Ryder Cup: This one is on Zach Johnson… and here’s why

“The crowd are going wild and it’s everything it should be,” said Patrick Cantlay in a preview this week for TV. He used the word “wild”.

That is a soundbite, folks. It’s called playing to the crowd and it appears to be the only time in his career Cantlay has done so. ‘Wild’ and ‘Cantlay’ don’t mix.

He was just one of many US players this week who moped around Marco Simone looking disinterested. The world No.1 was in tears. Talk of a team room split was doing the rounds with players reportedly wanting paid.

After the Saturday morning foursomes, this thing looked done. A late US charge only meant we needed to keep the broadcast going. A Sunday comeback kept everyone interested… too long from a European perspective.

All in all, Friday and Saturday was a shambolic spectacle.

• Ryder Cup: Every European player rated

• Ryder Cup: Every US player rated

A reminder if needed: six of the top ten players in the world are in this US side. More than half have won majors. Yet they’ve played some of the worst golf in the history of the Ryder Cup.

On the Sunday morning, Paul Azinger felt the need to reveal live on Sky Sports that Davis Love III, a vice-captain for this week, had admitted the US side “weren’t prepared”. Ten minutes later, Zach Johnson said he didn’t do much talking in the team room to get his players fired up.

Regular listeners to The bunkered Podcast will know I have bored host Michael McEwan to tears talking about captains. Captains lead. They set the tone. They solve problems instead of creating them.

Azinger added that Luke Donald had been “inspirational”. “[Zach Johnson’s] message coming in was ‘less is more’. They wanted to out-prepare the Europeans this week,” said Azinger. “But when it comes to their locker room and that sort of thing, not a lot of inspirational stuff going on… the American team room is not inspiring.”

This has been a catastrophic failure of leadership from a US camp that should know better. The players looked miserable from the off. At one point during the Friday fourballs – after a whitewash in the foursomes – Schauffele threw a sarcastic smirk across the fairway to partner Collin Morikawa. The pair were five-down at the time. It was as if he said: “There’s f**k all we can do.”

Jordan Spieth, who spent most of the week staring at his feet, played some genuinely awful golf.

Scheffler is the world No.1 and played like he’d been dragged out from the crowd. Shane Lowry just about tore his hamstrings celebrating Viktor Hovland drain another monster. It was Friday afternoon. The next morning Scheffler was in tears.

It was all morbidly fascinating.

• Veni, Vidi, Vici! Europe wins Ryder Cup in Rome

• Cantlay & LaCava: The pantomime double act we needed this week

Seven days ago, Danielle Kang leapt off her feet to celebrate Lexi Thompson getting a point as her side ‘lost’ the Solheim Cup. A weird moment, indeed – but it showed she cared. If only this US Ryder Cup team had 12 Justin Thomases.

Captains live and die by their decisions, and Johnson will likely never step inside a US team room again because of his.

Here goes:

• Nine of his team hadn’t played since the FedEx Cup on August 27. Seven finished in the top ten that week. That’s disgraceful prep for an event he said is the best thing he’s ever been involved in.

• He gambled in the opening session and benched his biggest stars in Koepka, Spieth and Thomas. All his pairings lost. Taking your foot off the gas in the opening session was a truly bizarre move.

• He chose to leave Keegan Bradley at home. Hindsight is a writer’s dream but leaving a player who won twice this season and finished ninth in the FedEx Cup (and has a sparkling Ryder Cup record) was the wrong call.

• He admitted he didn’t bother to watch LIV Golf and so missed the performances of Talor Gooch and Bryson DeChambeau. The latter insisted he was playing his best golf for years – but Johnson wasn’t interested. He didn’t even bother to call Bryson about not getting a pick. As a former cupper, he deserved more than that.

• Dustin Johnson went 5 and 0 two years ago. No pick. I mean, come on.

• Johnson constantly belittled the stats gurus, calling them “nerds” in interviews leading up to Rome. It appears strategy wasn’t really that big a deal.

• Johnson didn’t put his stamp on the US set-up. For example, Jim Furyk was a vice-captain this year but his history with the Ryder cup is laughable. He must dread these weeks. Poor guy.

• Fred Couples’ remarks pre-event only undermined Johnson. Noticeably, Couples has kept a low profile in Rome. Probably just as well. But no doubt he’ll be on Tiger’s backroom team in two years… yikes!

You can call out strategy, decision-making, pairings and disinterested players all day long but the single biggest problem America faces at the Ryder Cup is that Team USA has no inspiration to lean on. That’s what a US captain is for. Europe has the spirit and aura of the late Seve Ballesteros and Donald used it to his advantage. It is a real, inspiring bond that galvanises the side.

The US team has the look of a side that has to play in the Ryder Cup. I’m not convinced the players want to.

The next captain has it all to do. Suspect he might have to pay them to inspire them.

Footnote: The US captain for the President’s Cup in 12 months? Jim Furyk. Inspired.

Bryce Ritchie is the Editor of bunkered and, in addition to leading on content and strategy, oversees all aspects of the brand. The first full-time journalist employed by bunkered, he joined the company in 2001 and has been editor since 2009. A member of Balfron Golfing Society, he currently plays off nine and once got a lesson from Justin Thomas’ dad.

Editor of bunkered