3 Sneaky Match Play Tactics Pros Use At The Ryder Cup l The Game Plan l Golf Digest

The Ryder Cup is golf’s ultimate test of pressure. It demands intense focus and strategy on every hole and on every shot. Whether you’re an avid low handicap player, or just a weekend warrior following Team USA vs Team Europe, these Ryder Cup tactics reveal how pros use strategy, psychology, and gamesmanship to impact their matches.

In this episode of The Game Plan, Golf Digest Senior Editor Luke Kerr-Dineen dives into three psychological strategies you’ll see at Bethpage Black. From the art of when to concede a putt, to controlling the pace of the round, to mental tricks and annoyances that rattle your opponent, this video is packed with golf tips that will help you play smarter, make fewer mistakes, and win your next match.

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Writer & Host: Luke Kerr-Dineen
Producer & Video Editor: Ben Walton
Executive Producer: Christian Iooss

(2025 Ryder Cup, golf strategy, match play tactics, golf psychology, Ryder Cup highlights, golf match play tips, golf game improvement, Ryder Cup history, golf mind games, golf putt concessions, Ryder Cup USA vs Europe, mental game, golf pressure, golf short game strategy, Ryder Cup drama, how to win match play golf)

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
1:12 Let Us Know Your Best Tactic In The Comments
1:40 The Art Of Conceding Putts
4:44 “GOOD GOOD”
7:05 When ‘Good Good’ is Good For You
7:39 Controlling The Pace
13:18 Dominating The Physical Space
16:24 The Knives of Gamesmanship
17:11 Comment With Future Episode Ideas Below

