What did Watson do wrong ?

[Bill_McBride]

Pretty funny tyop there, "shits" instead of "shirts."    But appropriate I guess.     

[Ronald Montesano]

Pretty funny tyop there, "shits" instead of "shirts."    But appropriate I guess.     

corrected!!

[Pat Burke]

back in the stone ages (when I was playing), a lot of the club companies didn't offer much, if anything in bonuses
for making the Ryder Cup team.  They got little exposure for it due to team uniforms/bags/head covers,
so they could care less.
Now in negotiating those contracts, being a Ryder Cupper couldn't hurt, but the reason for being the Ryder Cup member for most created the value anyway.
Not sure any more, the Ryder Cup is certainly bigger than it was then.

[Rich Goodale]

Let me count the ways....

http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/ryder-cup-2014-tom-watson-phil-mickelson-team-usa

[A.G._Crockett]

This may all have been said/written, but I've neither time nor eyes to read through 4.5 pages of your brilliance, compadres mios.

1. Said "Yes." ~~ Why he said yes in the first place is beyond me. Like taking points off the board. No one remembers 1993 if he loses in 2014. Oops.

2. Got stuck in a year when no ones outside the automatic qualifiers were playing well. ~~ Horschel hadn't become Horschel, Haas-meh, Kirk had one win and didn't seem to care whether he made the team or not.

3. Picked Simpson. ~~ I'm a Wake guy and still couldn't understand this one: you take a guy who begs you over the phone, who then says "that's too early for me" to Bubba.

4. Bubba. ~~ Remember when Bubba lost the PGA at Whistling Straits to Kaymer after Dustingate, and all that Bubba cared about was making the Ryder Cup team? That Bubba is long gone.

5. Got stuck in a year when his veteran players offered no tacit leadership. ~~ Phil? Yut. Furyk? Hasn't closed anything but a door in years. Stricker? Oh, right, he's a captain's assistant-captain pick.

6. Picked old guys like himself as assistants, to make his own self feel comfortable.

7. Didn't defer to Larry Nelson (see my trilogy on the Larry Nelson curse.)

8. Didn't ask Mrs. Pavin to pick the uniforms (yaaah, I'm running out of funny stuff to say.)

9. Didn't ask Ben Crenshaw to pick the Sunday shirts (Almost completely on empty.)

10. Didn't ask Lynn S. for a copy of anything John Wooden ever wrote or said about coaching.

Ronald,
I'll disagree only with #2, and that as it pertains to Kirk.  Kirk's second win of the year was at the Deutsche Bank immediately BEFORE Watson made his picks.  At that point, Kirk not only had two wins, but led the FedEx standings by a wide margin before ultimately finishing 2nd.  He shot 66-64-66 in the last three rounds in Boston, with the final 36 being head-to-head with McIlroy.  Picking Kirk was an absolute no-brainer on ANY level.

Other than wanting Bradley to pair with Mickelson, Kirk's downfall may have been his comments immediately after the tournament when he was asked about being a captain's pick.  He simply said, in essence, that if he wasn't picked, he'd go to a football game and be ok. 

Omitting Kirk was just foolishness, as was picking Simpson; it appeared so at the time, and looks MUCH worse in retrospect.  There were 7 Americans above Bradley in the FedEx standings, and 5 above Simpson; neither had won anything all summer.  It appears that the simplest explanation is that Watson opted for the appearance of "passion" (Simpson's text message) instead of the reality of a player playing really, really good golf.  Bear Bryant once said that enthusiasm is great until the kick-off; then you better have players!

If anyone wants to read an interesting take on Watson's captaincy and what the position means, try Alan Shipnuck's article from SI.com:

http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/ryder-cup-2014-tom-watson-phil-mickelson-team-usa

[Rich Goodale]

AG

Good post, but I did post a link to the Shipnuck article above, but nobody listens to me anymore....

[Brent Hutto]

AG

Good post, but I did post a link to the Shipnuck article above, but nobody listens to me anymore....

Rich,

I read all your posts, still.

And I meant to mention earlier regarding your colorblindness...

Tom Huckaby does indeed have green hair, or so I recall.

[A.G._Crockett]

AG

Good post, but I did post a link to the Shipnuck article above, but nobody listens to me anymore....

