Worst Ryder Cup Captains?

[D-S]

Keegan Bradley must be the winner.
Set up the course totally wrong.
Got pretty much all pairings wrong (including putting the worst pairing statistically together twice).
Rambled on in press conferences about a set plan.
Even lost it with a rules official during the singles.
He looked to me like a man who was doing the job 10 years too early.

You could add didn’t pick himself to that list.

 

[irip]

You could add didn’t pick himself to that list.

I think that he was in the mix to qualify was probably another added thing to think about. As well as the Ryder cup and all that goes with it all year he has had his own game and performances to think about.
Luke has pretty much just had the Ryder cup to consider for the past 4 years

 

[doublebogey7]

I was only half joking to be fair - his plan might have actually worked if he buried them later in the order and his better players had picked up 2 or 3 points early on. But they were doomed to failure making their debut in a high pressure singles environment. Hard enough debuting in a four-ball match with an experienced player by your side, let on your up against a Phil or a Tiger!

Wasn't that the whole point at 10-6 up send out the rookies against their big guns take the loss, and expect your best performing players to have big wins against what little is left of the American side. Ok it failed, but not sure you can put that on the captain, the fact is our big guns didn't perform as most would have expected, similar to Sunday, but this time we had more in the bag.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

Or he wrecked the confidence of 3 of his team and then threw them under the bus. Perhaps the big guns could have done with a rest to come out Sunday with more energy.

I don't think anyone has copied his template since, with good reason.

 

[Orikoru]

Wasn't that the whole point at 10-6 up send out the rookies against their big guns take the loss, and expect your best performing players to have big wins against what little is left of the American side. Ok it failed, but not sure you can put that on the captain, the fact is our big guns didn't perform as most would have expected, similar to Sunday, but this time we had more in the bag.

Maybe this is just hindsight speaking but we have seen how big an effect momentum has on Ryder Cup singles. Quite a few times now it's finished 8.5 - 3.5 with one team taking the early matches and then everyone else riding the momentum from that.

 

[The Squirrel]

Losing away is no disgrace - it’s really hard to win away. The US is generally stronger on paper so losing at home as a US captain makes you an automatic candidate for the worst I’d say.

Nicklaus was the first to lose at home for the US but we’ll give him a pass as he wasn’t even given any captain’s picks and was up against Seve and Jose M, Faldo, Woozy, Langer, Lyle and a good skipper.

Oak Hill was on a knife edge. Could have gone either way. No disgrace there.

Medinah you can’t really say the skipper did much wrong getting them to 10-4 in the team format at one point.

That makes Hal Sutton and Keegan Bradley as the worst. Can’t argue with that too much. Rose’s bad putt on the 18th at Bethpage (if he makes that then the putt to halve is more difficult, gets missed and the pressure is off the rest of team Europe who romp away from there) saved Bradley from embarrassing margin of defeat, so Sutton remains the worst thanks to that .

 

[Golfnut1957]

Faldo.

Azinger went the whole 9 yards doing the captains' thing, giving it some thought. Faldo made it all about Faldo. Even his speech at the opening ceremony was all about him. Who would have thought.

 

[howbow88]

I get the argument that winning away is hard, so those captains should be given a pass... But...

Again, Faldo. If you read up on that week, Faldo didn't appear to really take the job too seriously and as mentioned, many of that Euro team have subsequently come and criticised his management.

We see it again and again in all sports - being a great player, doesn't necessarily translate to being a great manager. He'll probably never get the job now, but I couldn't ever imagine Mickelson being a good captain.

Whereas McGinley was a great captain but a fairly poor player when compared to other Ryder Cup captains.

