2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National - Paris, France

[iacas]

1 hour ago, lastings said:

Sorry, let me rephrase.  Justin Thomas is one of the longest hitters on tour.

Yes, and four of his U.S. teammates managed to squeeze in above his 11th place position on the Driving Distance stat. 🙂

Justin also played the French Open this year. That was, I think, key.

[Pretzel]

2 hours ago, lastings said:

Sorry, let me rephrase.  Justin Thomas is one of the longest hitters on tour.

Like @iacas mentioned, Justin Thomas was ranked 5th out of a team of 12 in terms of the US driving distance. He was almost the median driving distance player on the US team, not the longest.

That's not to say he doesn't hit it long, because he does - just not longer than 1/3 of the rest of the team.

[Killa]

Yep and he is so much shorter than the lot of them. A whopping 3,4 yards. 

[lastings]

Probably sprinting right past the point here.   

The point simply being that a lot of people and pundits are suggesting that this course was set up well for the shorter players to succeed.   But, it’s not about short or long.  It’s about who can manage their drives and find the fairways.   Thomas not only managed the course well, but was able to use his length to an advantage as well.   As did Rory on Sunday, by the way.   I think either of those players would have won 3&2 or better had they been playing anyone other than each other. 

 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2018 by lastings

[Moxley]

Indeed, Thomas is a great ballstriker. He also played the French open. 

Yes, he's long but he's got more than just length to his game.

[3jacker]

It's not like these long hitters can't reach for the 2 or 3 iron.

I don't get the "length" issue.  It's an advantage even for the less accurate guys. Not many are less accurate with an iron the Europe with the drivers.

[chazza]

HI. I'm new here and this is a very long thread so if these points have been made before, I apologise in advance.

It seemed to me that there were two big issues in the Ryder Cup. The first was the course set-up, and the second was the apparent difference in attitude between the teams.

Le Golf National is a tight course. Let the rough grow deep like it was here and accuracy is going to be at a premium. Length helps everywhere, but with rough like that and water everywhere that course really has to be played from the fairways: you can't drive the ball like Mickelson habitually does and expect to have a shot to the green.

Mickelson's comments afterwards about not wanting to play these sort of courses anymore were revealing. I didn't take them as just the moaning of a sore loser, they are more indicative of a completely different approach to the game. On the PGA tour very few courses are set up to really penalise the long but wayward drive, it's routine to hit it off-line and still have a wedge into the green. And the organisers, and the crowds, as well as most of the players, like it that way. Boom-boom off the tee, lots of close approaches, lots of birdies for the TV people. In Europe, and especially the UK and Ireland, the mindset is a bit different. Most of the old-established courses aren't that long, but they're tight or they're hard and fast or they're exposed to the wind (or all three) and simply blasting it 320 yards off the tee is very often a poor strategy. The game is more about choosing the right shot to adapt to the terrain than about setting up courses to favour the big bombers. It's less spectacular but calls for more imagination and judicious shot selection. That was what was required in Paris and most of the Americans failed to adapt.

Why was that? Partly it was that the demands made were unfamiliar. But in addition (and this is where the attitudes of the teams comes in) most of them simply didn't look to be up for the fight. Woods mooched round looking as miserable as sin. Johnson at times looked almost indifferent. Apart from the close buddies, like Speith and Thomas, who were clearly playing for one another, it didn't look like a team. Contrast that with the Europeans, for whom the competition was clearly a very big deal and who were giving everything not merely to play as well as they could but to support and encourage their teammates. If you didn't know better you'd think Europe was a nation and the USA just a loose confederation of guys who happen to play quite well - for themselves.

 

 

[3jacker]

Couldn't agree more. Well summarized.  

Or "summarised" if you prefer.

[iacas]

https://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/2018/10/17/tiger-woods-blames-fatigue-ryder-cup-struggles/

The URL says it all, but just in case:

Tiger Woods‘s poor performance at the 2018 Ryder Cup was shocking to outside observers, especially coming on the heels of his comeback victory at the Tour Championship. At his charity invitational in California, Woods cited fatigue from a long season as the culprit for his struggles at Le Golf National.

…

When the topic of his disappointing Ryder Cup showing arose, Tiger explained that he hadn’t planned on having such a successful comeback in terms of his health. That success resulted in him playing far more events than he expected. The busy schedule took its toll by September.

“I was tired because I hadn’t trained for it. I hadn’t trained this entire comeback to play this much golf. And then on top of that deal with the heat, and the fatigue, and loss of weight.”

[rehmwa]

that was worth copying out - not sure why people didn't see this as obvious though

he planned a more 'comfortable' recovery schedule and exceeded expectations....it's nice to see that Tiger didn't expect to just step back in where he left off - these last 10 years have been a process that emphasized that every day to him

[Zeph]

The fact that he went through all that golf says a lot about how his back is working. Even if he had traines for it and been prepared, it was a lot of golf in a short period of time, and he won the TC, which must have been a bit exhausting in itself.

I still think having the cup the week after the Tour Championship is a poor decision, even if Tiger didn't play poorly.

Edited October 17, 2018 by Zeph

[Dry Tortuga]

On 10/17/2018 at 2:13 PM, Zeph said:

The fact that he went through all that golf says a lot about how his back is working. Even if he had traines for it and been prepared, it was a lot of golf in a short period of time, and he won the TC, which must have been a bit exhausting in itself.

I still think having the cup the week after the Tour Championship is a poor decision, even if Tiger didn't play poorly.

You are right! And fortunately they are moving the TOUR Championship up a few weeks to avoid this issue in the future.