Ryder Cup 2020 [Official Thread!]

Not calling you brain washed and unable to consider change, but that is a brain washed way of looking at it.

As I say, no other reputable sport would tolerate such a skewing to the home side. Only in the Ryder Cup, shameless loading of the dice further in favour of the home side is condoned.

Because according to you this leads to a better challenge when there is a rare away victory.

Yeah right!?! how's about improve every Ryder Cup as a contest & spectacle by taking away the extra artificial home advantages (course set up & extra practice & scoping of the course) - that's not a loser's mentality at all (?), it's a spectators mentality who wants to watch better contests!! Simples.

Poor Rory

He had been badly out of form, but was one of the few Europeans playing well coming into the cup. He had a top 5 in the first playoff event and a top 10 in the 2nd, missing the Tour Championship by a putt, he was the 5th placed European in the Fed Ex Cup and most importantly he was making birdies, lots of them.

Wouldn't have made a difference either way in the grand scheme of things, but there was no benefit to Paddy's insistence all along that Poults and Sergio were certainties for the team. Still can't work out how he thought that would help anyone.

Noren also a great wind player, would have fancied the job Fri/sat afternoon.

Hopefully himself and molinari can get their form of old back for the next one, they'll be badly needed.

Only young players you'd really be excited about in Europe are hojgaard's, but Italy might come too soon for them.

The Americans did seem better prepared this time. Another thing - neither Tiger nor Phil ever looked completely comfortable playing in the Ryder Cup.

No they didn’t. Woods’ record is shocking but I heard an interesting point made last week by an American guy (could have been Rich Beem I can’t remember) and he said Woods was probably too big for the team. It would have been very difficult for any player to play with Woods such was the aura that Woods had. I don’t know if I agree with that statement because even Woods’ singles record was poor.

On a side note, I’m not sure if anyone heard that clown Gary Murphy on 2fm this evening. Talking about what European players would get on the US team. He named 5 players - including Lowry. I nearly put my car into the ditch laughing. I don’t know what planet Gary Murphy is on but McIlroy is the only player that would get anywhere near that US team and considering the players that didn’t make that US team I’m not so sure McIlroy would get on it. I never liked Murphy, I think he’s a bitter auld fella that is pissed off he had a crap career and before he went off air he had a swipe at Koepka about the number of majors he has. I’m no Koepka fan but hard to argue with what he has achieved.

McIlroy did well enough on the final day ( when there was nothing at stake ) after his two days rest beforehand

I think anyone who knows anything about golf and watched all of the Ryder Cup will know there is very little he could've done differently to change the outcome. In the singles which is where the captains have the least influence on the outcome USA won 7 - 4 which meant Europe would've needed to be coming into Sunday with a considerable lead to retain the cup. The losing margin might have been smaller but no amount of different captains picks or pairings were going to beat the USA this time, basically the US players played accurately to their world rankings and PGA tour form which they don't usually at the Ryder Cup

I don't often post in the golf forum, I do play golf, but don't watch a lot, I'm one of those people that just come in for the Ryder Cup and possibly a Major. I don't have a sports subscription anymore to watch it, but every 2 years I upgrade Sky for the month of September. So - I used to watch it with my parents when it was on terrestrial TV, then when I left home we'd watch separately but be on the phone on the Sunday, when it went to Sky somehow they'd end up visiting my house for the weekend - complete coincidence obviously. It's been a weekend writ large in my memory, lots of emotional memories around it, and now that both of my parents are gone, it means a connection to them and even more emotion. I'm not alone in this, I have friends around the world who don't play or watch golf, but love the Ryder Cup, and now that we have social media, we can watch it together but apart.

This year I seemed to be the only one of my friends with any interest in it, so I came in here because I was boring everyone on Facebook.

I think it has changed, I get the impression that it used to be a week for the players to have some fun and get away from the pressure of the Tour. It's not that anymore, it seems to have the same, if not more pressure now. I'm probably just old and crotchety, it's so commercialised, unless I win the lotto I doubt that I'll ever be able to afford a ticket to actually go. Maybe it's actually always been like that, but I was viewing it through European eyes, so the whole Darren Clarke year and the Seve thing meant something to us.

I really hope that it somehow retains it's specialness and doesn't just become another 'major'.

I promise I won't bore you all for another two years now

Professional golf is one of the most singular sports in the world. Even more so in the last 5-10 years. It is all about data driven feedback and metrics

When ever you see a pro golfer win a tournament, you rarely see them celebrate after winning , because they are so zoned in like a com#puter program on the singular process and technique

Ryder cup brings out the human emotion, when you are not playing for yourself. It was lovely to see Rory Mcilroy crying after his singles match

An American victory wasn’t inevitable - nothing in sport is - but was highly likely. If we ran the Ryder Cup repeatedly in a best of seven series, we’d be doing well to lose 4-1, and 4-2 would be an excellent result. The captains can only do so much. Home advantage, the US fans, a significant disparity in player quality and the cohesiveness of the US team left few vulnerabilities. Despite all that, next time is not a foregone conclusion by any means.

Europe need to sit down and hammer out a masterplan, right now not 18 months down the road.

You argued otherwise in your first post on the matter.

”He performed well when the pressure was off and there was nothing to play for”.

As far as I can see Keano was only calling a spade a spade. You can’t wait to have a dig about McIlroy when the chance arises and it’s fairly obvious you dislike him.