2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National - Paris, France

[GolfLug]

US 16-12. Arbitrary but US team seems lopsidedly heavy.

Edited September 18, 2018 by GolfLug

[lastings]

14-14 - US retains the cup. 

[MacDutch]

You are all way too optimistic about the chances of the US-team. You know the match is in France? Euro team will win, 15-13.

[DeadMan]

7 minutes ago, MacDutch said:

You are all way too optimistic about the chances of the US-team. You know the match is in France? Euro team will win, 15-13.

The US team is so much deeper than the Euros, though. The US is favored even though it's in Europe. If this were in the US, I would be picking a US blow out.

[lastings]

45 minutes ago, DeadMan said:

The US team is so much deeper than the Euros, though. The US is favored even though it's in Europe. If this were in the US, I would be picking a US blow out.

Given that Europe has won 8 of the last 11 Ryder cups, I don’t think we get to think we’re favorites.  If we win this one, that makes it two in a row, one on foreign soil.  We can start to have that attitude.  

But, for some reason, there’s more to it than just who has the more talented team.  Our huge win at hazeltine was nice, but not nice enough to make me forget about the slaughter at Gleneagles. 

 

 

[DeadMan]

3 hours ago, lastings said:

Given that Europe has won 8 of the last 11 Ryder cups, I don’t think we get to think we’re favorites.  If we win this one, that makes it two in a row, one on foreign soil.  We can start to have that attitude.  

But, for some reason, there’s more to it than just who has the more talented team.  Our huge win at hazeltine was nice, but not nice enough to make me forget about the slaughter at Gleneagles. 

 

Well, we're not on the team, so I don't think our attitude matters that much. 

(I hope that the team doesn't think the Ryder Cup is won already or anything like that, but I don't think it's relevant how the fans feel about it.)

We're the favorites by the oddsmakers, which is what I meant when I said that. And the odds shifted pretty significantly towards us after the captain's picks were made, which speaks to the depth of the two teams.

Edited September 19, 2018 by DeadMan

[Pretzel]

6 hours ago, MacDutch said:

You are all way too optimistic about the chances of the US-team. You know the match is in France? Euro team will win, 15-13.

While I understand you're rooting for your home team, you can't deny the fact that even the weakest US player on the team is a contender with all but the top 4 on the European team. There's Rahm, McIlroy, Rose, and Molinari for Europe but after that your next best player is Fleetwood (outclassed by DeChambeau, Koepka, Johnson, Thomas, Fowler, and Spieth) and beyond that it gets even bleaker with Stenson potentially still injured and Sergio playing as his usual streaky self (this time down near the bottom of his streak). 

I think up near the top the European team will outperform the US by some margin, but I think in the lower end matches the depth of the US team will end up with a fairly significant points advantage if Henrick, Sergio, and Poulter continue to perform as they have been playing rather than as they used to play.

[Big C]

6 hours ago, MacDutch said:

You are all way too optimistic about the chances of the US-team. You know the match is in France? Euro team will win, 15-13.

I agree, I think the home course advantage for the Euros is a big deal and enough to offset the undeniable talent advantage the US possesses. It's not a coincidence that the US hasn't won on foreign soil since 1993.

I've got a small wager on the Europe money line and am guessing a final score somewhere in the range of 15-13 Europe. As usual, I think the US will have a difficult time winning the partner matches and will mount a modest singles comeback, but fall just short. I hope I'm proven wrong, though.

[Moxley]

USA 15.5-12.5 Europe. 

USA team is a lot stronger, but home advantage will help keep it competitive until singles.

[MacDutch]

5 hours ago, Pretzel said:

While I understand you're rooting for your home team, you can't deny the fact that even the weakest US player on the team is a contender with all but the top 4 on the European team. There's Rahm, McIlroy, Rose, and Molinari for Europe but after that your next best player is Fleetwood (outclassed by DeChambeau, Koepka, Johnson, Thomas, Fowler, and Spieth) and beyond that it gets even bleaker with Stenson potentially still injured and Sergio playing as his usual streaky self (this time down near the bottom of his streak). 

I think up near the top the European team will outperform the US by some margin, but I think in the lower end matches the depth of the US team will end up with a fairly significant points advantage if Henrick, Sergio, and Poulter continue to perform as they have been playing rather than as they used to play.

If you look at the owgr numbers, the US team is a bit better. But you have to take more into account. First of all we have the Poultergeist in our team. He’s under your skin and not just a bit. He might be owgr 34 or something, but he is the best Rydercup player ever.

Next thing is that the course will be set up to our likings, this on its own will at least level the match. See also the statistics on the RC for Europe on home soil. 6 wins, 1 draw to lost out of 9.

