You can’t play defense. You can’t worry about your opponent.
These are the final words of every self-proclaimed golf dad turned psychologist with a young player under his tutelage, and it gets at the ethos of the sport. Golf is a "gentleman’s sport." Proper etiquette is pounded into the skulls of young players from junior camps on. Play against the course, not your opponent. Call penalties on yourself. No shadows over the ball. Be gracious to your playing partners. Golf is a game constructed for the better part of its history upon artificial ivory columns. This is not the sport for the proletariat, and you best act like it, they’ll tell you.
Rarely does Golf Dad walk up to his son and say, "Hey, see that guy over there? Go kick his ass."
Much of that is built upon the above: golf’s very stupid unwritten rule book that would make the stodgiest old baseball columnist shudder. But a good part of that arises out of self-preservation. A 72-hole individual stroke-play event is among sport’s biggest mental challenges. A given round is 1 percent actually hitting golf shots, and 99 percent walking in a doggone field figuring out how to do the former.
Other sports are reactionary and require an engagement of the fight-or-flight response just to compete, but a human body under stress is not built to swing a golf club. Being overly self-aware of all 100-some competitors one needs to beat in a given week is overwhelming and oft leads to self-implosion. Winning golf tournaments requires a macro view of what’s in front of you, not a micro one.
Unless you’re in a match play format.
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Match play is golf’s id — an opportunity for naturally hyper-competitive individuals to embrace just going to beat that dude. It’s an altered focus, and it’s a change that’s unwelcome for some. Beating a single other person over individually separated 18 hole micro-matches takes the mental uncertainty that some struggle with out of the sport. There’s no scoreboard guessing. There’s no worrying about what’s going on in the groups behind you, no worrying about a number that you might need to post to win. Did the guy you’re playing against blow it into the trees? Cool. Stripe it.
Just go beat that dude.
Match play formats tend to favor — or at least level the playing field for — the slightly unhinged. Players that are ultra-talented, but often face mental obstacles on the course. There’s a cross section of those individuals that are the obsessive, quirky, beat-you-at-all-costs types. The type of player prone to explosion and collapse under pressure because they just want to win so dang much. OK, now drop those players in a situation where they’re playing for national or continental pride. With teammates. And crowds that roar with every made putt or jeer your every step.
The Ryder Cup is golf for the unhinged. The Ryder Cup is golf for shitheels. The Ryder Cup is golf’s best event.
What else could explain golf’s biggest snakebitten star of the last 20 years, Sergio Garcia, being one of the best players in modern Ryder Cup history? What else explains the wild success of Patrick Reed in front of a hostile crowd in 2014 — a player so disliked among his peers that his Augusta State teammates cheered against him during the NCAA title match? The list goes on and on. Ian Poulter and Colin Montgomerie have more jarring quotes about Tiger Woods combined than they do major championships, and both are two of Europe’s greatest Cup stars. Poulter, Monty, and Sergio have a combined 51-21-15 record in the event. They have combined for a grand total of zero major championship wins.
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This pathology isn’t the only route to match play success or to Ryder Cup wins. Plenty of major champions have had wild success in the event — those Nicklaus, Palmer, Trevino, Snead, and Watson guys did quite alright. But none of those men have played in a Ryder Cup in decades.
America’s two biggest modern golf stars, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, have career losing records. Woods has as many major championship wins as he does individual Ryder Cup match wins. Despite being a consistent Tour performer and major champion for more than a decade, Jim Furyk has a Ryder Cup winning percentage that approaches the Mendoza Line.
It may be the wiring of the brain that makes for stroke play shortcomings and conflict with Tour peers. It may be the lack of a major title that drives the emotion and passion to care more deeply about the event than others. But whatever the reason, the Ryder Cup is for shitheels.
And come Sunday at Hazeltine, don’t be surprised if it’s Sergio or Reed leading the Europeans or Americans to Ryder Cup victory.