Woods came into the event as the man of the moment after winning his 80th career title at the Tour Championship last week.
The win in Atlanta capped an impressive return to the spotlight for the 42-year-old and he was given a hero’s welcome at the opening ceremony on Thursday.
But on the course, things went horribly for Woods as he and Patrick Reed lost in the opening foursome session.
The same pairing then lost again in Saturday’s foursome session before Woods then paired up with Bryson DeChambeau in the fourballs but was beaten for the third time.
Then in the singles, Woods lost a crucial match to Jon Rahm which gave Europe the breathing space they needed to reach the coveted 14.5 point mark.
After the event, Woods was in a reflective mood and said playing so many events in the build-up took its toll.
“Yeah, I played seven out of nine weeks because I qualified for Akron and you know, all of those are big events, starting with the Open Championship,” said Woods.
“You’ve got a World Golf Championships, you’ve got another major championship, you’ve got the [FedEx Cup] play-offs and then you have the Ryder Cup on the back side.
“So a lot of big events, and a lot of focus, a lot of energy goes into it.
“I was fortunate enough to have won one and we were all coming here on a high and feeling great about our games, about what we were doing, and excited about playing this week.
“For me, it’s been a lot of golf for a short period of time.
“I’ll have a better understanding of what my training needs to be for next year so that I certainly can endure the entire season, because this year was very much up in the air of how much I would play or if I would play at all.”
Woods, who underwent spinal fusion surgery in April 2017 and only returned to action in November, added: “It’s disappointing because I went 0-4 and that’s four points to the European team.
“And I’m one of the contributing factors to why we lost the cup, and it’s not a lot of fun.
“It’s frustrating because we came here, I thought we were all playing pretty well, and I just didn’t perform at the level that I had been playing, and just got behind early in the matches and never got back.”