Home captains key in plotting course to Ryder Cup victory

There is an untruth about the Ryder Cup which would have you believe it all comes down to the players, 12 true men and all that bonding as a team and doing their duty. Sure, it has its part to play. But an outside force also exists, one which traditionally has had an important bearing on the outcome of this biennial match between Europe's best golfers and those of the United States of America: the course set-up, as orchestrated by the home captain, is a big factor.

Ahead of the last match at Gleneagles in 2014, Jim Furyk was one of those players irked by his first impression of the course. "I didn't expect to see eight-inch rough out there, it is overly thick and overly long in spots . . . it has a different feel," observed Furyk, aware that he – as a relatively short and accurate driver of the ball – wouldn't be impacted so much as others on his team who relied on length off the tee.

Stimpmetre

As it happened, Furyk was proven right. The set-up gave

Europe

an advantage; but, in truth, such sleight of hand has become par for the course. Home captains will seek to exploit home advantage, which is why, for instance, greens are slower – running 10 and a half to 11 on the stimpmetre when matches are played in Europe – and faster, running up to 12 and beyond, when matches are staged in the

USA

.

In responding to Furyk’s claims, Paul McGinley – Europe’s captain – claimed he hadn’t “gone out of my way to trick things up. I’ve aligned it very much with the set-up that we play on the European Tour. In general, we have narrower fairways in Europe than on the PGA Tour. In general, we have a little bit more rough on the European Tour than on the PGA Tour. And, in general, the greens are quicker on the PGA Tour than we have on the European Tour.”

What McGinley pointed out was true, but the reality was that he was also sticking to a template dating back to what previous captains had done in using the course set-up to gain an advantage. Sam Torrance had done it at The Belfry. Ian Woosnam did it at The K Club. Colin Montgomerie had his hand in setting up Celtic Manor. The common theme is that it assisted in giving a winning hand, and also emphasised how difficult it is for the away team – the USA – to come to Europe: the last time the Americans won on European terrain was at The Belfry back in 1993.

In modern times, it would seem that the Europeans have used home advantage the better. Thick rough. Slow greens. Narrowing the neck on certain fairways to take away the sting of the American big-hitters. Such subterfuge is entirely within legal limits. After all, both teams have to play the same course. It is about playing to your strengths.

Ice rinks

There was a time that the Americans had an advantage on home turf, mainly due to using faster greens. Time was when European players – playing mainly in Europe on slow greens – were unable to cope with the demands of effectively putting on slick ice rinks. But that was a time before many of Europe’s top players started taking up PGA Tour membership and before the net was widened to allow more European players to play in the Majors stateside.

Nowadays, it is almost second nature for European players to putt on fast greens. Once an advantage to the Americans, that particular part of the course set-up has been nullified to an extent.

Which brings us to next week, and a tie-in with 2012 where the Europeans performed a final day feat in the singles which transformed the match and led to it being referred to as the 'Miracle of Medinah'. The common fact in the then and now is that Davis Love III was and is the captain. And, interestingly, his set-up that week looks likely to be mirrored again this time round.

At Medinah, looking for an advantage, as all home captains must do, Love got the course superintendent to lower the blades on the mowers so that the intermediate cut of rough was reduced to 1 ¼ inches – barely any rough at all – so that his perceived longer-hitters could basically let loose without worrying too much about where the ball would finish.

In effect, the fairways at Medinah were widened to make approach shots possible and much easier for his longer-hitting players. Paul Azinger had done something similar at Valhalla in 2008, the last time the USA actually won the cup.

Knowing that Love would orchestrate something similar this time, it was one of the factors in Darren Clarke going for Thomas Pieters – a seriously long hitter – for one of his wild card picks. Speaking to McGinley recently, he observed that Clarke's picks – like Pieters – could be a plus. As he put it: "Winning Ryder Cups is very difficult. Winning Ryder Cups away from home is really difficult. There's no doubt we're up against it, there's no doubt America are favourites. But there's a couple of dynamics that could work in our favour. Darren was struggling to figure who to leave out. The Americans are looking, 'how do we justify picking Bubba Watson?'"

The Bubba question is a really interesting dynamic when you consider that Watson’s length would be one of those advantages that Love would look to use in how he has requested – mainly through the PGA of America’s Kerry Haigh’s interactions with Hazeltine’s course superintendent Chris Tritabaugh – that the course be set up in Minneapolis.

As Tritabaugh put it: “Most of my discussions about course set-up for the Ryder Cup have been with Kerry, and then he goes on and talks to Davis Love. I rarely chat with Davis directly. Kerry cares about three things: height of rough, hole locations and green speed.”

He added: “Getting the crowd into it is the single most important thing for the USA team, and Davis wants to create this back-nine of Augusta feel where people are making birdies from everywhere. You can achieve that through rough height – if we keep the rough mowed down at three inches, pros will be able to recover from all sorts of places.”

Love has used statistics to determine exactly what set-up would most favour his team and, if he’s being honest, it would seem that the information didn’t provide any great indicator of any advantage.

Trickery

“We know both teams are going to be long. It’s not like the old days when we could say, ‘Well, the USA team is long and the European team is short, so let’s make it really long. Rory McIlroy and Henrik Stenson and all these guys hit it a really long way. So, where’s our strength? Are we great iron players?” asked Love, who revealed he’d had discussions with Clarke, his opposite number, and informed him there would be no trickery, that it would be set up “fair, like a PGA championship, with maybe not as much rough”.

So, it would seem, there is no real sleight of hand at play on this occasion at Hazeltine. The rough – according to the course superintendent – will be at three inches and the greens will run at “12-ish” on the stimpmetre. Maybe it will all come down to 12 men and true, this time!