Phil Mickelson’s Ryder Cup blame game lets ‘useless’ Nick Faldo off the hook

Phil Mickelson, who said what almost everyone else in Ryder Cup circles wanted to say about captain Tom Watson’s flagrant mishandling of a U.S. team that weathered another demoralizing defeat Sunday, has been bashed far and wide for his opinions as well as the timing of his Watson slam.

Without naming names (we’re looking at you, Watson), Mickelson evoked the name of Paul Azinger, patron saint of the non-Euro RC squad, to torpedo the efforts of the commander of the 2014 USS Sinking Ship.

St. Paul “got everybody invested in the process” and “had a great game plan” for his troops, Mickelson said in a stunning and entertaining post-loss presser during which he strongly suggested that Watson did neither. Despite his weak protestation (“I’m sorry you’re taking it that way ... I don’t understand why you would take it that way”) that he was not savaging Watson’s leadership, the 44-year-old with a 16-19-6 Ryder Cup record was certainly doing just that.

For opining thusly, one guy stepping up to give Lefty a slap on the wrist was the clueless Nick Faldo, who ought to, as Geoff Shackleford suggested Sunday night, be popping the cork for Mickelson for taking the heat off himself rather than ripping the aging superstar a new one.

“For him to sit there and throw the captain under the bus, that was a tough one,” Faldo told BBC Radio Five on Monday, according to AFP. “That should have been a private conversation. There’s obviously a bit of aggro [aggravation] in the American team room.”

Faldo would likely be on the hot seat for his inelegant portrayal of Sergio Garcia as “useless,” were it not for Mickelson’s “mutinous” if not altogether straightforward critique of Capt. Tom’s spot-on performance as the crotchety, out-of-touch, autocratic and inept leader of the Americans. (Yeah, players gotta play, but Watson will hear it for years about sitting the red-hot duo of Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed on Friday afternoon and failing to communicate his intentions to the RC rookies.)

Combine the losing 2008 European RC captain’s original characterization of Garcia with his meaningless non-apologetic mea culpa and airing of Sergio’s private life, and Faldo should be on full damage-control alert. As of Sunday night, the six-time major winner-turned Golf Channel analyst had not even contacted the object of his derision to offer congratulations.

“I have not [heard from Faldo],” Garcia told reporters during a post-victory group love-in/press conference with his teammates. “I really wouldn’t expect it anyway, but I’ve had it from everyone on this table and a lot of other people and that’s really what means a lot to me.”

Faldo was at least able to poke fun at himself when he compared his own leadership to that of this year’s Euro captain, Paul McGinley, and came up wanting.