Announced Cardiff airport, as the American players flew in for the Ryder Cup this morning.
Captain Colin seems to bending over backwards to be the genial host and to give his game plan away. He's already announced that all twelve of his players will feature at some point on the first day. That's not necessarily a bad thing; certainly one of the mistakes of 1999 was not giving three of the players a match before the Sunday singles, a tactic that may arguably have helped Europe build up the 10-6 lead in foursomes and fourballs they held, but certainly contributed to none of those players (Coltart, Sandelin and Van De Velde) even reaching the 16th green in their singles games, when they did get the chance to play. If the Ryder Cup has all the pressure of a major (and many players say it's far worse) surely the last thing you want is rookies picking a club up for the first time, on Sunday, in a singles match without even a team-mate to help them along. It was tantamount to tossing 3 of that 4 point lead away, that year, before the singles had even begun.
Montgomerie has also, bizarrely, already admitted he's written a gracious losing acceptance speech. Not something I can imagine a Vince Lombardi, or an Alex Ferguson, doing.
It's certainly a different style of captaincy to ones we've seen before. Fascinating to see if it works.
Captain Colin seems to bending over backwards to be the genial host and to give his game plan away. He's already announced that all twelve of his players will feature at some point on the first day. That's not necessarily a bad thing; certainly one of the mistakes of 1999 was not giving three of the players a match before the Sunday singles, a tactic that may arguably have helped Europe build up the 10-6 lead in foursomes and fourballs they held, but certainly contributed to none of those players (Coltart, Sandelin and Van De Velde) even reaching the 16th green in their singles games, when they did get the chance to play. If the Ryder Cup has all the pressure of a major (and many players say it's far worse) surely the last thing you want is rookies picking a club up for the first time, on Sunday, in a singles match without even a team-mate to help them along. It was tantamount to tossing 3 of that 4 point lead away, that year, before the singles had even begun.
Montgomerie has also, bizarrely, already admitted he's written a gracious losing acceptance speech. Not something I can imagine a Vince Lombardi, or an Alex Ferguson, doing.
It's certainly a different style of captaincy to ones we've seen before. Fascinating to see if it works.
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