The leader of an American team took the day off Sunday, letting someone else commit rocket science by filling out the lineup card. You know, just for giggles. And guess what? The loose, happy bunch still won easily.
The team in question was the New York Yankees, which thumped Baltimore 10-4 under the direction of catcher Jorge Posada, but it may as well have been the U.S. Presidents Cup team under the direction of Barbara Nicklaus.
It was Mrs. Nicklaus who asked Woody Austin to don swimming goggles Sunday on the 14th hole where he'd earlier fallen into the lake. (If you somehow missed the splashdown highlight on TV, welcome back from your spelunking fantasy camp.)
Someone commented that you'd never see the goggles in the Ryder Cup, aside from the kind used to keep champagne out of the eyes of the Europeans. But you can pretty much say that about the Americans' entire easy, breezy, 19 1/2 to 14 1/2 victory over the International team at the Presidents Cup.
Not since the 1999 Ryder Cup have we seen so many hole-outs from on and off the green and such joyful camaraderie among the Americans.
In Montreal on Sunday, in the afterglow of a U.S. team winning on foreign soil for the first time in 14 years, some began to float the idea that the PGA of America appoint Jack Nicklaus as Captain America for the Ryder Cup.
He keeps everyone loose, the argument goes. Nicklaus reportedly said last week that if he were asked to captain another Ryder squad, he would.
But a Nicklaus captaincy comes with no guarantees. He's good at maintaining perspective, a scarce commodity at the Ryder Cup. What really keeps guys loose, though, is winning 5 1/2 points out of a possible 6 on day one or going five-for-five in foursomes play Saturday, as the U.S. did last week.
If levity was such a reliable predictor of golf scores, the PGA of America would just hire Larry David as U.S. captain in perpetuity, along with his two assistants Ricky Gervais and Sacha Baron Cohen, and be done with it.
(While we're on the subject, the PGA might consider moving the '08 Ryder to Royal Montreal and nudge it up a bit on the schedule. Tomorrow would work.)
Everyone from Jimmy Roberts on down is talking about the Americans winning because they were happier, but it's really not that simple. More to the point is that they were happier because they were winning.
Why they were winning is a little more complicated. Among the reasons:
• The FedEx Cup
Yes, it was supposed to hurt the biennial team competitions like the Presidents Cup, but in a perverse way, it helped.
Let's face it: While the FedEx got Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods together for probably the best tournament of the year in Boston, it was also a slog. Most everyone is pleased to be done with this relentlessly hyped, four-week mathematical proof, especially the players. After all of the fretting over deferred compensation, movement up and down the points standings and who's taking what week off, the P-Cup was a breath of fresh air.
