To me the biggest upset of the day that nobody's really talking about was Lawrie thumping Snedeker 5&3. Love's captain's picks went a combined 5-8. If you take away Dustin Johnson, Stricker, Furyk and Snedeker went 2-8. Combine this with not overruling Phil's insistence on sticking with the pregame plan when they were redhot, and had only played 12 holes Saturday, and telling him he needed him and Keegan out there again you get a pretty poor coaching performance overall. Looks like just as in his playing career, Davis just doesn't possess the killer instinct. Leo Durocher may have had it right...
I completely agree with every point here. I, too, thought the Lawrie thumping of Snedeker was the pivot point on Sunday. And I completely agree that it was a coaching abortion to sit Mickelson and Bradley Saturday afternoon.
Can you imagine Phil Jackson benching MJ and Scottie in the Eastern Conference finals? Ditka benching Payton, Singletary and Hampton for the NFC Championship game? I sure as hell can't! You play your best players. Period.
Saturday, the way Mickelson and Bradley were rolling, they'd have beaten anybody in the world in 15 or 16 holes. It was asinine to bench them.
This was a classic case of overcoaching. If I was Love, I'd have told Mickelson and Bradley "You two are white-hot. Don't even go inside and don't even think about sitting down 'cuz you might get stiff. Keep walking around and go straight to the first tee - because I want you two back on the course ASAP, so you're going off first."
Lawrie/Snedeker pivotal -- yes. An upset -- not really.
Lawrie was sent out as the
anchor at Brookline in 1999, and already knew his match would be pivotal when he teed off, as the U.S. rally was on by then. And he thumped Maggert (undefeated at Brookline until he ran into Lawrie) 4 and 3 in a match that
no one talks about because it was lost in the shuffle/stampede of what went on that day. And to me, Snedeker might've been the single most unreliable guy in the U.S. singles line-up, because he's high-strung to begin with and had shown his overall game (his hot putter nothwithstanding) was pretty inconsistent (his tee shot on 18 that essentially cost the US side a point or half-point Friday in foursomes.)
Lots of Monday-AM quarterbacking, and I'll add a few cents:
-- I think it's fair to criticize the benching of Bradley and Mickelson. They hadn't played a full slate of holes, given how quickly their matches end (44 holes of a possible 54 through Saturday morning's session), and it was pretty clear they were intimidating Euro sides put up against them with their play. However,
not the worst decision made by Love (more on that later...)
-- While everyone's jumping on Love's (and Mickelson's) back, I think Olazabal opened himself up to some criticism by benching three players for all but one match before Sunday's singles (Kaymer, Hanson, and Lawrie) and we really don't know what went into that decision. Ollie had his assistants (Jimenez, Clarke, Bjorn) closely follow groups Fri. and Sat., and we simply don't know if one or more of those assistants urged him to bench those guys. In fact, Ollie suggested he'd be open to that, when he said he'd be leaning on them for evaluations of how players were doing. We just don't know about it, compared to the openly discussed decision to bench Bradley/Lefty. It worked out for Euro -- Ollie's three benched guys went 2-1. But had Kaymer not sunk that putt, I think you'd see lots of speculation in the Euro press about the benching decision.
-- Some of this is luck. When the pairings came out, I though that Euro got much the better half of the draw. Bradley got one of the two guys (McIlroy) that Love probably didn't want to see. Rose, playing well, got another hot player in Mickelson. Sergio got a chance at redeeming his defeat to Furyk at Brookline. Ollie's four most off-form/weakest guys (the benched three, plus Molinari) drew Snedeker, Tiger, Stricker and Z. Johnson -- only one of whom it could be said was having a decent RCup (Z Johnson) for the U.S. Kaymer and Stricker were probably the two most off-forms guys at the RC, which essentially made that match the crap-shoot it turned out to be.
-- To me, maybe the most odd result of the entire singles session (the one I thought surely would go the other way) was Kuchar-Westwood. Kuchar was terrific in fourballs, and only the stumbling Woods/Stricker pairing had allowed Westwood to rack up a point through Saturday for Euro -- he looked off all weekend. Until Sunday.
-- Still, the single worst decision by anyone this year was Love's decision (probably made days before Friday's session) to play Tiger in foursomes anchoring the Friday morning session. I'm not good enough to detect what specifically ails Tiger's game, but I've watched enough to know this -- he's spectacularly inconsistent. Not just round to round -- hole to hole, shot to shot. Brilliant one moment, awful the next. He hit some of the best shots of the week, and some of the worst. And he's been playing that way for awhile. Exactly the kind of guy you save for fourballs, and hope he can get through singles.
Tiger is now one Justin Leonard-45-foot bomb from never having played on a winning RCup team since he turned pro. And when he didn't play in the RCup in 2008, the U.S. won. One of the Euro players joked Sunday night that Euro qualifying should be changed to: 9 qualifiers, two captain's picks, and Poulter.
I think the U.S. needs a selection system the opposite of that.
