ON JANUARY 18, 2013, Tom Watson was formally introduced as the American Ryder Cup captain for the matches at Gleneagles, Scotland, in 2014. The announcement came at a lavish press conference held in the Empire State Building—a perfect spot for two reasons.
First, it helped fulfill the PGA’s continuing desire to both win the Ryder Cup and to sell the Ryder Cup. By making the announcement in the media hub of the U.S., the PGA guaranteed that Watson’s appointment would receive massive publicity, which—even with the matches overseas—would help with promoting all things Ryder Cup for almost two years.
Second, staging the press conference in the 102-story Empire State Building was symbolic of the uphill climb the Americans faced in trying to end Europe’s dominance, which had now stretched to seven wins in nine matches, dating to 1993 when Watson’s team had won at the Belfry.
The U.S. hadn’t won overseas since then, and Ted Bishop was hoping that having Watson—an adopted Scot—as his captain at Gleneagles might give the U.S. a small edge that could be the difference between a one-point win and the back-to-back one-point losses the Americans had suffered.
As much as he wanted the job, Watson was fully aware that captains received too much credit and too much blame, depending on the outcome of the matches.
Or, as Butch Harmon, who had taught numerous Ryder Cup players and captains through the years, put it: “If the good Lord jumped off the cross to become captain, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference if the players didn’t play well.”
Publicly, the naming of Watson was greeted with great enthusiasm. To most, the choice made absolute sense, even though at sixty-five, he would be the oldest captain in Ryder Cup history—eight years older than Sam Snead had been when he had been the captain at Birkdale in 1969, the famous Nicklaus-Jacklin “concession” match.
Even Tiger Woods, whose relationship with Watson had been—at best—frosty through the years, put out a statement saying that Watson was a great choice. Asked about his past comments criticizing Woods, specifically saying that his on-course behavior showed a “lack of respect” for the game, Watson shrugged it off.
“Water under the bridge,” he said. “Tiger and I will be just fine.”
As it turned out, he was right about that—Woods was the least of his problems.
One person not happy with the choice was Phil Mickelson. To him, Watson’s selection was another example of a PGA of America president who was out of touch with the players, picking someone he wanted rather than someone the players wanted.
“If he [Bishop] had asked the players likely to be on the team, I guarantee you very few of them would have been happy with the choice,” Mickelson said, long after the 2014 matches were over. “Players are different now than in 1993. Back then, Tom was leading guys he knew; his peers in many ways. The sport was different; players were different. Tom is very authoritarian in his approach to leadership. That doesn’t work with this generation of players.”
Clearly, it wasn’t likely to work with Mickelson, even though he and Jim Furyk—who were born six weeks apart—would be the oldest members of Watson’s team. Mickelson was (correctly) fairly certain that if Watson had been the captain at Medinah, he wouldn’t have gone along with Mickelson’s plea to “stick with the plan” and sit him and Keegan Bradley out on Saturday afternoon.
Watson believed he had plenty of time to get to know his players. When he played at the Masters and the British Open, he made a point of playing practice rounds with those who were either going to be on the team or might be on the team. He showed up at other events—notably the U.S. Open—to observe how his future players handled pressure.
But Mickelson was right about another thing: he was never going to have the kind of relationship he had with the players on the 1993 team. That year, Watson had been forty-four, and three of his players were over forty: Tom Kite, forty-three; Lanny Wadkins, forty-three; and Raymond Floyd, fifty-one—who had captained in 1989 and was the oldest player in Ryder Cup history.
The two youngest players had been Lee Janzen and Davis Love—both twenty-nine. That meant the largest age gap between Watson and any of his players had been fifteen years. In 2014, the smallest gap was twenty-one years—Mickelson and Furyk were forty-four. The largest was forty-four years—Jordan Spieth had been born two months prior to the ’93 Ryder Cup. As good as Spieth’s memory is, he didn’t remember those matches.
What’s more, as Mickelson pointed out, Watson was no longer one of the guys. In the two years leading up to the ’93 Ryder Cup, Watson played thirty-one PGA Tour events. That meant he was a regular in the locker room, a familiar face to everyone on the team. In 2015 and 2016 he played a total of four times—which was understandable given his age.
