Issue No. 260 | October 6, 2025 | Read Online

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10 (More) Thoughts on the 45th Ryder Cup

Last week, I wrote a lot about problems the U.S. has as it relates to the Ryder Cup. I promised a follow up with some solutions and some miscellaneous final takes on the 45th edition of this event. Let’s jump right in.

1. A solution (which I wrote about in July) to the uneven nature of how the U.S. has gone about things this century: Create USA Basketball but for golf.

Here’s what I wrote in Normal Sport newsletter No. 222 …

When I think about great national teams, I think about Jerry Colangelo and USA Basketball. He took over a program that had finished 6th in the 2002 world championships and lost to Puerto Rico, Lithuania and Argentina in Athens in the 2004 Olympics and failed to win gold.

Here’s how he got started in the position over all of Team USA.

There was no vision, no continuity and little leadership in USA basketball (does any of this sound familiar?). After he took over, he rebuilt the culture from the ground up and from 2006-2016, Team USA went 50-1.

Like I said, all of that is a pipe dream. Europe has worked toward something similar with probably more people involved than should be involved. But they are all at least mostly on the same page.

Here’s a question if you’re the U.S. … Why not hire a permanent captain like Team USA did with Coach K? It’s not 1944 anymore. The Ryder Cup is big business. Winning is big business. Would Team USA hire Kevin Durant to coach the 2028 team because he’ll probably not be good enough at that point to make the team?

Europe has thrived over the last 20 years because its players have bought into humility and vulnerability. That’s probably never going to happen for the U.S. so why not aim for dominance instead. Sell a vision of dominance and build a culture around it. That’s more or less the basketball blueprint.

I would like to double down on all of it. Triple down. I will be your creative boy. Put me to work. Jason and I even made a creative committee during our downtime at Bethpage. I want the U.S. to have as good of an organization as possible. One that Europe — instead of scoffing at — is completely and totally jealous of.

How cool would that be?!

2. It would be easy to infer that, because of the way the U.S. side gets mashed together the week of this event, that they have a data and analytics problem. Is this true?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Here’s what Garrett Morrison of Fried Egg Golf wrote after the event.

This is an idea that Joseph LaMagna seems to agree with in theory and that I challenged him on a bit during our podcast last week. But back to Garrett.

Despite my desire to believe the best, I admit that it has become increasingly difficult — given all the U.S. issues over the past few Ryder Cups — to give the benefit of the doubt that this was a seamless operation that simply failed because Europe just played better. I’m not saying that it wasn’t. Only that it has become tougher to believe it.

It also gets at an underlying issue that is the through line in all of this: Trust (or rather a lack thereof).

(Jason continued) It was crazy. In good and bad ways. The fans were worse than anyone expected, except for the Long Islanders and maybe Slim Shady Don Rea, apparently, but Sunday was a little different because a lot of American fans sold their tickets. So it had more of a European majority and everyone was more focused on the actual golf. It’s not really surprising considering how much ass the Euros kicked on the first two days. I almost felt bad for the boys club, like, do all of you guys want to still be out here?…

3. Here’s more from Garrett.

I agree with the last part about how transparency is deserved here. However, I’m a tad dubious of the “good process, bad result” option given that, you know, Scottie admitted on Sunday evening that two caddies were working through who should tee off on which holes.

You can keep your Morikawa-English issues, Scottie and Henley teeing off on the wrong holes on Friday is inexcusable. Their caddies speaking into it even more so. How were the caddies the only people in the room that were like, “Yo, maybe not the best idea to have the shorter hitter on the longer holes”?!?

My other issue here is the lack of reference to the data or how it was interacted with by Keegan and the team during the pressers. Every question about it was answered with a version of "we did what we thought was best" with zero reference to the data.

At least give me an idea of how it informed your decisions!

This goes back to trust, which the U.S. hasn’t exactly earned over the years when it comes to analysis and evaluation by us in the media.

In retrospect, it’s also wild that they would choose an active player to be the captain. Keegan talked on Sunday about how much he was learning on the fly, which Donald was for Rome as well.

The difference?

Europe’s infrastructure rules — Paul McGinley talked on the broadcast about how he and others were advising Donald for Rome — and the U.S. infrastructure does not.

4. A month ago, at the press conference introducing the captain’s picks, I asked Keegan about how they use data to select players. Here’s my exact question.

Here’s how Keegan answered.

The first line was an attempt at being funny in the face of strokes gained nerds, but I do have to wonder if it is emblematic of a larger distrust of data boys and other folks involved. Maybe. Maybe not. I truly don’t know.

Garrett gave some more benefit of the doubt here, which I appreciated.

Again, this implies a fundamental organizational issue rather than a “kEegAn wUz jUst a bAD caPtaiN” pointing of the finger. This is exactly why I’m hesitant to go too in on Keegan. Some notes …

1. He was put in a difficult position as a current player.

2. He’s now taking all the blame for decisions he may or may not have made.

3. He said one thing in the post-tournament presser that stood out to me.

Here it is.

This definitely implies that he listened to the info, and the info just didn’t work. That’s OK. It happens. But given Keegan’s regrets, are we sure these data folks are best suited for the job? Again … trust. Does the U.S. side have it? Should they?

Don’t let Keegan’s captaincy get in the way of a complete overhaul of how all of these pieces can (and should!) work together.

5. Here’s a wild first attempt at creating a new hierarchy on the U.S. side.

I think you have to have a GM. Somebody who is tantamount to the captain but does everything behind the scenes. Europe has a version of this, though I don’t think they call him a GM. It’s a person who is thoroughly dedicated to helping Europe win the Ryder Cup, though, and is so meaningful to their operation.