 

[Neilds]

Wonder how many of these captains were regaled as brilliant, just what the team needs, etc before the competition but then slated when it when wrong. All judged using hindsight and the armchair experts forensically picking apart every decision to show what they did wrong., and what they should have done differently. Maybe the next European captain should be a joint effort by a team selected from various clubhouses around the country - will surely win by a record distance then

 

[Orikoru]

Wonder how many of these captains were regaled as brilliant, just what the team needs, etc before the competition but then slated when it when wrong. All judged using hindsight and the armchair experts forensically picking apart every decision to show what they did wrong., and what they should have done differently. Maybe the next European captain should be a joint effort by a team selected from various clubhouses around the country - will surely win by a record distance then

You do have to chuckle when everyone was slating Bradley because the "stats" said Morikawa and English were the worst pairing possible. And they lost twice so that backed it up. But I'm sure there are plenty of times in golf where the statistically 'weaker' pair or group have won. These 'stats' are only computers running numbers, I think the vast majority of people (myself included) would have no idea how the pairs could even be graded in such a way, they just accepted that Morikawa & English was the worst. And by this logic an AI super-computer could just be the next Ryder Cup captain.

 

[sunshine]

Keegan Bradley must be the winner.
Set up the course totally wrong.
Got pretty much all pairings wrong (including putting the worst pairing statistically together twice).

I keep hearing this comment. Where does it come from? What is the statistic being measured?

The only stat that really matters is points won. And that's largely irrelevant when the team changes and you need to create new pairings.

 

[irip]

I keep hearing this comment. Where does it come from? What is the statistic being measured?

The only stat that really matters is points won. And that's largely irrelevant when the team changes and you need to create new pairings.

I have no idea where it comes from but having putting them out once and losing it seems strange to me to do it again.
Madness is defined in doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result.
The pairings Bradley put together misfired spectacular.
Europe won 1 singles match and still won the competition that shows how poorly Bradley approached the first 2 days

 

[timd77]

I keep hearing this comment. Where does it come from? What is the statistic being measured?

The only stat that really matters is points won. And that's largely irrelevant when the team changes and you need to create new pairings.

It’s things like pairing long drivers with the better approach players, matching those strengths up to each hole. So that first hole at Beth page, you need a good driver off first, and the better approach player hitting in, and the better putter putting first.

It’s not just morikawa and English they got wrong. They had sheffler and Henley in the foursomes, instead of sheffler teeing off first (one of the longer drivers who would’ve taken it over the corner) leaving Henley as a strong approach player hitting into the green, they had Henley teeing off, he’s not long enough to take the corner on, so sheffler was hitting a good 40-50 yards longer into the green than our second player. They did fix this for the Saturday foursomes and although they lost it was touch and go with us winning on the last (from memory).

Sheffler again in the fourballs, being paired up with Bryson. I remember them saying in fourballs you don’t pair your best players together, you should split them up to help the lesser players and have some dovetailing. If (statistically speaking) your 2 best players are together and both have a great round birdie fest, well you’ve still only won a single point. Split them up and you might win 2 points. That one single change might’ve won them the RC.

I do agree that it’s not all stats though.

 

[Neilds]

It’s things like pairing long drivers with the better approach players, matching those strengths up to each hole. So that first hole at Beth page, you need a good driver off first, and the better approach player hitting in, and the better putter putting first.

It’s not just morikawa and English they got wrong. They had sheffler and Henley in the foursomes, instead of sheffler teeing off first (one of the longer drivers who would’ve taken it over the corner) leaving Henley as a strong approach player hitting into the green, they had Henley teeing off, he’s not long enough to take the corner on, so sheffler was hitting a good 40-50 yards longer into the green than our second player. They did fix this for the Saturday foursomes and although they lost it was touch and go with us winning on the last (from memory).

Sheffler again in the fourballs, being paired up with Bryson. I remember them saying in fourballs you don’t pair your best players together, you should split them up to help the lesser players and have some dovetailing. If (statistically speaking) your 2 best players are together and both have a great round birdie fest, well you’ve still only won a single point. Split them up and you might win 2 points. That one single change might’ve won them the RC.

I do agree that it’s not all stats though.