Beyond that, Mickelson was 100 percent correct about how players had changed. In ’93, Watson brought Stan Thirsk, a pro at Kansas City Country Club when Watson was a kid, to England as his one and only vice captain.
Very few players brought teachers or sports psychologists with them. They brought their caddies and their wives—period. By 2014, many players referred to themselves as “we” when talking about their game—not the royal “we,” but as a reference to their “team.” Those teams usually consisted of a swing coach; a personal trainer; a masseuse; at least one agent—often more; a sports psychologist; equipment reps; a caddie; and a wife or girlfriend. Parents were sometimes involved too.
Once, when a player went to the range on practice days, he was accompanied by his caddie. Now, often as not, he has an entourage with him.
Those on the U.S. team saw their job—whatever it was—to make sure the players were happy at all times. There weren’t a lot of people around giving a player orders. Love had been considered a “players’ ” captain because he saw to every player’s needs, whether it was Zach Johnson needing an hour by himself each day to go through his practice routine, Bubba Watson wanting multiflavored smoothies, or Mickelson, if he so desired, going off by himself to another golf course.
Because the entourages were smaller than usual during a Ryder Cup week, vice captains—four on each side now—were expected to make sure the players’ needs were attended to at all times. When Love had been a vice captain in 2010, Stewart Cink, one of the gentler souls on tour, had said to him, “I’m not sure I can get my head around the idea of sending you to get me a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.”
“It’s my job,” Love replied. “That and making sure you have all the towels you need.”
Paul Goydos, who was also a vice captain that year, had one job each morning that was an absolute: make sure the players were all wearing the right clothes for the day. He would sit at the end of the hallway in a chair and check them all as they headed for the door.
Watson wasn’t going to worry about smoothies or peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. He did have three vice captains, but the first two he picked were contemporaries: Floyd, exactly seven years to the day his senior; and two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North (his closest friend), who was six months younger than he was. A few months before the team headed overseas, Watson decided he needed a vice captain closer in age to his players, so he added Steve Stricker, who had played at Medinah at the age of forty-five.
“The fact is if the players had been asked how they felt about Tom being picked as captain, just about all of them would have been against it,” Mickelson said. “It wasn’t personal. Everyone respected Tom Watson. But none of us really knew Tom Watson.”
He smiled. “When I was a kid practicing on the putting green behind my house, I always competed with Hogan, Nicklaus, and Watson. My record against them was phenomenal.
“It was more about the thing I’d been talking about for almost twenty years: putting us in a position to succeed or fail. Paul had put us in a position to succeed. Davis certainly tried, but we just couldn’t finish the job on Sunday.
“I thought Tom was put in a position to fail when they picked him. Twenty years earlier, absolutely, no-brainer choosing him. I thought I had a chance to make that team [in ’93], but he didn’t pick me. I won [at the International] the week after the points race was over, and he only had two captain’s picks and he went with experience. I got it and, heck, I’ve been on enough teams, so it’s fine.
“This was a different time though. Different players, different mentality.”
Mickelson wasn’t shy about letting people know he didn’t think Watson was the right captain. In July, he played with Ted Bishop in the pro-am at the Scottish Open, and flat out told him that Watson’s captaincy was going to be a failure.
“He told me I was wrong, it was going to be great,” Mickelson said with a shrug. “I really wish I’d been wrong.”
The argument can be made that it didn’t help the U.S. team that their leader—“our papa bear,” as Zach Johnson calls Mickelson—went to Gleneagles already convinced the week was going to be a disaster. The notion that there was unrest in the American locker room was widespread enough that the Europeans were aware of it—even before the matches started on Friday.
“We heard rumblings,” McIlroy said. “And it was pretty apparent just being around them during the week that there were some issues going on in their team room. I guess we didn’t really know how serious they were until after it was over.”
The simmering Mickelson-Watson rift came to a head on Saturday morning. The U.S. had won the opening session of Friday four-balls 2½–1½. Their most impressive team that morning had been Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed—both Ryder Cup rookies. The idea for the pairing had come from Spieth.
“I was just looking at some statistics, and I saw that Patrick was the best guy on our team on par-5s, I was the best on par-4s, and we were both pretty good on par-3s,” he said. “I thought it made sense for us to go out together. I took the idea to Strick [Stricker], and he took it to Tom.”
