SB Nation’s 2016 Ryder Cup Preview

Editor's note: This post originally appeared at No Laying Up and has been updated and re-published here with additional Ryder Cup incomprehensibilities.

The Ryder Cup is (regrettably) only every other year, so considering the relatively small number of actual Ryder Cups there have been, you would think the memories would stick out a bit stronger than normal annual events. Every year when the Cup rolls around, I wear out the Wikipedia pages for the recent events, and still manage to find shocking and disturbing facts along the way. Admittedly, my knowledge of European golf in the late 1990s and early 2000s is limited. Forgive me if you actually remember this stuff. I did not:

Chris Riley and Jay Haas were Ryder Cup teammates

As much as I love to ridicule the 2006 Ryder Cup team, the 2004 group managed to lose by a record margin on their home soil. We haven't seen this much American bloodshed at the hands of the Europeans on this continent since the Battle of Camden. The shocking part of the discovery that Chris Riley and Jay Haas were Ryder Cup teammates, was the fact they actually went a combined 2-1-2. Haas was a 50-year-old captain's pick (!), and Riley finished 10th in the standings thanks to a Buick Invitational win and a T4 finish in the PGA Championship. The Europeans finished Saturday with 11 points. The U.S. team finished Sunday with 9.5 points.

Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

Vaughn Taylor, J.J. Henry, and Brett Wetterich were Ryder Cup teammates

OK, this one I knew. I've worn out this Wikipedia page whenever I start feeling bad about the fact that we've managed to lose three straight Ryder Cups after seemingly getting this thing figured out in 2008. The Euros demolished the U.S. team in 2006 (just like in '04) to the tune of 18.5-9.5. If I'm being honest, a team that was carrying these three in tow should be commended for almost putting up double-digit points.

While these three have become a punchline for the state of American golf a decade ago, I thought it might be especially entertaining to take a look at how these players got on this team, and what they accomplished after their Ryder Cup debuts (spoiler alert, none of them sniffed another Ryder Cup team).

Brett Wetterich: Won the Byron Nelson and that was enough to qualify him for a spot. He had a strong 2007 season, then made a total of 27 cuts for the remainder of his career, and less than a million dollars. He now makes infrequent starts on the Web.com Tour.

Vaughn Taylor: Qualified on points despite his best finish being a T3 at the Verizon Heritage. He went on to miss 69 cuts the following eight years out of 186 events, and finished outside of the top 100 in the FedExCup standings every year, except 2007 and 2010. He had his dead cat bounce this February by winning the AT&T Championship, only to disappear into the abyss again.

J.J. Henry: Won the 2006 Buick Championship to get on the team. He has won in Reno twice since — first in 2012 and then again last August in a rare JJ sighting. Aside from that, he's mostly known for his charity work, being Chris Berman's partner at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

David Cannon/Getty Images

There was so much suckitude on the '06 U.S. Ryder Cup team that they somehow managed to throw cold water on perhaps the hottest golfer in the history of the game. The mere presence of the three mentioned above, combined with Scott Verplank, Stewart Cink, Chad Campbell, and Chris DiMarco* gave Tiger his only loss of the fall, as he entered the event coming off an unprecedented (in the modern game) five-event winning streak (then he won the next event after the Cup).

*A bit unfair to throw DiMarco in there, because up until this point, he was a stud. But it was immediately after '06 that began his incredibly fast demise.

Combine the U.S. Point totals from 2004 and 2006 and they still would have lost to both the 2004 and 2006 Euro teams

President George W. Bush should have been less concerned with the war on terror and more concerned with the war on Taylor.

Pierre Fulke and Phillip Price have been on as many winning Ryder Cup teams as Tiger Woods

Pierre Fulke! Phillip Price! Heavyweights! They both somehow made the 2002 European Ryder Cup team that beat the U.S. 15.5-12.5 at The Belfry. Within two years, Fulke would fall outside the top 100 of the Order of Merit, and within five years he would retire from the game forever to focus on golf course design. By 2006, Price had fallen outside of the top 400 in the world, and now ranks outside the top 1000.

Ignacio Garrido was on the 1997 European team

Garrido has since played the weekend in three major championships. Three.

Tim Matthews/Getty Images

Phil Mickelson played on a Ryder Cup team with Curtis Strange, and one with Jordan Spieth

Spieth and Strange are 38 years apart, yet Phil played with Strange on the '95 team, and played with Spieth in '14. Phil went 3-0 as a 25-year-old rookie in the '95 Cup, and was one of only four U.S. players to win his singles match as the U.S. team blew a 9-7 lead on Sunday.

Oliver Wilson and Soren Hansen were on a Ryder Cup team more recently than Tiger has won a major

Seriously, these two were on the 2008 Euro team.

Wilson and Hansen share a laugh about the fact they played in the Ryder Cup. They've taken almost the exact same dive off the world rankings cliff:

Jack Nicklaus captained the 1983 Ryder Cup team, then won the Masters 2½ years later

This was a little different era in captaincy. Jack was younger than Mickelson's current age when he captained the team. I can’t picture Phil captaining the team until 2024 at Bethpage (although I bet Phil has already started crunching the numbers).

Paul Way played on the Euro team as a 20- and 22-year-old, and then never again

The original Anthony Kim.

Stephen Gallacher was on the 2014 European Ryder Cup team

Paul McGinley basically had to pick him because he was Scottish, and the Cup was played in Scotland. He sent him out in the Friday morning fourball session only to see his soul vanquished by the Patrick Reed/Jordan Spieth buzzsaw. He was benched until Sunday singles, where Phil took him down 3&1. He has one worldwide top 10 in the last two years, and he's now ranked 421st in the world.

Andrew Redington/Getty Images

Ryder Cup "hero" Justin Leonard had never won a match until the 2008 Ryder Cup

He made the team on points, and sported a 0-3-5 record going into the 2008 event. Five halves! Consider that the only match in the entire 2012 event that was halved was the very final match between Tiger Woods and Edoardo Molinari, it's pretty remarkable that he managed to rack up five of them in just eight matches. He's most famous for his putt that guaranteed at least a halve of his match with Jose Maria Olazabal in 1999, which sealed the victory for the Americans. But he conceded the final hole to Olazabal, and halved that match. He went 2-1-1 in '08 to finish his career with a bizarre 2-4-6 record, despite playing on the only two winning teams in the last two decades.