win away for the first time in 34 years by being a figurehead. More important is to draw up a new blueprint, just as Europe did after the trouncing at Whistling Straits only four years ago. Team USA need to make sure they travel to Ireland the week before the 2027 Ryder Cup to avoid jet lag, limit the number of rookies, dive into the data and even have the captain send out Monday emails, as Donald did, to an ever-decreasing number of potential players to make them feel part of something special.
Or they could also look to their own past. In 2008 the USA were on a three-match losing streak, including an embarrassing nine-point home defeat. The USA captain, Paul Azinger, introduced the pod system in which he grouped players in terms of personality, such as dominant-controlling and steady-supporting. He even let the three groups of three choose who they wanted as their fourth member from a shortlist he had drawn up.
Mickelson, right, has mooted the idea of having non-golfers as captains for the USA team
JOHN LOCHER/AP PHOTO
Having picked a Ryder Cup player, they had an added interest in their pod and an instant bond. That team (which did not include Woods) won but the USA either modified the pod system or abandoned it thereafter, despite it also proving successful at the Solheim Cup.
Meanwhile, Phil Mickelson has come up with an even more radical idea and suggested recruiting from other sports, citing the celebrated college basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski, aged 78, and the American football sage Lou Holtz, 88, as possibilities.
“Here is why looking outside of golf to a Coach K or Lou Holtz is worth exploring,” he said. “Golf is an individual sport that doesn’t have teamwork, support systems, partnership, team analytics, personality traits and more. The Europeans have a template that teaches and prepares their captains for these skills. The US has a new template every two years with little continuity.”
Europe have decided continuity is key to winning away and two or more terms will become the norm. Woods will get the fans’ vote, but if Bradley, thrust into a thankless task as second-choice captain while in his playing prime, wants a second go and learns from his mistakes and Europe’s success, he might be the better man.