Given that Mickelson’s major criticism of Watson was that the players had “no input,” that story is worth noting. Of course, Mickelson was talking more about lack of input before the week began more than what happened during the week.
Spieth and Reed went out on Friday morning and blasted Ian Poulter and Stephen Gallacher, 5 and 4. Reed was so tight on the 1st tee that he popped up a three-wood and found himself with a three-iron in his hands for his second shot.
“The rest of them were all hitting wedges,” Reed said, laughing at the memory. “It was embarrassing, but I sort of said, ‘Okay, watch this.’ I got the ball on the green and we all made par. That relaxed me. Walking off the green, I said, ‘So, what’d everybody make?’ It felt pretty good.”
Watson had decided on Thursday night to sit Spieth and Reed out on Friday afternoon. He didn’t think they would be as effective in foursomes as in four-ball, and he wanted to get all twelve of his players into the competition on the first day. Jim Furyk, Matt Kuchar, Dustin Johnson, and Hunter Mahan—all Ryder Cup veterans—had sat out the morning. They played in the afternoon, as did Mickelson and Bradley—who had extended their Ryder Cup record as a team to 4-0 in the morning—and Rickie Fowler and Jimmy Walker. Spieth and Reed, along with Bubba Watson and Webb Simpson, who had also won their match 5 and 4, sat out.
Mickelson was upset that Spieth and Reed sat—and told them both so. In fact, the entire team knew that Mickelson wasn’t happy with the afternoon pairings. Mickelson and Bradley finally lost a match—to Graeme McDowell and Victor Dubuisson—that afternoon. In fact, the afternoon was a disaster for the Americans. They scored a half point (Walker and Fowler) and trailed at the end of the day, 5–3.
On Saturday morning, Mickelson and Bradley sat out. As with Love at Medinah, Watson didn’t want Mickelson playing five matches. He sent Furyk and Mahan out for a second time because they’d played well in losing on Friday, and they won. He paired Kuchar with Bubba Watson and they played very well—seven under par for sixteen holes. The only problem was that Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose were eleven under—including nine straight birdies—and won the match.
Still, the U.S. was leading the session 2–1, with the Fowler-Walker/McIlroy-Poulter match still on the golf course, when Watson had to submit his pairings for the afternoon.
Late Saturday morning is probably the most difficult time of any Ryder Cup for a captain. On Friday, most often, he knows who is going out in the afternoon, and he isn’t likely to make any radical changes based on the morning play—if any changes at all.
Saturday is different. Almost always, the captain has seen all twelve of his players at least once, probably twice, and sometimes on three occasions. He knows who is hot and who is not, and he has to decide who is tired, who is fresh, and who needs rest. He has his vice captains in his ear telling him what they think.
And he has to submit his pairings before Saturday morning play is over. The Fowler-Walker/McIlroy-Poulter match was on the 15th hole, all square, when Watson was told he had to submit his lineup.
He was torn. Fowler and Walker were playing very well and had played good golf in tight matches for three straight sessions. They had been the only American team that hadn’t lost in foursomes the previous day. Mickelson and Bradley were warming up on the range, ready to go, dying to make amends for their Friday afternoon showing.
Watson knew that. He also knew that Fowler and Walker, when on, were his best foursomes team. He decided to play what he thought was the hot hand, scratching Mickelson and Bradley.
Then he had to go give them the news. Mickelson was both disappointed and unhappy. “We’re rested and ready to go,” he told Watson.
“It’s done, Phil,” Watson said. Then he added, “You guys just aren’t playing well enough for me to put you out there.”
If there was any chance at all for the two men to eventually find common ground, it vanished right there. As it turned out, Watson had made a mistake. After playing three straight matches that went to the 18th hole—all halved—Walker and Fowler were gassed, especially Walker.
“I knew I’d gotten it wrong on the 3rd hole,” Watson said later. “I could see Jimmy didn’t have his legs. If I’d been able to wait until their morning match was over, I might have made a different decision. But I didn’t have that luxury. Neither did Paul [McGinley] though. I blew it.”
Watson is always blunt—whether criticizing someone else or criticizing himself. That’s his style. Some people thrive playing for a leader like that—others don’t.
