The First Major: The Inside Story of the 2016 Ryder Cup - Softcover

JOHN FEINSTEIN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the classics sports books A Season on the Brink and A Good Walk Spoiled, along with many other bestsellers including The Legends Club and Where Nobody Knows Your Name. He currently writes for The Washington Post and Golf Digest and is a regular contributor to the Golf Channel, Comcast Sports Regional Networks, and he hosts a college basketball show and a golf show on SiriusXM Radio.

One

Remarkably, the ending was almost quiet. After arguably the three most raucous days in golf history, the final meaningful stroke was a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18th green at Hazeltine National Golf Club that Ryan Moore cozied to within a foot of the cup.

From there he had two putts to clinch the Ryder Cup for the United States. Lee Westwood wasn’t going to make him bother with a tap-in. He conceded the putt—and their match—and, for the first time in eight years, the U.S. had won the Ryder Cup.

It was 4:11 p.m. Central time on a bright, breezy, early fall afternoon in the southwestern corner of Minnesota, and an American quest—one that had, at times, felt like Don Quixote tilting at the windmill—was finally over.

Moore was thirty-six, arguably the quietest member of the American team, an eleven-year PGA Tour veteran who, a week earlier, had been the last player selected by U.S. captain Davis Love III. Given that he had been 2 down with three holes to play and had rallied to win his match and clinch the Cup, he might have been expected to leap into someone’s arms.

Instead, he took his cap off and shook hands with Westwood. The crowd applauded and some broke into what felt like the millionth “USA!” chant of the weekend. Love, who had been given a second chance to captain a Ryder Cup team, gave Moore a heartfelt hug. Others lined up to do the same.

There were hugs all around for the American players, caddies, and wives. But there was no singing—as there always is when Europe wins the Cup—and no splashing of champagne. That would come later. Although Moore’s win had given the Americans the point that clinched the Cup, there were still three uncompleted matches on the golf course, and, since Ryder Cup tradition holds that all matches are played to completion, the six players involved kept on playing.

Watching the quiet American celebration, Rory McIlroy was a little bit surprised.

“It was almost weird,” McIlroy said later. “They waited so long, worked so hard, and played so well. I expected more.” He paused. “Maybe they were just relieved.”
Love noticed it too. “Honestly, for a second I thought, ‘Hang on, am I wrong, did we not just win? Is it possible that it’s not over? But then I looked around, and everyone—I mean everyone—had tears in their eyes. Some guys were just sobbing. Everyone had worked so hard for almost two years to get to that moment that the reaction was actually beyond joy or elation—it was more than that. It was like seeing your child graduate from college when you just well up with so much pride and relief and memories that you don’t cheer, you break down and cry.”

Relief. Joy. Catharsis. Every emotion was understandable. No American Ryder Cup team had ever been under the kind of pressure that Love’s team faced at Hazeltine. It wasn’t just three straight losses; six out of seven or eight out of ten—dating to 1995. It wasn’t just playing on home ground, after an extraordinary meltdown the last time the matches had been played in the U.S., or the fact that Europe was playing six Ryder Cup rookies—on the road.

There was more—much more. There was the infamous “task force,” which the PGA of America had formed in the wake of an embarrassing and acrimonious—among the Americans—loss in Scotland in 2014. There was Phil Mickelson’s feud with Tom Watson, the American captain in Scotland. There was Love’s labeling of his team as “maybe the best team ever assembled,” the week before everyone made the trip north to Minnesota.

And finally, there was Mickelson’s baffling decision to publicly take down 2004 U.S. captain Hal Sutton two days before the 2016 matches began. 

“It’s almost as if they’re trying to figure out a way to help Europe win,” said Chubby Chandler, agent and best friend of European captain Darren Clarke. “I have no idea what they’re thinking over there.”

Love had brought up New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, whom he had spent a little time with during one of the thousands (or so it seemed) of public appearances he had made as U.S. captain. Normally one of the most open and honest people in golf, Love had actually been a little bit cagey when answering questions leading up to Hazeltine.

“I’m channeling Coach Belichick,” he had said, smiling, on several occasions.

In truth, he was channeling Belichick—and many other successful coaches—but not by being circumspect with the media. It was all about creating an us-against-them mentality in his team room. There were twelve players, one captain, five vice captains, and—to a lesser extent— wives and partners, caddies and past Ryder Cup captains, who had been invited for the week. That was us. Everyone else was them. Even the fans, because Love knew they would turn on his players in a heartbeat if they didn’t play well—especially after all the prematch rhetoric and the past failures.

