USA losing Ryder Cups by not playing like Americans

Phil Mickelson questioned captain Tom Watson and past captains for moving away from Paul Azinger’s pod-system strategy.

When Phil Mickelson openly questioned US Captain Tom Watson’s strategy and essentially put the blame of the Ryder Cup loss on him it was quite a powerful statement. After all, nobody have played in more Ryder Cups that the lefty so when he says something, it means something.

Watson cannot be blamed for his team under-performing but it’s easy to question sitting Mickelson, Keegan Bradley and Webb Simpson on the bench all day Saturday while playing Ricky Fowler and Jimmy Walker all five sessions. And it’s easy to say Bradley, Simpson and Hunter Mahan were poor captains picks after they combined for a 2-4-2 record.

But the real problem Mickelson pointed out was that Watson tried to rule with a iron fist. Granted, that is what PGA American wanted, they wanted a strong leader who would call all the shots and tell the guys what to do.

It just doesn’t work, especially not in America. An iron-fist ruler who tells everybody what to do sounds a lot like a Monarchy. Paul Azinger led team USA to a victory in 2008 with a pod system that has leaders selected for each pod and decisions made by a committee; sounds a lot like Democracy to me.

In an individual sport like Golf the Ryder Cup is one of the very few occasions where guys are ever in a team format. Golf is not a sport where players are told what to do so in a format like the Ryder Cup it makes so much more sense to let all these individual American athletes with their big egos work together, not under on specific instructor as a group.

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Corey Johns

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You could say Corey was born to become a sports journalist. His father won a national championship coaching college soccer. His mother is a baseball fanatic who hasn't missed seeing an Orioles game since 1983 (literally, sometimes it's annoying). His great uncle was a big-time boxing promoter and his maternal grandfather was once a department head at the Baltimore Sun. Basically, sports and journalism run through his blood. He played just about every little league sports there was when he was a kid and was a multi-sport athlete in high school; even playing in the first-ever high school sanction Rugby game in the country. Eventually he retired from sports as an undefeated Maryland state Rugby champion as a high school senior. Perhaps lack of athletic talent has more to do with the retirement, but he will tell you that it more had to do with a great desire to jump right into media. Upon his graduation from University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a triple communications major, Corey started the So Much Sports network and has continued to grow his websites and continues to work to make them premier sports media outlets.

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