“I loved playing for him,” Reed said. “I like someone who just puts it out there and tells you what’s what. I don’t need to be coddled. Hey, if you’re good you’re good, and if you’re not, you’re not no matter what the captain does or says. I don’t need to be told I’m good when I know I’m not.”
Reed was the one player on the American team who kept in touch regularly with Watson after Gleneagles. “I talk or text with Cap all the time,” he said a few weeks before the Hazeltine matches. “I learned a lot from him over there. I’m still learning from him. I love the guy.”
His teammates were not as enthusiastic. They tended to side with Mickelson—“papa bear.”
Saturday afternoon at Gleneagles was just as bad for the Americans as Friday afternoon had been. The score was the same: 3½–½, giving Europe a 10–6 lead going into Sunday. Only Spieth and Reed scored, and Reed was inconsolable after Rose and Martin Kaymer had birdied the 18th hole to steal an extra half point.
“I kept telling him it was okay, that they’d given us everything they had,” Watson said. “That’s all I could ask. He couldn’t stop crying. He was devastated.”
Saturday night has now become the traditional night for rah-rah speeches in the team rooms. On the European side, McGinley didn’t want to go too far. He had decided before the week began that he didn’t want anyone—including the captain—to speak for more than fifteen minutes, and he didn’t want the sessions to go on too long.
“You get to a point where the players aren’t listening anymore,” he said. “Either they’ve heard it all before or they’ve just been sitting there too long. I wanted everything quick and hard-hitting.”
Poulter, the perennial heart and soul of the team, spoke first. Then came Lee Westwood—which was something of a surprise to the other players. Westwood was Darren Clarke’s best friend. He had been the one Cup veteran who had publicly supported Clarke for the captaincy. And yet McGinley had selected Westwood with his last captain’s pick over Luke Donald—a good friend, one of his most vocal supporters, and someone with an excellent Ryder Cup record (11-4-1).
“I had to make a cold-blooded decision,” McGinley said. “It couldn’t be personal or based on Luke having supported me. Lee had played better during the summer, and in fact Luke hadn’t played well at all. I had to do what was best for the team.”
McGinley asked Westwood to speak because he was the most experienced Ryder Cup player in the room and because he knew he would be succinct and to the point. Then he got up and made his final speech of the week, reminding the players that Europe had been in the exact same position as the Americans (down 10–6 on the road) two years earlier, and they should be prepared for a lot of intensity early from a team that didn’t want to go home embarrassed. He also reminded them to stay focused on their own matches.
“I never believed that you can take twelve individuals, put them in a room, and say, ‘Presto, you’re a team for one week,’ ” McGinley said. “I focused on trying to get them to play for their individual pride. Martin Kaymer, you’re representing the town you grew up in; the people you know back home; your country; and then Europe. Play for all the people in the pub in Düsseldorf who want you to make them proud. It was that way with everybody.”
In the American team room, the tension was almost palpable. As had become tradition, the players presented a gift to the captain. It was a mock Ryder Cup, signed by all the players and presented by Jim Furyk. Some in the room say that Watson was clearly moved by the gift. Others, not so much. There isn’t any dispute though about what Watson said:
“Thank you for this. It’s really thoughtful. But it’s going to feel a little bit hollow if I can’t hold the real thing tomorrow.”
To some, Watson was being ungrateful. To others, Watson was making a point: this is really nice, but we’ve got serious work to do.
Then Watson talked to his team. Again, there is little doubt about what he said. The confusion came in the message his players thought he was sending.
“Look, fellas, you suck at foursomes,” Watson said. “But you’ve been really good playing your own ball [the U.S. had won the four-balls 5–3 and lost the foursomes 7–1]. Tomorrow, you’re all playing your own ball. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t win this thing playing our own golf balls.”
Then he began going through the singles matchups. In each case, he talked up the American player and talked down the European.
“Rickie [Fowler], you’ve played great all week. Are you telling me you can’t handle McIlroy? Of course you can.”
And: “Phil, you’ve got Stephen Gallacher. There’s absolutely no way you can lose to Stephen Gallacher.”
And more along those same lines: Americans good, Europeans not good.
