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Racing Post golf expert Jeremy Chapman takes an in-depth look at September's sporting highlight, the Ryder Cup.CLEAR favourites for the first time ever...superior on combined world rankings for the first time ever...landslide winners by nine clear points on US soil last time. Yes, Europe's golfers seem to have it all. Even home advantage at the K Club, just south of Dublin, where the Irish (starved until now of the greatest sporting show on earth outside the Olympics and the World Cup) are guaranteed to give the players of the 36th Ryder Cup the warmest of welcomes, whichever side they are on. 
So what's stopping you? Just two words, I suggest...Tiger Woods. And maybe a feeling deep down that the Americans have a far cannier captain in Tom Lehman than the last two, Curtis Strange and the woefully inept Hal Sutton, while Europe's leader, Ian Woosnam, maybe does not command quite the respect as Bernhard Langer or possess quite the passion of Sam Torrance. On Ryder record alone, Woods frightens nobody. By losing 11 out of 20 singles and pairs events, he has forfeited the fear factor in matchplay that he possesses in 72-hole tournaments. No, it is not that record that worries the Europeans but the record he has recently run up, winning five tournaments in a row including back-to-back Majors, not all of them with anything like his A game. Now that really is frightening. But nobody, not even a genius, can stay right at the top of his game for three months and Tiger's expressed opinion that the Ryder Cup is just "an exhibition" and next to his main job of accumulating major championships matters relatively little. As he says, whoever judged Jack Nicklaus by his (indifferent) Ryder Cup record? It was the 18 Majors he assembled and his wonderful sportsmanship, not the fact that he lost twice in a day to Brian Barnes and lost 1.5 points out of two to Tony Jacklin on another occasion, which reflected his place in golfing lore. Let's face it: anything can happen in 18 holes. Woods lost to Costantino Rocca at Valderrama in 1997, Phil Mickelson did likewise against Phil Price five years later. And Europe have confounded the world rankings time and time again by winning with teams so markedly inferior on paper that if it had been a fight, the referee would probably have stopped it in round one. Every two years we hear the same thing: the US may have the superior individuals but it is Europe who play and think as a team. And the Monty Factor can never be underestimated. He puffs out his chest with pride whenever he leads from the front and achieves things that are beyond him in strokeplay golf. When you see him putt like a duffer, as he sometimes has this year, remember that he has won 21.5 points out of a possible 32. He is Europe's talisman and if he starts winning points, the others will follow suit. All the bonding in the world, as Lehman's men did recently in Ireland, cannot make up for lack of matchplay savvy. And two of their side, Vaughn Taylor and Brett Wetterich, totally baffled their captain by admitting they did not even know the etiquette of matchplay until they qualified. In truth, the USA barely have a team thanks to their bizarre allocation of qualifying points. Wetterich and JJ Henry have got in on the basis of one win and a few good weeks and Wetterich, in particular, looks totally out of his depth on current form. Their squad consists of two great players, Woods and Mickelson, one very good one in Jim Furyk and one, Chris DiMarco, who is not hugely gifted but is one player who truly cares. He said he would rather play in the Ryder Cup than win the Open Championship and I believe him. 
David Toms is in the Furyk mould but has not had a Furyk season and the rest, with the possible exception of Cink, aren't worth a candle. The two Americans in the best current form, Woods and Furyk, are expected to play together but Furyk has won only one pairs event in ten, Woods only five out of 16. And in the unlikely event they win all six matches they are involved in, singles included, it still adds up to only six points and they need 14.5 to win that trophy back. Not that Europe have their best team out. They have had to discard talents that the US would have given their eye-teeth for - Thomas Bjorn, runner-up in last year's USPGA Championship, in particular, stands out and Europe would have been stronger if he and not the woefully out-of-form Paul McGinley, was in the team. But that was not an option. And if by chance Darren Clarke holes the winning putt, that's it as far as betting on BBC Sports Personality of the Year is concerned. Game over, yet he has been trading in the 40s on Betfair. OK, some of us would rather have had Bjorn in the side rather than McGinley but it is still one of the strongest teams we have fielded since the glory days of Major champions like Faldo, Langer, Lyle and Woosnam himself. But every Ryder Cup has its unlikely heroes and Price and McGinley have proved that in the recent past. And although some of our finest are not at the top of their games, Europe has nobody who needs hiding like Wetterich, a player who would not finish in the top 50 on the European money list. When betting in-play, remember that Europe's biggest strength is the fourballs - we hold an 18-point lead in that discipline over the last ten Ryder Cups - and the Americans hold the aces in singles, though by a diminishing margin after the last shellacking at Oakland Hills. Who will win? The only three certs are: that it will be closer than last time - Woosie thinks it will go "right to the wire" but home advantage will swing it for us - that there will be plenty of surprises; and that, as ever, it will be a great match. Europe, with world No. 8 Sergio Garcia marginally their top man just ahead of Luke Donald, cannot match the Americans at the top-end as the visitors field the current top three in the world rankings. However, the home side have the superior younger players and in the two debutant Swedes, Stenson and Karlsson, two of the longest hitters on either side. It's a conundrum that will fool many of the best minds in punting but you can bet we will be smashing into all the markets like loons. Can't wait - bring it on! |
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