Rich,
Sorry!  One post later has to be a new record (or at least tie the old record!) for reposting the same link.  I read that article late last night in the print SI, and just knee-jerk posted the link after reading Ronald's post.  I'll cop to having a "senior moment"...

In any event, it is rare that a writer like Shipnuck will be as blunt about a legend like Watson as this article.  It really, really makes me wonder what else he heard and was told off the record that didn't get written.

[Dan Kelly]

AG

Good post, but I did post a link to the Shipnuck article above, but nobody listens to me anymore....

Don't sell yourself short, Judge. Nobody ever listened to you!

[A.G._Crockett]

As an update/addition to the Shipnuck article, you should try to find and listen to what Ben Wright had to say about Watson on Matt Adams' show on XM today.  Wright was just brutally frank and completely believable, and I think it is safe for me to say that I've never heard anything quite like it.  If you have XM, I think it gets replayed tonight at 8?

[Rich Goodale]

AG

Good post, but I did post a link to the Shipnuck article above, but nobody listens to me anymore....

Don't sell yourself short, Judge. Nobody ever listened to you!

Dan, you are getting a bit Slouchy in your middle age, given that you must have listened to me before you wrote your reply above!  Also, I've got Hutto and Crockett going for me....

AG

Not sure if we can get XM on the wireless over here, but I'm looking forward to somebody summarizing what Ben W. had to say.

Rich

[Garland Bayley]

What we need on the US team is more players that don't "need to be invested in the process."
How invested could Speith and Reed be? All completely new to them.
Sounds to me like a bunch of embarrassed blokes that have to make excuses. And with records like Phil and Furyk, they need powerful excuses.

[Mike Schott]

As an update/addition to the Shipnuck article, you should try to find and listen to what Ben Wright had to say about Watson on Matt Adams' show on XM today.  Wright was just brutally frank and completely believable, and I think it is safe for me to say that I've never heard anything quite like it.  If you have XM, I think it gets replayed tonight at 8?

For those of us without satellite radio, can you give a synopsis? Also, Ben Wright knows his stuff but likes to hear the sound of his own voice so I take what he says with a grain of salt.

[A.G._Crockett]

As an update/addition to the Shipnuck article, you should try to find and listen to what Ben Wright had to say about Watson on Matt Adams' show on XM today.  Wright was just brutally frank and completely believable, and I think it is safe for me to say that I've never heard anything quite like it.  If you have XM, I think it gets replayed tonight at 8?

For those of us without satellite radio, can you give a synopsis? Also, Ben Wright knows his stuff but likes to hear the sound of his own voice so I take what he says with a grain of salt.

Mike,
Among other things, Wright said that Watson's nickname on Tour was "Carnac", for obvious reasons, and that he had captained accordingly.  He went further to say that Bob Murphy had been Watson's ONLY friend on Tour, and that Watson's letter to ANGC that resulted in McCord's Masters ban was related to his belief that McCord had somehow been responsible for Murphy being let go by CBS. (I'm not familiar enough with Murphy's career trajectory to know much about this.)  Wright's point, obviously, is that Watson is capable of showing a high level of disregard and vindictiveness.

Wright went on to say that US captains simply don't have the work ethic of the Euro captains.  He said the Euro captains view it as a job and seek and receive mentoring from previous captains, while the US captains tend to view the position as a crowning moment for a career.  As a result, the US captains often don't show the same attention to detail; he used Pavin selecting rainsuits that leaked badly as an example, but was also referring to not taking the time or trouble to communicate with and get to know players that are much younger.

You get the gist...

[Dan Kelly]

So what did Watson do wrong?  He thought he was the smartest guy in the room.

I think that's what he has in common with Mickelson -- and goes a long way toward explaining everything.

Or, in other words:

Carnac meets FIGJAM.

[Mike Schott]

As an update/addition to the Shipnuck article, you should try to find and listen to what Ben Wright had to say about Watson on Matt Adams' show on XM today.  Wright was just brutally frank and completely believable, and I think it is safe for me to say that I've never heard anything quite like it.  If you have XM, I think it gets replayed tonight at 8?

For those of us without satellite radio, can you give a synopsis? Also, Ben Wright knows his stuff but likes to hear the sound of his own voice so I take what he says with a grain of salt.