“It was a pep talk, period,” Watson said. “I was trying to remind them they were still plenty good enough to win—which I believed they were. I told them we really needed to buckle down on holes 2 through 5 because we’d struggled there. I told them we needed to get a lot of red [U.S.] on the board early because that would make them just a little bit tight. Funny thing is, we did just that.”
Some of his players didn’t see the talk the way Watson did.
“I think we all knew where he was coming from,” Furyk said. “But it didn’t come off that way. I think some guys felt like he was talking down to them.”
Spieth remembers thinking: “He can’t be talking to Patrick and me about foursomes. We only played once and we halved, almost won. So why is he bringing it up?”
The answer, of course, is that he was generalizing about losing the foursomes 7–1 and trying to say, “Hey, the foursomes are behind us.”
When Watson finished, Mickelson walked to the front of the room and sat on a chair. He spoke at length, talking emotionally about how much the relationships he’d forged playing in ten Ryder Cups had meant to him. He talked about each of his teammates individually, their strengths, and what he liked about each of them.
As one of the nonplayers in the room put it later: “Tom might not have lost the room that night, but Phil won it.”
The sad thing, from the U.S. point of view, was that the room was so polarized. It isn’t supposed to be that way on Saturday night at the Ryder Cup.
“If you need a dramatic pep talk on Saturday at the Ryder Cup, that’s probably a sign that something’s wrong,” Spieth said. “Just being at the Ryder Cup should be all the pep talk you need. And yet I felt everyone was searching for something that night.”
The U.S. did put red on the board early the next day. Spieth, leading off, was 2 up on McDowell at the turn—but lost 2 and 1.
“I really felt as if I let everyone down by losing that match,” he said later. “If I had won, it might have set a different tone for the day.”
Reed, following Spieth, did win his match—shooting seven under par to beat Henrik Stenson on 18. Reed’s legend as a Ryder Cupper began to take clear shape that afternoon when he shushed the European crowd, a finger to his lips after he’d made a birdie putt on the 6th hole. Up ahead, playing the 7th, Spieth and his caddy, Michael Greller, heard all the boos coming from the 6th hole and looked at each other.
“Patrick did something,” Greller said.
“No doubt,” Spieth said.
The rally fizzled quickly. In the third match, McIlroy played the first six holes in six under par (four birdies and an eagle) and blew Fowler away.
“I played so well it was stupid,” McIlroy said. “I really didn’t give Rickie a chance—which was what I was hoping to do, knowing how hot he can get.”
Mickelson did handle Stephen Gallacher, but Sergio García beat Furyk one up (again), and Kaymer handled Bubba Watson. It was left to Jamie Donaldson to score the clinching point with a 5-and-3 win over Bradley.
The next morning, Donaldson was asked by an earnest TV interviewer if it had hit him yet what he had accomplished.
“I don’t know,” Donaldson memorably answered. “I’m still drunk.”
It was the Americans who needed a drink—several—when the matches were over. The final score was 16½–11½, certainly not what Watson, Ted Bishop, or Mickelson had hoped for when the week began.
The Americans had to watch the Europeans celebrate—again—and then had to go through the closing ceremony—again.
“Those are the worst two hours of the whole experience,” Matt Kuchar said. “There’s no way to get it over with quickly. You have to wait for the ceremony, go through the ceremony, and then go talk to the media. It’s fun when you win; torture when you lose.”
Just before the Americans walked into the interview room—the Sunday interviews are done en masse—Mickelson gathered a few of the players.
“Let’s not give them [the media] anything,” he said. “This isn’t the time or place. Just say they won fair and square.”
Mickelson then made a point of sitting off to the side when the Americans took their places on the podium. He would have been very happy if no one had directed a question at him.
Of course that wasn’t going to happen.
After the ritual comments from Watson about how well Europe had played and how proud and honored he was to have captained his team, someone asked the inevitable question about why Europe had now won eight of the last ten matches.
“Well, the obvious answer is that our team has to play better,” Watson said. “That’s the obvious answer. I think they recognize that fact; that somehow collectively twelve players have to play better.”
That answer was obvious. Europe had made 135 birdies as a team that weekend. The U.S. had made ninety. There was no doubt the team that had played better golf had won.
But that simple, seemingly harmless answer drove Mickelson over the edge. In his mind, Watson was somehow implying that his players hadn’t cared enough, that they hadn’t given everything they had to try to win.
