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Paul Azinger had a lot of Ryder Cup theories, and he wasn't afraid to share them. The conventional wisdom of pairing a long bomber with a deft putter was not very wise, he said, and neither was picking a Ryder Cup vet over an emerging would-be rookie.
What was Europe doing right? Where was America going wrong? Azinger had answers for all of the above, and more. This was back in 2005, when I was hanging around with the 1993 PGA champion for a story on his foosball hobby. Nobody had appointed him to captain anything, but he knew, as others did, that his day would come. The man is wired for the Cup.
That Azinger's underdog U.S. team won, 16 1/2 to 11 1/2, at Valhalla on Sunday does many things, first and foremost renewing a rivalry that had gone stale from two consecutive 9-point drubbings by Europe. But it also answers definitively the question of whether or not the captain really matters in these things.
Um, yes, it does.
European captain Nick Faldo is being marinated for the biggest barbecue of his life. Even before the 37th Ryder Cup matches began, the ruthless British press dubbed him "Captain Cock-up" for inadvertently revealing his Friday pairings. They appeared to be scrawled on a slip of paper in his hand, and came to light when the Euro captain seemed to forget that the Ryder Cup might attract photographers with expensive lenses.
Faldo nearly came to tears when he was asked about meeting Muhammad Ali on Thursday, an all-too-human reaction from a man not known for his warmth, but his strangest move was to leave both Darren Clarke and Colin Montgomerie off his team. Even for American fans, the absence of both players from a Ryder Cup was palpable, like a phantom limb.
But as much as the European press will eviscerate Nick the Not so Quick, Azinger's moves had a far greater impact. He began to put his stamp on the 2008 Ryder Cup the moment he was introduced as captain on November 6, 2006. He said the points system would now emphasize performance in the year of the actual Cup, not the year previous. He wanted the hot players.
He said he would be taking four captain's picks, not two.
He said he wanted "guys on the team that say 'dude.'"
"Experience," he said, "is way overrated."
And so he got at a team with six rookies, including the breakout star of the Cup, 23-year-old Anthony Kim, who throttled Sergio Garcia 5 and 4 Sunday and finished the week with two and a half points (2-1-1).
Paul Azinger got a team with lots of guys who say "dude," a guy who lets his driver speak for him in J.B. Holmes, and even a player who speaks a language all his own in Boo Weekley.
Every team needs a jester, a guy who can be relied on to keep things light, but you get the feeling Azinger knows that. (Clarke has filled that role for Europe.) Woody Austin kept the 2007 Presidents Cup team laughing, and with Azinger encouraging Boo to be Boo, Weekley kept everyone but Lee Westwood in stitches in Louisville. On Sunday, while thrashing Oliver Wilson 4 and 2, the U.S. team's southern comfort threw a leg over his driver and actually began to ride the thing, up and down, like it was Trigger. Can you imagine Davis Love III doing that?
Azinger not only changed the selection process, he altered the order of play, starting the competition with alternate-shot (foursomes) instead of best-ball (four ball). For whatever reason, the American team had enjoyed more success at foursomes, and so he let them play that game first. It panned out in a big way, as the Americans got off to a quick 3-1 lead and never trailed.