Mike,
Among other things, Wright said that Watson's nickname on Tour was "Carnac", for obvious reasons, and that he had captained accordingly.  He went further to say that Bob Murphy had been Watson's ONLY friend on Tour, and that Watson's letter to ANGC that resulted in McCord's Masters ban was related to his belief that McCord had somehow been responsible for Murphy being let go by CBS. (I'm not familiar enough with Murphy's career trajectory to know much about this.)  Wright's point, obviously, is that Watson is capable of showing a high level of disregard and vindictiveness.

Wright went on to say that US captains simply don't have the work ethic of the Euro captains.  He said the Euro captains view it as a job and seek and receive mentoring from previous captains, while the US captains tend to view the position as a crowning moment for a career.  As a result, the US captains often don't show the same attention to detail; he used Pavin selecting rainsuits that leaked badly as an example, but was also referring to not taking the time or trouble to communicate with and get to know players that are much younger.

You get the gist...

Thanks A. G.

[A.G._Crockett]

And if you haven't seen enough already, try THIS one!

http://m.espn.go.com/golf/story?storyId=11636089&src=desktop&rand=ref~{%22ref%22%3A%22http%3A%2F%2Ft.co%2FnjNfSQWdAJ%22}

[Mike Schott]

I was able to get Watson's autograph after a round at the Senior TPC Championship one year when it was played in Dearborn, MI. In that short time it was easy to see he does not suffer fools. He was very kind to me in signing his name, he would not sign for a man he recognized as one who profited from these artifacts and he rebuffed a Golf Channel reporter who he did not respect. My impression was he had high standards and had little tolerance for those who capitalized on the success of others. It's not fair to project this to the recent events but I can imagine that if he was on the team he would have taken full responsibility for his play and not blamed others. However, this is 2014, the Ryder Cup is a high profile event and he does not seem to be taking any responsibility for his own failures as captain. Perhaps time has passed him by.

[Lou_Duran]

Brian S,

Don't draw too many grave conclusions from what you read.  As we see in these pages regularly, many of us look at the same data and come up with diametrically different impressions.  Tom Watson is a great man.  All men make mistakes.  Most of ours are in anonymity and we're mostly left a bit tattered but with some of our dignity intact.

Watson was a very poor captain this time.  Nonetheless, he is the same guy who resigned from KCCC where his father was a prominent member over it denial of membership to a local Jewish businessman because of the candidate's religion.  He remains the man who a good friend drew as the pro-am partner for his team, all business clients, in the Colonial National Invitational and shared five hours of warm fellowship with on the course and more in the men's grill afterwards.  He is the tough-skinned businessman who gave a fantastic keynote address at a golf development conference and then handled my partner's highly inappropriate probes regarding his competency (something to the effect of what was he thinking when he chose fescues and bents for Spanish Bay, which subsequently burned-out), noting with a smile that sometimes things don't work out as you planned.  He is the imperfect man who fought alcoholism with success and helped at least one fellow pro (David Feherty) during his own ordeal.

In hindsight he was probably a bad choice for captain.  He is old school, perhaps too highly accomplished to have sufficient empathy for lesser professionals.  Maybe the PGA should have known better, but, again, the decision makers there probably looked at it from most angles and didn't get it right.  Learn from the mistake and move on.   

[Andy Troeger]

Has anyone read "Caddy for Life"? One thing I remember from the book is a story Watson told about how he blanked a young kid and his Dad for an autograph in a scenario where he wasn't exactly being mobbed and the Dad called him a total asshole. That seemed to really hit home with Watson and he felt ashamed. Doesn't sound as if he's changed his ways too much but obviously the book does portray him in a positive light. I think he liked the fact that Bruce Edwards would never take his shit and so there was a respect. I tend not to gravitate towards those kind of people but there you go...

I'd really rather have lived in ignorant bliss than to learn all of this stuff about Watson. The McCord letter is something I would find very hard to forgive and I wonder if he regrets writing it.

Good for the Dad. I attended my first tournament in 1991 at Crooked Stick (John Daly's PGA) at one of the practice rounds. I was 10 and got some autographs, including Fred Couples who signed for quite awhile for kids at the peak of his popularity. Watson came off #18, saw a group of kids waiting for a possible autograph, then saw a hole in the fence in another direction, and took off almost at a run to avoid having to sign. Hopefully the incident in the book occurred after that date, because otherwise he didn't learn much.

At the end of the day, however, we're all flawed and have done things we would have done differently given another chance. Such is life.