I sort of agree with your logic but you need to look at the whole course to decide who tees off on odds and evens. You can't just take the 1st hole, you need to look at where the par 3s are, etc and see where more holes might suit a certain player in the pairing.

 

[Orikoru]

I keep hearing this comment. Where does it come from? What is the statistic being measured?

The only stat that really matters is points won. And that's largely irrelevant when the team changes and you need to create new pairings.

I believe it was from here: https://datagolf.com/ryder-cup/insights
I couldn't begin to understand what metrics it uses to decide what the best pairings are though.

It does rate Tommy-Rory and Rahm-Hatton as optimal pairings for us, but I guess those are no-brainers anyway. Funnily enough it recommended Aberg-Macintyre and Hovland-Fitzpatrick whereas we went Aberg-Fitzpatrick and Hovland-Macintyre, haha. So it seems like Europe were working off very similar stats to this Data Golf model and had similar findings.

 

[Orikoru]

I sort of agree with your logic but you need to look at the whole course to decide who tees off on odds and evens. You can't just take the 1st hole, you need to look at where the par 3s are, etc and see where more holes might suit a certain player in the pairing.

I thought this as well when they were talking about it. Some of the pundits were moaning about one of the US foursome pairings and saying you need your best putter hitting first because they'll be talking the first putt on 4 of the first 6 holes. Ok, but then there are 12 more holes potentially?

 

[Orikoru]

I believe it was from here: https://datagolf.com/ryder-cup/insights
I couldn't begin to understand what metrics it uses to decide what the best pairings are though.

It does rate Tommy-Rory and Rahm-Hatton as optimal pairings for us, but I guess those are no-brainers anyway. Funnily enough it recommended Aberg-Macintyre and Hovland-Fitzpatrick whereas we went Aberg-Fitzpatrick and Hovland-Macintyre, haha. So it seems like Europe were working off very similar stats to this Data Golf model and had similar findings.

Furthermore (sorry, forgot to add this). He got slated for putting Morikawa and English together, as statistically the worst pairing. However, it rates Scheffler-Bryson as the number 1 four-ball pairing, and he got slated for putting them together as well.

 

[timd77]

I sort of agree with your logic but you need to look at the whole course to decide who tees off on odds and evens. You can't just take the 1st hole, you need to look at where the par 3s are, etc and see where more holes might suit a certain player in the pairing.

Well yeh, I know that but I haven’t got time to post about the other 17 holes! It was widely reported that Bradley got it wrong with sheffler and Henley on day one, and that it was actually a caddy who suggested they switch the order on day 2, he could see something Bradley had got wrong. It almost worked.

Europe plotted every single shot by every single player on every single hole, and used that as the basis to working out their pairings. Of course they’re not just going to just go with what the computer says, there are other factors and nuances that only a human can make the final call on. But similarly, they listened to the boffins rather than just ignoring them.

 

[D-S]

Well yeh, I know that but I haven’t got time to post about the other 17 holes! It was widely reported that Bradley got it wrong with sheffler and Henley on day one, and that it was actually a caddy who suggested they switch the order on day 2, he could see something Bradley had got wrong. It almost worked.

Europe plotted every single shot by every single player on every single hole, and used that as the basis to working out their pairings. Of course they’re not just going to just go with what the computer says, there are other factors and nuances that only a human can make the final call on. But similarly, they listened to the boffins rather than just ignoring them.

Didn't one of our pairings change the holes they drove after the first foursomes outing? If so, that original stat can't have been that good.

 

[Orikoru]

Didn't one of our pairings change the holes they drove after the first foursomes outing? If so, that original stat can't have been that good.

Aberg & Fitzpatrick swapped holes, yeah. Was obviously a mistake since they went from 5 & 3 winners to 4 & 2 losers. No idea why they decided to change given the big win on day one - I mean they were 7 under for 15 holes which is absurd in foursomes. On Sunday with the order flipped - 2 under.