Beyond that, I think you need a couple of people just constantly coming up with ideas and testing stuff out for what could work for future teams. Full-time people who only work on the Ryder Cup.

Your three primary verticals could be analytics, content and storytelling and player development, performance and care.

The first two verticals speak for themselves. The last — development and performance — would be people whose job it is to organize the Procore gathering but throughout the two years, not just two weeks before the Ryder Cup. People who are thinking through how to get the most out of every player. Who do the Myers-Briggs stuff and research how to get the most out of players at these team events.

This is a big investment. Several million dollars a year. But it’s worth it. It’s baseline stuff on the Euro side! The Ryder Cup is big business. It’s no longer Ben Hogan rolling out 10 dudes in ties and vests to whack a ball around and shake some hands. It is the most important international golf event in the world. It generates $200 million every time it’s played!

We either care about our performance in that, or we do not.

(Jason continued) But those boys came out swinging. Well not immediately. I was sitting in the media center and it was just blue all over the board. I think everyone was thinking about what angle they would take on their “Euros Ryder Cup scoring record” piece. And then the board started to flip to grey and then red. I ran out to follow Scottie and Rory in on the back nine. It was kind of a pillow fight but pretty cool to see their parents out there cheering them on and telling fans kindly to stfu. I eventually posted up on 15 fairway, 16 green next to 17 tee and looking at 17 green with the giant screen behind it showing the action on 18. Viktor Hovland was next to me nursing a hurt neck. He’s not actually that tall, none of the guys are except for Ludvig. He’s tall tall. And they all have Popeye arms. That might be my lasting memory from the tournament. That and when Cam Young dropped the putt on 18 followed by JT. From the rough streets of New York to Bethpage on Sunday of The Ryder Cup….

6. Another thing — because European players know everyone at the European Tour (which runs the European side of the Ryder Cup), there is an implicit trust there that the PGA Tour players don’t have with the PGA of America, which they see just once a year.

This was explained to me at Bethpage by a European official, and I found it fascinating.

Does that mean the PGA Tour — where players do know all of the communications folks because they see them every week — should be running Ryder Cup USA? I don’t know, but I do know that organizations thrive when trust is a pillar.

It is clearly not on the U.S. side, and it clearly is on the Euro side. The example I was given: Euro players know if they’re talking politics (or whatever) they trust the social and content teams to turn the cameras and mics off. This has nothing to do with putting, but it has everything to do with putting if you believe in organizational excellence.

On the Euro side, the players trust Luke Donald. Luke Donald trusts his social team. The vice captains trust the data people. The infrastructure is rooted in trust. It would be very, very difficult to believe that anything close to the same thing is true on the American side.

Again, nobody’s fault!

It’s tough to get thrown together for an event like this without any continuity. The Europeans have continuity because everyone involved is basically also involved on the European Tour side. They spend time together, they are around each other. It’s just a completely different setup than what the Americans have.

7. This remains amazing. One of the most amazing things that happened all week (in a week of amazing things).

To recap: The emcee on the first hole — put in place ostensibly by the PGA of America — yelled “f*** you Rory” into a microphone on Saturday and had to be replaced.

Organizational excellence is important. Imagine this happening in Europe. It wouldn’t ever take place, but they would hold a press conference to apologize if it did!

Every detail matters.

It’s much easier to say that Europe just makes more putts because it’s much more difficult and hurts way more to pay attention to every detail and still get shellacked every once in a while (like Europe sometimes does).

The pay off, though, is always incredible. And Europe is 11 for its last 15.

8. If the question being posed is, "Man, Europe's excellence seems to emanate from a trust that is built by establishing relational equity and world class communication at every turn. Who can we get to build our version of that?"

I’m extremely unconvinced that "Tiger Woods" is the answer, even though lots of people are saying that he is. And again, even if he does great and falls into a road win at Adare, that papers over the real problem which is that the U.S. has nothing undergirding its annual process the way the Euros do.

I just want to get out ahead of that one because it is for sure going to be a thing. Also, I got a text from someone after Phil’s reply here that said, “Imagine telling yourself 10 years ago that you'd be making suggestions that Tiger might not be the best Ryder Cup captain and Phil Mickelson would be publicly agreeing with them.”

9. The U.S. side has not acquitted itself very well in the aftermath. You have Jim Furyk talking green speed. You have Don Rea talking about the devil’s levels.

It is all emblematic of the lack of cohesion on the U.S. side of things.

Ultimately, all of this bums me out. As an American golf fan and a massive Ryder Cup supporter, I am insanely jealous of the European side. All of it. How it works. How they function. How they view this event.

And while some of that is rooted in culture and upbringing — which is probably impossible to change — so much more of it is within the grasp of the power brokers on the U.S. side. You can build an elite organization. You can change the direction of this thing. Excellence is a possibility. It won’t be easy, and it might make the losses even more devastating than they already are. But from where I’m sitting, the decision of stasis is not an option. This is something worth pursuing.

Even if I don’t really believe anyone will do it.

(Jason continued) They almost pulled it off! It was electric. I was rooting for anyone who made a putt. And the Euros only won one match! Without the envelope rule they might have only retained the cup. I was happy for them though. The Americans were outclassed from the get go. It’s actually an organizational thing that goes back years to Seve. The Euros focus on details like shampoo and the Americans rewrite the playbook every two years. I’m sure you could draw some parallels between European socialism and America individualism. There’s like a million podcasts on this Ryder Cup. You wouldn’t believe how much people can talk about it.

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