SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — The European Ryder Cup team must feel like it’s starring in the Seinfeld “Bizarro’’ episode.
The past two days of the 43rd Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits have represented an alternate universe for the Europeans. Everything that once was … is no longer.
Where once it was the European team that was renting space inside the heads of the U.S. players and captains, the whole thing has flipped this week, and it’s been the Europeans who’ve been left to desperately search for answers.
Team USA and its captain, Wisconsin native Steve Stricker, have pushed all the right buttons this week — the same way it’s been the other way around the years.
Inside the team room of the road squad, European captain Padraig Harrington has been scrambling to find the right combination of players to send out for matches and not getting the results.
The whole thing has looked a lot like 2018, the last time the Ryder Cup was played, outside of Paris, where U.S. captain Jim Furyk was doing everything he could to put his players in position to succeed but continually was let down by their performance.
Put simply, when Europe was winning four of the past five Ryder Cups and nine of the past 12, it has had the better team in better form that week.
It was that way in 2018, when Europe won 17 ½ to 10 ½ and veterans Tiger Woods was taking an 0-for-4 collar, Phil Mickelson was 0-2, Dustin Johnson was 1-3, Bryson DeChambeau was 0-3 and Brooks Koepka was 1-2-1. Even Patrick “Captain America’’ Reed was 1-2.
Europe, meanwhile, was introducing new stars who were blossoming, delivering points and partying like rock stars in victory. Francesco Molinari was 5-0 and Tommy Fleetwood was 4-1. They were 4-0 as partners and nicknamed “Moliwood.’’
Molinari is not on the team this year, with his form having sagged, and Fleetwood hasn’t had the same Ryder Cup mojo he had three years ago.
Conversely, this week has been all about the introduction of six U.S. rookies, all of whom have contributed. Instead of being a liability because of inexperience, the Americans rookies went 6-0-2 on Friday.
Rookies Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, who entered Saturday’s afternoon fourballs with 2-0 and 3-0 records, respectively, look like they’re going to be the backbone of the U.S. side for the next decade.
“One thing we all have in common is we all hate losing,’’ the stoic Cantlay said.
The U.S. team, which hung onto the older guard perhaps a year or so too long, has made the transition to youth, to a group of players with no scar tissue from the run of defeats to Europe. Mickelson, at 51, is a vice captain this year and Woods is home recovering from the injuries he sustained in that February car crash.
Now, in the alternate universe, it’s the Europeans who appear to have hung onto their veterans one Ryder Cup too long.
With due respect, Lee Westwood and Ian Poulter, for all the great things they’ve done for Team Europe, seem to have lost their respective fastballs in these matches.
Westwood, playing in his record-tying 11th Ryder Cup, was 14-8-3 in his first five he played and is 6-12-3 in his past six, including Friday’s loss in foursomes. Westwood has lost his past six matches, dating to 2014 when he last won a match.
Poulter, for so long the heartbeat of the European team, entered the week with a stout 14-6-2 career record. But, entering Saturday’s fourball match, he had a 2-4-2 record since he went 4-0 in 2012 at Medinah.
Bottom line: The Americans are simply better than Europe now with a team in form at the right time — much the way it used to be for Europe while it on its run.
The U.S. team has eight of the top 10 players in the world rankings and the Europeans have one, Jon Rahm. The Americans have been backing up that ranking advantage.
“This team is deep,’’ Stricker said.
“This is the best American team that I’ve encountered in my time, even since I started working at Sky Sports,’’ Paul McGinley, the 2014 winning European captain and current commentator on Sky Sports, said Saturday.
The Americans have no weak links on this year’s team. It feels as if Stricker can play any of his players with anyone else and win points. Harrington has been hamstrung with too many players in so-so form.
Rory McIlroy, who should be Europe’s second-best player after Rahm, has been a stunning disappointment this week. He lost both of his matches on Friday, the first time he’s done that in six Ryder Cups, and was benched for Saturday’s foursomes match, the first time in his career of 26 matches he was told to sit one out.
When your big guns aren’t firing (see: Woods and Mickelson in 2018), it has a significant psychological effect on the rest of the team. So now, instead of Europe riding the wave of momentum, it’s been the Americans.