Two questions later, Hank Gola, the veteran golf writer for the New York Daily News, asked a question that could have been answered by three players—Mickelson, Furyk, and Mahan—or by Steve Stricker, one of Watson’s vice captains.
“Anyone who was on the team at Valhalla, can you put your finger on what worked in 2008 and what hasn’t worked since?”
Mickelson jumped on the question.
“There were two things I think Paul Azinger did that allowed us to play our best, and one was that he got everybody invested in the process. He got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their pod, who they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod. In my case we had Ray Floyd and we hung out together and we were all invested in each other’s play. We were invested in picking Hunter [Mahan] that week. Anthony Kim and Justin [Leonard] and myself were in a pod that week, and we were involved in having Hunter be our guy to fill our pod. So we were invested in the process.
“And the other thing Paul did really well was he had a great game plan for us, you know, how we were going to go about doing this, how we were going to go about playing together—golf ball, format, what we were going to do if so-and-so is playing well, if so-and-so is not playing well. We had a real game plan. Those two things helped us bring out our best golf. And I think that, you know, we all do the best that we can and we’re trying our hardest and I’m just looking back at what gave us the most success. Because we use that same process in the Presidents Cup and we do really well. Unfortunately, we have strayed from a winning formula in 2008 for the last three Ryder Cups and we need to consider maybe getting back to that formula that helped us play our best.”
Those 283 words—which came in a torrent—have been analyzed, sliced, diced, and broken down hundreds of times since Mickelson uttered them.
A simple synopsis was this: Azinger listened to me; Watson did not. Watson benched me for an entire day on Saturday. How dare Watson imply that we gave anything but our very best.
Watson stared ahead as Mickelson spoke, his face impassive. Mahan, sitting next to Mickelson, looked as if he was hoping the floor would open up and allow him to disappear.
Later, Watson would admit Mickelson’s words stung and surprised him.
“Some of it was just the timing,” he said. “I didn’t think that was the time or place for comments like that. Later, in private, sure. I would never say that I didn’t make mistakes that week, but I was simply doing what I thought at that moment gave our team the best chance of winning.
“You have to be prepared to make changes on the fly as the matches are going on. Did I change some things up from the original plan? Yes. Because I was trying to do everything I could to give us a chance to win.”
What shocked Watson the most was the notion that Mickelson thought he had implied that his players didn’t care enough. “They tried their guts out—all of them,” he said. “I knew that. Nothing different ever occurred to me.”
As soon as Mickelson finished his diatribe, a British reporter followed up. “That felt like a pretty brutal destruction of the leadership that’s been on this week,” he said.
Mickelson backpedaled—briefly.
“Oh, I’m sorry you’re taking it that way. I’m just talking about what Paul Azinger did to help us play our best. It’s certainly—I don’t understand why you would take it that way. You asked me what I thought we should do going forward to bring our best golf out, and I go back to when we played our best golf and try to replicate that formula.”
“That didn’t happen this week?” came the quick follow-up question.
Mickelson paused for a moment. “Uh…no. Nobody here was in any decision. So, no.”
Now Mickelson had officially taken down his captain in public. Naturally, Watson was asked for a response.
“I had a different philosophy as far as being captain of this team,” he said—not backing down even a little. “It takes twelve players to win. It’s not pods. It’s twelve players. And I felt—I based my decisions on—yes, I did talk to the players, but my vice captains were very instrumental in making decisions who to pair. I had a different philosophy than Paul. I decided not to go that way. But I did have most of them play practice rounds together who played most of the time in the matches. I think that was the proper thing to do. Yes, I did mix and match a little bit from there, but again you have to go with the evolution of the playing of the match and see who is playing the best with whom, and that’s what I did.”
Translation: I’m not Paul Azinger. I had my own philosophy, and the reason we lost had nothing to do with pods.
The tension in the room was palpable. When someone asked Jim Furyk how he felt about the back-and-forth between Mickelson and Watson, Furyk shook his head and said, “Oh yeah, thanks for asking me that.”
In other words: why are you putting me in the middle of this catfight?
The press conference ended a few minutes later after several benign questions about the play of the American rookies. As it turned out, the infighting on the U.S. side was only beginning.