There was no better example of that us-against-them mentality than Love’s reaction to an on-air argument between Golf Channel analysts Brandel Chamblee and David Duval, on Tuesday night before Friday’s start to the Ryder Cup.

Duval had played on two Ryder Cup teams—the one that came from 10–6 down at Brookline in 1999 to win and the one that lost at the Belfry in 2002. He was a former number one player in the world and a major champion—having won the Open Championship at Royal Lytham & St. Annes in 2001. In short, he’d been a star.

Chamblee was a solid tour player, who won once in his PGA Tour career—at the 1998 Greater Vancouver Open. He got his degree from Texas in speech communications and has used his ability to communicate, along with a remarkable work ethic, to become the star on the Golf Channel in the last dozen years.

Because he’s never afraid to express an opinion, Chamblee isn’t terribly popular among the current players, most of whom believe that former players should never be critical of current players. Like Chamblee, Duval has his college degree—most tour players don’t graduate from  college—and is one of the few ex-players who can stand toe to toe with Chamblee intellectually.

The questions asked on-air on the first full day of practice rounds leading up to Friday morning’s start of the matches were: Who’s to blame for the U.S.’s past failures in the Ryder Cup? And was it lack of leadership?

Chamblee, as usual, was direct and prepared. He blamed the failures of the American team on the two men who had been the leaders of those losing teams—Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.

“A team takes on the personality of its leadership,” Chamblee said. “If there’s apathetic leadership, there will be apathetic play.”

Duval adamantly disagreed. “You can’t assign losses to certain players,” he said. “It’s not about leadership, it’s about execution.”

The two argued vehemently for almost ten minutes—with Frank Nobilo stuck in the middle, literally and figuratively. When Nobilo finally did get a chance to speak, he sided with Duval. At one point, Duval said to Chamblee, “I realize you’re never wrong, I understand that.”

The anger was genuine—not staged for TV. By the time Golf Channel’s re-air of the evening show came on, word had spread—largely on the Internet and social media—about the Duval-Chamblee dustup. Several of the American players were watching the show in the team room on the lobby level of the Sheraton Bloomington Hotel—where both teams were staying. The hotel had been a Sofitel until Sheraton had bought it in 2013 and put $18 million in renovations into the property, in part because they were hoping to host the Ryder Cup teams. There were two large-screen TVs in the team room, and most of the U.S. team gathered around them, squeezing onto comfortable couches directly in front of the televisions to watch the entire nine-minute-and-fifty-foursecond segment.

Love was sitting on the other side of the room, grabbing a late dinner, when he saw his players suddenly crowding around the TV.

“What’s going on over there?” he asked.

“Something you have to see,” several players responded.

Love could see that the Golf Channel was on and that the usual evening foursome of Rich Lerner, Chamblee, Nobilo, and Duval was on the screen. “I slammed my hand on the table and I said, ‘Hey, fellas, what did we say about tuning out the noise this week?’ ” Love remembered. “They all just looked at me and said, ‘Okay, okay, but you gotta see this.’ ”

So Love put his dinner aside and walked over to where the sound was turned up and he could hear the argument unfold. Brandt Snedeker, who had heard the debate the first time it aired, had attached a microphone to one of the TVs to make sure the sound could be heard in the entire room.

Jordan Spieth had also seen it and, sitting on the arm of a couch where Mickelson sat, was concerned.

“We’d done everything right until then,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘Oh boy, this is going to upset Phil and set us back.’ I was watching him closely. By the time it was over, he had this big grin on his face and I knew it was okay.”

Love’s players were practically cheering Duval on by the time the segment finished.

Love suddenly had an idea. He turned to Mac Barnhardt, who has been his agent forever, and had also represented Duval in his TV negotiations.

“You have any idea where Duval’s staying?” he asked.

“Sure,” Barnhardt said. “Right here.”

Love was a bit baffled. The PGA of America controlled all 244 rooms in the hotel for the week, and no one from the media was supposed to be staying there. Duval was a past major champion and a two-time Ryder Cupper, but he was in town as a member of the media.

“I got him in,” Barnhardt admitted. “Used your name. He just wanted to see the guys as the week went on.”

Love wasn’t the least bit upset. He looked up Duval’s number in his phone and texted him.

“Where are you right now?” he wrote.

