"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
weekly online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

September 21, 2004

Once again the United States Ryder Cup team failed miserably in its effort to end the European side’s recent domination of the event.

How can the U.S. reverse its fortunes? Here are a couple of suggestions:

•One of these years a captain has to wake up and put John Daly on the team. Daly’s style lends itself to match play. He’s a gambler, on and off the course, so he’s always going to be attacking pins and trying to overpower courses with his length. Best of all, he makes everything he looks at on the greens.

Europe has dominated by going for flags and making putts. Our pros have become so accustomed to playing just to make a comfortable living that they’ve forgotten about trying to win. Think about it. Tour players can earn a ton of money and never win a tournament. Complacency and conservatism reigns on tour, because there’s so much money out there.

European pros are hungrier, because the purses they compete for are a lot smaller. There’s a great emphasis placed on winning.

•Do away with a points system for making the team and allow the captain to make all 12 picks. Save Stewart Cink, who was picked by captain Hal Sutton, no member of the U.S. team had won a tournament since May. Some of the players, notably Kenny Perry, had earned their way onto the team based on strong play more than a year ago and came into the Ryder Cup not playing their best.

The U.S. has to start sending out players who enter the event on a hot streak.

•The PGA of America has to start treating the Ryder Cup as though it were a full-time pursuit. Allow a captain to bring together several players he thinks might have a shot at the team for special training camps, even as early as 18 months before the event. These camps could be conducted at the venue that’s hosting the event, or if it's Europe’s turn to host, at a U.S. course that closely approximates the European venue.

Do high-level tour pros really need practice? Not really, but that’s not the point. Just allow the players to get together and become more unified. Let them practice the alternate shot format that so thoroughly confounds the U.S. in the Ryder Cup. Let them gamble with their own dough to make their practice time a little more meaningful.

The U.S. Ryder Cup needs to become more a program than a team. There’s a big difference.

Clearly, some changes are going to have to be made to avoid further embarrassment (just ask USA Basketball after last month’s Olympic debacle about that). If the U.S. can’t perform any better than it did last week, what’s the point in getting humiliated every other year?

---

Be sure and check out Chattanooga native Kip Henley when The Golf Channel’s The Big Break II premiers on Sept. 28.

Henley, a two-time winner of the Tennessee Open, has fallen just short of his ultimate goal of playing on the PGA Tour since he turned professional in 1982. Henley’s many friends in golf have suffered along with him. There was the time in 1997 when he was in sixth place in the Club Pro Championship, but fell victim to heat exhaustion and had to be hospitalized. If he had maintained his position, Henley would have made the field in the PGA Championship that year.

Henley has played in the PGA Tour’s FedEx St. Jude Classic three times, but each time has failed to make the cut.

Henley took another shot at the tour a couple of years ago, giving up his long-time club pro job in Crossville, Tenn., to do so, but to no avail. Currently back in the state as a club pro and occasionally caddying on the tour, Henley is eagerly awaiting his chance on The Big Break II.

"I’m happy-go-lucky on the golf course and like to have my fun," Henley told The Golf Channel. But I’m determined to win my big break. I’ve given a lot to this game. It owes me."

*** Feedback ***
click here to give us your comments about this article,
 or suggest a subject for a future article