Cascading failures of a Ryder Bethpage Cup

Farmingdale, NY – when this ryder cup disappears in the sand of time, it will be easy to remember how close Things really got.

It will be easy to show in the score table, 15-13, and remember the bold American return that placed a real fear in the euro. Overall, the loss will look small and explainable: things came down to some captain’s decisions, a high variance style of golf, a sudden course configuration and luck.

All said, the Americans won or halved everyone, but one of Sunday’s bachelors’ matches, deleting a mass deficit and bringing the Ryder Cup on the eve of the biggest return to the history of the event. In the end, they lost the cup in the last hole of the eighth match of the day, when drinking 10 -foot birds of Shane Lowry found the bottom of the hole and gave Europeans half -points to hold. It was taller than anyone – even competition – was expected to hang around a Sunday that began to look like a bleeding and ended up feeling much different.

“To be honest, no,” Lowry said, when asked if he expected it to be the crucial point. “I didn’t foresee myself by going up to the 18th I needed a bird to keep the Ryder Cup. It was, yes, like the two worst hours of my life. It was terrible. It was.”

But hidden in Lowry’s response is a kernel of truth that speaks of a much wider US failure: the last two hours of Lowry’s single -match Russell Henley match was the most embarrassment he felt all the weekend in Bethpage Black. This is reflective for this week’s unpleasant truth – and unfortunate – in almost all ways, this American Ryder Cup was a spectacular interruption.

It will be easy (and seductive) to focus on just one area of ​​US debut: leadership, players, stars, crowds, environment. It will be harder to remember that, closely, the reality was not so simple. This American team was not just beaten in Bethpage, was beaten everywhere, and in almost every way.

The biggest failures took place in the course. For the second right Cup, a talented US list was blocked in team sessions, seeking discommunications and countless against a European attack. The depth was again a problem for the Americans, who saw a third of the list whistleblower go without a victory in Bethpage, but the power of the American star was not much better (except Xander Schauffe and the excellent Cameron Young novice). Scottie Scheffler became the first player from Peter Alliss in 1967 to go 0-4-0 to the first four sessions of a Ryder Cup, while Patrick Cantlay and Bryson Dechambeau played five sessions each and came up with three points combined.

“Maybe it was one of the lowest moments of my career,” Scheffler said about the final loss of his 1-4-0 week.

Scheffler observed closely, while the US lost each of the first four Cup sessions, classified and external by a European pair that seemed better prepared and comfortable in the game format. This too was part of the conclusion: Captain Keegan Bradley and the American team seemed to fight the list and management minutes Datagolf’s The latest rank option (Harris English/Collin Morikawa, 0-2-0), and asked for a flip-driven rolling players in the Scheffler/Russell Henley pairing. These decisions were at least protected for Bradley whose players could have lost no matter their order, deals or opponents. The same cannot be said for the decision to set up Bethpage Black for a better bird, reducing heights to lower than the typical public game and leaving the greens as soft as the butter of the day, which seemed to benefit from the euro significantly more than Americans.

“Of course it wasn’t the right decision,” Bradley said. “Certainly I made a mistake in the course configuration. I should have heard my intuition.”

Bradley was not all the problem as captain, and yet his decisions helped open the road for a European week in a dream. Euro caught the momentum almost shortly after Friday’s fourth couples began, occupying the momentum from a crowd that would spend the rest of the weekend swinging between anxious and unfair. Things reached a Saturday afternoon with a series of pathetic insults thrown mainly in the Irish duo of Rory Mcilroy and Shane Lowry.

The situation of the crowd was more nuanced than an angry crowd, but not too much. Whether some bad apples or some many, the screen pumped oxygen into a series of ugly stereotypes for New Yorkers, New York Golf and the decision to bring the Ryder Cup to a municipal course. Bethpage’s loyalty should be ashamed of the screen, properly the PGA of America, which failed to adequately train the marshals and its security staff to smell the problem. Players, as Justin Thomas pointed out, also bears some responsibility to strengthen the irritated environment with a largely non -competitive show.

“Cam and I told Shane and Rory yesterday that we felt for them,” Thomas said on Sunday. “Cam and I just wanted we gave them something to cheer instead of people cheering against them. I think this was a kind of main consensus of the last two days, which we were not giving enough to cheer, and they were just trying to help us win.”

This, apparently, was also the first and last failure of this Ryder Cup: a failure of the soul. From the first announcement of a Ryder Cup to one of the true paradise of American Golf and the last day of $ 750 for the ticket competition, the Bethpage Ryder seemed to be misunderstood. The point of keeping a Ryder Cup in one of America’s cleanest places was not to set records for income from tickets or hospitality offers, but rather to secure one of the most loud and passionate golf joys in the world to raise its voice. The goal was to bring one of the biggest golf events for the true New York players. After all, this ryder cup was not taken.

Those 40 minutes of glory on Sunday afternoon mattered. They made this Cup nearby, and for a second, they gave us a brief appearance at this weekend as it should have been: loud, annoying and accessible and entertaining. But before we got into another important event in Adare Manor in Ireland in two years, we would do well to remember three days – and two years – preceded this week.

Maybe then we can remember that these Americans are not close. There is work to do, and on Sunday night in Bethpage, there are no easy answers.

You can reach the author in James.colgan@golf.com.