“Pulling up to the hotel,” Duval answered.

“I’ll meet you in the lobby,” Love wrote back.

He walked quickly from the big room at the back of the lobby to the entrance of the hotel without saying anything to anyone. “It would be great if you came into the room right now,” Love told Duval. “Everybody was watching. They’re all fired up about it.”

Duval agreed and walked across the lobby with Love. He waited around a corner and out of sight while Love went back into the room. “Hey, fellas,” he said. “There’s someone outside who wants to say hello to you guys.”

He signaled Jim Furyk, one of his vice captains, whom he had stationed in the doorway, and Furyk waved Duval inside. When Duval walked in the door, the room exploded.

“It was perfect,” Love said. “It was totally unscripted, not part of any of the planning for the week.”

Love asked Duval to say a few words. Duval did—talking about the difference between statistics and passion. “You can’t explain the Ryder Cup with statistics,” he said. “That’s what I was trying to tell Brandel. You have to experience the Ryder Cup as a player to understand what it really means. I will always think of myself as a Ryder Cupper—even though I haven’t played in one since 2002.”

The players loved this. To them, Duval was one of their own, one of us because he had played in the Ryder Cup, knew the pressures that came with it, and was on their side. Chamblee had been a very solid tour player and was then probably the most insightful golf commentator on TV. But he was, most definitely, one of them.

The passion that filled the room that night—almost sixty hours before the first shot was going to be struck on Friday morning—may explain why, in their moment of victory, the Americans seemed almost subdued. Later, several of them would stand on the bridge that had been built across the walkway that would normally lead from the clubhouse to the range (built there so players could make that walk without having to push through throngs) and spray cheering fans with champagne. But they weren’t about to go all out with TV cameras rolling; with the media around; even with adoring fans chanting their names and their country’s initials repeatedly.

“Wow, it was crowded up there,” Zach Johnson said later. “My wife [Kim] is a little claustrophobic. She was definitely not comfortable.” The real celebration would come later, back at the hotel, inside the team room, where even player agents and swing coaches would eventually be asked to leave the American party. No one who wasn’t us belonged in the room. No exceptions.

Because even in their moment of ultimate victory, there was still a good deal of scar tissue in the room. For some—like Mickelson and Love—it dated back more than twenty years. For others—Spieth, Patrick Reed, Jimmy Walker—it went back only a couple of years. But they all felt it—perhaps even more than their joy.

Amid all the hugging and sobbing that afternoon, Love had been struck most by the reaction of Bubba Watson—the last man left off the team, who had volunteered to be a vice captain after Love gave him the news he wouldn’t be playing.

“Bubba came over and was just sobbing on my shoulder,” Love said. “My son, Dru, was standing there waiting to get his hug. After a while, he realized this was going to go on for a while and he went to find someone else to hug.

“That was the moment it all really hit me and I broke down. Bubba hadn’t even played and it meant that much to him. We were all just too emotional to storm the green and jump on one another.”

And too exhausted. It had been a long week. And a long two years.

The process that led to the moment when Westwood conceded the final putt to Moore had actually begun four years earlier, at the 2012 Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club, outside Chicago, a little more than four hundred miles south and east of Hazeltine.

It started when Martin Kaymer rolled in a seven-foot par putt on Medinah’s 18th hole to beat Steve Stricker one up in the eleventh of Sunday’s twelve singles matches. Kaymer’s win gave Europe a 14–13 lead, meaning that the best the Americans could do was a 14–14 tie. Since Europe had won the Cup in 2010, a tie meant they retained it. When Tiger Woods and Francesco Molinari halved the final match, Europe won by a score of 141/2–131/2.

Kaymer ending up as the hero was a complete surprise—to him, to his teammates, to everyone involved. He had played poorly for most of 2012—dropping from number four in the world rankings at the end of 2011 to number thirty-two—and had just squeezed onto the team as the tenth of the ten players who automatically qualified, largely on the basis of the points he had accumulated in 2011.

Captain José-María Olazábal had played him only once the first two days, in the Friday afternoon four-ball matches, and he and Justin Rose had lost comfortably to Matt Kuchar and Dustin Johnson—Kaymer failing to make a single birdie.

“The only reason I played at all was because Jose wanted everyone to play at least one match before Sunday,” he said. “I felt sorry for Justin having to play with me. No one wanted to play with me at that point, and I didn’t blame them.”

By Sunday, tho...