[Peter Pallotta]

Reading through this, I was reminded of an earlier generation of golfers: how different men like Hogan and Snead and Nelson and Demaret and Middlecoff and Palmer and Nicklaus and Trevino were from one another, and then imagining Ben Hogan as RC Captain and thinking about how he would interact with some of those (later) stars -- i.e. what he would expect of them, what they would accept from him.  Night and Day, huh?

[Mike Schott]

Brian S,

Don't draw too many grave conclusions from what you read.  As we see in these pages regularly, many of us look at the same data and come up with diametrically different impressions.  Tom Watson is a great man.  All men make mistakes.  Most of ours are in anonymity and we're mostly left a bit tattered but with some of our dignity intact.

Watson was a very poor captain this time.  Nonetheless, he is the same guy who resigned from KCCC where his father was a prominent member over it denial of membership to a local Jewish businessman because of the candidate's religion.  He remains the man who a good friend drew as the pro-am partner for his team, all business clients, in the Colonial National Invitational and shared five hours of warm fellowship with on the course and more in the men's grill afterwards.  He is the tough-skinned businessman who gave a fantastic keynote address at a golf development conference and then handled my partner's highly inappropriate probes regarding his competency (something to the effect of what was he thinking when he chose fescues and bents for Spanish Bay, which subsequently burned-out), noting with a smile that sometimes things don't work out as you planned.  He is the imperfect man who fought alcoholism with success and helped at least one fellow pro (David Feherty) during his own ordeal.

In hindsight he was probably a bad choice for captain.  He is old school, perhaps too highly accomplished to have sufficient empathy for lesser professionals.  Maybe the PGA should have known better, but, again, the decision makers there probably looked at it from most angles and didn't get it right.  Learn from the mistake and move on.   

Excellent post. Whatever happened during his captaincy this year, he is a man of high principles and one of the greatest competitors of the modern era.

[J.D. Griffith]

Often greatness in a sport does not equate to excellence or even proficiency in leading, managing and inspiring others.
Team Europe has a structure, and seems to build on their successes, and correct their shortcomings.   
Every two years we seem to fall further and further behind this model.

[John Kirk]

Brian S,

Don't draw too many grave conclusions from what you read.  As we see in these pages regularly, many of us look at the same data and come up with diametrically different impressions.  Tom Watson is a great man.  All men make mistakes.  Most of ours are in anonymity and we're mostly left a bit tattered but with some of our dignity intact.

Watson was a very poor captain this time.  Nonetheless, he is the same guy who resigned from KCCC where his father was a prominent member over it denial of membership to a local Jewish businessman because of the candidate's religion.  He remains the man who a good friend drew as the pro-am partner for his team, all business clients, in the Colonial National Invitational and shared five hours of warm fellowship with on the course and more in the men's grill afterwards.  He is the tough-skinned businessman who gave a fantastic keynote address at a golf development conference and then handled my partner's highly inappropriate probes regarding his competency (something to the effect of what was he thinking when he chose fescues and bents for Spanish Bay, which subsequently burned-out), noting with a smile that sometimes things don't work out as you planned.  He is the imperfect man who fought alcoholism with success and helped at least one fellow pro (David Feherty) during his own ordeal.

In hindsight he was probably a bad choice for captain.  He is old school, perhaps too highly accomplished to have sufficient empathy for lesser professionals.  Maybe the PGA should have known better, but, again, the decision makers there probably looked at it from most angles and didn't get it right.  Learn from the mistake and move on.   

Excellent post. Whatever happened during his captaincy this year, he is a man of high principles and one of the greatest competitors of the modern era.

No, it's not!  OK, it's a good post.

I'm much more sympathetic to Tom Watson's recent experience as Ryder Cup captain than most people here.  I do not wish to attempt a full explanation.

[Bill Seitz]

I love pure alternate shot because I understand the unselfishness of team competition and take pride in my spotless record including a victory against a much younger and more talented team with Tom Doak as my partner.

I believe George and I were sandbagged that day.  Also, in my own defense, George was my partner, so...  I'd also dispute the more talented part.  You and Tom aren't exactly chopped liver.  

I also love playing alternate shot in some form every now and again.   It makes for a very weird distribution of pressure.  You really want to hit a good shot for your teammate, but if your teammate puts you in a bad spot, it almost makes it easier, because the expectations are so low.  I really like that our round that day only took about 2.5 hours.