The owgr is a result from strokeplay events. This is match play, see for instance the numbers on Tiger in his fourball and foursome RC matches 😏

[Vinny Cap]

15 - 13 US wins and Reed is playing like he did in 2016.

Was watching a rerun last night and he was on fire!

[DeadMan]

5 hours ago, MacDutch said:

If you look at the owgr numbers, the US team is a bit better. But you have to take more into account.

On the other hand, the OWGR is biased towards European players because it weights European Tour events more heavily than they should be. If you look at other ranking systems, the Americans are even further ahead. For example:

https://www.pgatour.com/stats/stat.02675.html (Total Strokes Gained on the PGA Tour; Average US rank is 13.8; Average Euro rank is 20.7. Sergio and Oleson aren't on this stat, which means the Euro's ranking is probably higher than it should be.)

http://rankings.golfweek.com/rankings/default.asp?T=world (Sagarin Rankings; Average US rank is 11.9; Average Euro rank is 26.4.)

[iacas]

5 hours ago, MacDutch said:

If you look at the owgr numbers, the US team is a bit better. But you have to take more into account.

Right… you have to take into account that the European Tour players get a false boost from the bias (toward the European Tour) in the OWGR system.

Sagarin ratings have the U.S. team as:

• Dechambeau: 8
• Finau: 7
• Fowler: 6
• Johnson: 3
• Koepka: 5
• Mickelson: 20
• Reed: 18
• Simpson: 13
• Spieth: 21
• Thomas: 2
• Watson: 36
• Woods: 4
• Average: 11.92

And the European team as:

• Casey: 15
• Fleetwood: 10
• Garcia: 82
• Hatton: 24
• McIlroy: 9
• Molinari: 11
• Noren: 28
• Oleson: 68
• Poulter: 39
• Rahm: 23
• Rose: 1
• Stenson: 16
• Average: 27.17… and still 17.6 if we leave out Garcia and Oleson.

The U.S. has 7 of the top 8, and nobody ranked lower than 36th (and 11 of 12 are ranked 21st or higher).

Europe has 1 of the top 8 (admittedly, yes, #1), and has two players ranked outside of the top 50, and six (half the team) ranked worse than the 11th best American ranking.

 Hmmm, while typing that up, Dan made similar points, though I may have done some math badly as my averages are slightly different? Or maybe he did. Whatever… they're close.

5 hours ago, MacDutch said:

Next thing is that the course will be set up to our likings, this on its own will at least level the match. See also the statistics on the RC for Europe on home soil. 6 wins, 1 draw to lost out of 9.

Things are patterns until they're not. The past doesn't predict the future. Europe was winning in the U.S. until recently, too, yet very nearly lost the last three here in the U.S.

5 hours ago, MacDutch said:

The owgr is a result from strokeplay events. This is match play, see for instance the numbers on Tiger in his fourball and foursome RC matches 😏

Things are patterns until they're not. The past doesn't predict the future.

[MacDutch]

True @iacas but whats your prediction?

[iacas]

2 minutes ago, MacDutch said:

True @iacas but whats your prediction?

Read back.

Heck, I made the first one.

[Pretzel]

7 hours ago, MacDutch said:

If you look at the owgr numbers, the US team is a bit better. But you have to take more into account. First of all we have the Poultergeist in our team. He’s under your skin and not just a bit. He might be owgr 34 or something, but he is the best Rydercup player ever.

I'm not sure I would count Poulter necessarily as a huge advantage. He has a fantastic Ryder Cup record in the past, yes, but the last time he played in it was in 2014 where he went 0-1-2. As of late he hasn't shown anything to indicate that he'll be turning around from his most recent Ryder Cup performance.

As far as the course being set up to your liking, as far as I'm aware neither team has any input on course setup since that's handled by tournament officials. The course itself isn't even a links style course that might give the Europeans an advantage since they play that style of golf more, because it's a pretty standard open parkland course setup. It's nowhere near the ocean, so it also won't have the gusting winds that US players could potentially be less used to.

[Big C]

2 hours ago, iacas said:

Things are patterns until they're not. The past doesn't predict the future.

I think this is only partially true. The past can definitely tell us that it is really difficult for the United States to go into hostile European territory and win a Ryder Cup. The US is 0-5 in their last 5 "away" matches. Those teams weren't exactly filled with scrubs - in fact, they likely had the talent advantage in many cases. But aside from Celtic Manor in 2010, the U.S. has never really mounted a serious run at the Cup when playing in Europe.

It's fair to look at what appears to be an overwhelming U.S. talent advantage and say that this year will be different. But to me, the past is indicative of a meaningful home court advantage that is very real and cannot be discounted.

[rehmwa]

I predict that whichever team has more people that are playing hot on that particular period of time will most likely have a chance to win.

Going out a limb.