At 2 AM today, one of the most exciting events in sports, The Ryder Cup, will begin. Being played at Le Golf National (real original) in Paris, France, we are in for an exciting weekend. The United States need 14 total points to retain the cup and from what happened this morning, the Americans looked to be off to another dominating Ryder Cup, like their recent win in 2016.
The U.S Needs to bench Phil if they want to win
The Americans jumped out to a 3-1 lead early in the morning after the four ball format with wins from Fowler/Johnson (4&2) Spieth/Thomas (1 Up) and Finau/Koepka (1 Up). Jim Furyk then chose to sit Read and Woods for the afternoon alternate shot format and went with Bryson DeChambeau and Phil Mickelson together against Garcia/Noren, Thomas/Spieth playing again against Molinari/Fleetwood, Fowler/Johnson playing again against Rose/Stenson and Watson/Stenson playing against Poulter/McIlroy. Short story – The United States got absolutely murdered. The European’s swept the afternoon session to take a 5-3 lead and they did it by absolutely dominating every match.
MVP of the Day- Tommy Fleetwood
Fleetwood provided his hot putter to give the European’s their only point of the morning and cruised with Molinari to beat Spieth and Thomas 4 & 5. Tommy is a dangerous player who has shown he can perform in the biggest stage, expect Tommy to play most of the sessions moving forward.
Worst player of the day- Phil Mickelson
You can’t fully blame Phil. American Team Captian Jim Furyk decided to pair together Ryder cup rookie with long time veteran, Phil Mickelson for the alternate shot format. This was a disaster in the making. Bryson, a very careful player who likes to play by the numbers and calculate each of his shots, played alternate shot with the most creative, yet sporadic player on tour, Phil Mickelson. Phil hit the ball all over the place and hit it to places where we have only seen Phil recover from. Due to the alternate shot format, Bryson had to try to recover when Phil missed and both players hit the ball very poorly. Garcia and Noren started off by winning 6 of the first 8 holes on their way to an easy 5 & 4 victory where Bryson and Phil never had a chance.
Time to bench Phil?
All in all, Phil is past his prime and unfortunately should not be used in this Ryder Cup again until the Sunday singles play. He provided no help for DeChambeau and has not done very well in the group match play sessions (besides his play with Keegan). Jim Furyk needs to go back and rethink his pairings if the United States want a chance to win.
Below is the schedule for tomorrow. The crowd will be fired up and ready to go after pure domination by the Europeans in the afternoon session. Look for the Americans to be aggressive off the start and begin the day with a dominant performance.
