Some years ago, foolishly trying to curry favor while interviewing Bernhard Langer, I said, “What was Hal Sutton thinking, pairing Tiger and Phil?”
At the 2004 Ryder Cup, at Oakland Hills, Langer was the European captain, Sutton was the American captain, and Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods were the two best and most famous golfers in the world. They were famously not friends. On the first day, Sutton sent that duo out twice, morning session and after lunch, too, batting them first in better ball and third in afternoon alternate-shot play. They lost both times.
Assume the Bernhard voice here. The monotone, the authority: “You are only saying that because it did not work out.”
Accurate.
In all of fandom, the two easiest places to do some serious second-guessing is pitching changes when your starter is going good through six and Ryder Cup pairings. All across golf ordinary fans cannot understand why the American captain, Keegan Bradley, put out Harris English and Collin Morikawa on Friday morning alternate shot. Does that seem like a natural pairing? Which guy is going to bring a match and some starter fluid? They got trounced by a powerhouse European team, Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy. Then Bradley kept the team together on Saturday morning.
“We came in here this week with a plan and the players are prepared for that plan,” Bradley said Friday night. “We’re going to stick to that plan.”
That’s right out of the Tiger Woods playbook, what Woods did as captain of the American team at the 2019 Presidents Cup at Royal Melbourne. On Saturday morning, as fate would have it, they drew Fleetwood-Mac again. Again, the Europeans won without breaking a sweat. Two easy points on their way to the 14.5 they seek.
Second-guessing is the great sport of fandom because it’s so easy. We all have our instinctive feelings about what makes sense and what does not. Would you really want to pair Mickelson and Woods together when they were barely on speaking terms?
Maybe you think, when creating two-man teams, one of the players needs to be the natural leader, so one player sets the example and the other player tries to live up to it. Big brother-kid brother. Who’s the big brother in English-Morikawa? English is 36 and Morikawa is 28. Morikawa has won two majors, English has won none. So who’s who?
Maybe you think one of the two players, on any given two-man team, must have a sort of easy charisma, in the interest of fan engagement and calming nerves on down-the-fairway walks. On the English-Morikawa team, where’s the charisma? Who among them can provide the explosive shots that make a team event a team event? Where’s the necessary passion?
When you have 12 golfers on your squad, you can create 132 two-man teams (say the math majors). There are 132 permutations. Stat mavens at a website called Data Golf figured out a formula to analyze all 132 American teams based on recent performance. The Morikawa-English team ranked 132nd. Dead last. Both players made the team on points. Both are world-class golfers. But neither has provided any must-watch moments this year. Harris plays a Titleist ProV1. Morikawa plays a TaylorMade TP5. Does that really matter? Who knows. It’s got to be something.
I realize this sounds harsh. Bradley certainly had his reasons for putting these two fine players together in alternate shot, aka foursomes, the first time. It didn’t work. The players were eager to prove their captain correct on Day 2. Groundhog day.
Second-guessing is easy. It’s a right of fandom. These words can be typed for only one reason: the Harris English-Collin Morikawa alternate-shot pairing, like the Phil Mickelson-Tiger Woods pairing, didn’t work out. You can say that, when the scorecards are delivered. Still, Bernhard’s insight lives. It’s alive and well and will be forever.
Michael Bamberger welcomes your comments at Michael.Bamberger@Golf.com.