There is a dark side to golf strategy. And every two years at the RDER Cup, we see it. It’s what JT was so annoyed about right here. These are subtle tactics that spark controversy. They fuel resentment, and sometimes they can even be enough to win you a point. This is gamesmanship, a series of strategies pro golfers use that are designed not just to help them play a little better, but to trick their opponent into playing a lot worse. Now, if you’ve watched these videos before, you know that my goal here is to use data and reporting to understand course strategy and to help us all play better golf because of it. And that makes gamesmanship quite tricky because it’s just not that straightforward. There’s lots of intangible mental side stuff going on, but we’re still going to take an evidence-based approach here. We even talked to current US Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley for this one along with some other experts. In essence, there are three common mind game tactics that you see flare up during heated matchplay situations, and we’re going to analyze each of them and create a little game plan for gamesmanship. Right off the top here, I want to mention one thing. Everything I mention in this video is by the letter of the law legal. None of this stuff is considered cheating because it’s not. That’s not what we’re about here. Instead, these are all kind of etiquette breaches that players can and often do use to get inside their opponent’s head. And if you think I’ve missed anything here or have some clever gamesmanship tactics of your own, let me know in the comments below. I really do love hearing from you guys. Okay, so probably the most common form of gamesmanship from the amateur ranks all the way up to the pros is in the art of conceding putts. Now, as you know, unlike in stroke play where everyone has to finish each hole by literally getting their ball into the hole, in match play, at any given point, you can end your opponent’s hole for them. If your opponent has a one-oot putt for birdie, you can just say, “That’s good. Pick it up.” you’ve given them the putt and the birdie without them actually having to hit the putt. Now, interestingly, a lot of pros actually don’t like this dynamic because it can create these awkward judgment calls. That’s why Jason Day has a firm I never give parts policy. He never gives his opponents parts and in exchange he guarantees that he’s going to putt everything out, too. When we talked to Keegan Bradley, the US captain for this video, he said he actually kind of likes this dynamic. I mean, I’m I’m under the belief that you should putt basically all of them. I wish that I could before the match just say to my partner like, “Let’s just putt everything out.” Like, so there’s no weirdness here. But other players like the giving putts element of match play because they can try to use it to their advantage. And one of those ways is by freezing their opponent out. Sometimes it’s as simple as making an opponent putt a comically short putt just to get them rattled and annoyed. That’s what JT was responding to in this clip. But one tactic that has been around for a while is the idea that you should be generous and give your opponents parts early in the match in low pressure situations and then stop giving them later on in high pressure situations. The idea here is that they’ll be more rusty when you do stop giving them putts and so they’ll be more likely to miss them. It’s a fun idea, but when you crunch the numbers, this strategy doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. The average tall player’s approach putt proximity is about 2 feet. So to do this strategy, you need to give your opponents all those gimmies plus a generous one or two in order to get them rusty. Say a putt that’s right around or just even a hair over 3 ft. Pros only miss putts of those length about 5% of the time. So to concede a putt like that with the idea that it’ll help them get rusty later on, you’d be trading away a 5% chance that they’d miss that putt for the idea you’d get a slightly higher miss rate later on. The problem it’s that pros only see about 1 and a half of these three to four foot length parts over the course of an average 18hole round. And at the Ryder Cup, most matches don’t even go 18 holes. the average match length is more like 16 and a half holes. So in reality, what you’d be doing is guaranteeing them one putt in exchange for a future putt that probably isn’t going to happen. So after digging into these numbers, the moral of the story here is that this strategy probably doesn’t work as well as you’d think when it comes to giving putts. A more interesting conceding putt gamesmanship situation is the topic of good good. This happens when both players have parts of similar length. So they form a kind of truce. When you offer them good good, it means that you both agree to give each other’s parts and move on. Again, a lot of pros don’t like this dynamic, and Keegan is one of them. They think that offering good good is a sign of weakness. You should never offer it and never accept it when somebody else offers because it shows that they’re nervous. In my match against Jamie Donaldson at the Ryder Cup at uh Glenn Eagles on the first hole, we both had like four feet and he said good to me and I always had this thing if someone says good good I’m never going to do it because I feel like they want and I I’m fine with finding it and I said no which was such a I regret it was stupid and he went first and made his and then all of a sudden now I have to make mine which was so nervous I made it and then he went on and beat me six and five. So maybe if I we did good good it would have been different. Now to be honest with you, I kind of disagree with Keegan here. There’s a subtle game theory at play that you can use to put the odds slightly more in your favor. So when you’re wondering how to navigate this one, there are a few numbers to keep in mind. First is that between 2 and 4 ft, your make rate drops by about half a percent for every inch further away from the hole you are. For example, if a tall pro has a putt that’s just over 2 ft and their opponent has just under 3 ft, those extra 10 or so in may not seem that significant. Maybe it’s a potential good good situation, but the numbers say that the first tall pro will make their two-footer about 99% of the time, but their opponent will make their three-footer only 95% of the time, a difference of about 4%. That difference is even larger for the rest of us. The margins are small, yes, but points are often won and lost in these small margins. And remember that not all parts are created equal. If we use short putt statistics from our friends over at the stack training aid as our gauge, low handicaps make just under 50% of their downhill braking parts from inside 12 ft, but almost 55% of their uphill breaking parts. And if you have a pretty straight uphill part, the make rate there is more like 60%. That’s a big difference and something that you should pay attention to in these potential good good situations. Basically, here’s a good breakdown. Pause and screenshot this if you need. If you have a downhill breaking putt and your opponent has an uphill putt about the same distance, definitely offer good and see if they take it. Now, if your putts are basically the same type, but your ball is a little further away, you can try offering good good and then see what happens there as well. Don’t offer or accept good good if you have a straight putt and your partner has a breakings putt, especially if your straight putt is uphill. You have the highest make rate on those. And again, don’t offer or accept good if your opponent’s ball is further away than yours, even if it’s just by a few inches. There are two other pieces of games I really want to get to, and one of those is the tactic of controlling the pace of the group. The idea here is that your opponent has an ideal pace of play where they’re most comfortable and feel in rhythm. So, the gamesmanship comes into play when you can change the pace of the match to make your opponent feel uncomfortable and as a result a little more out of rhythm. And there is some evidence that shows that this kind of works well. One way of doing this is by playing fast, by speeding things up, to march ahead of your opponent like a dog leading a pack to establish a kind of dominance and subtly give them the feeling that they’re playing slow. It wasn’t at the Ryder Cup, but John Ram put on a masterclass with this tactic against Brooks Kepker during the final round of the 2023 Masters. Jon would march ahead of him on fairways, then finish out his putt and then walk to the next tea while Brooks was still on the green facing a part of his own. There seemed to be some lingering animosity there because it flared up when the two men actually met in a matchplay situation at the Ryder Cup later that year. John did something similar and won that match, too. This marching ahead of your opponent to the next TE is something that you see a lot at Ryder Cups. Again, it’s just a subtle way of rushing your opponent. You’re essentially saying to them, “Come on, let’s get moving. Don’t slow us up.” Young Keegan Bradley actually used to do this himself as a junior golfer because his aunt Pat told him it was important to quote make an opponent get used to seeing your ass all day. As my Golf Digest colleague Shane Ryan explains, so gamesmanship, yeah, you hear about, you know, walking in front of people. One really hilarious story about Keegan when I researched him was when he was a kid, he had obviously heard this idea of you should walk in front of your competitor in match play. And there would be these stories where he would tee off second and he would tee off and then rush to his bag and this is when he’s very young. Rush to his bag, grab it and run ahead so that he could be doing this thing of walking in front of the other person. Like it was so much in his like in his mind like I must do this that he would like sprint to get in front of the other guy. And there’s another really clever reason for this too. Often home teams will try to do this march ahead move because the hometown crowds will generally follow the home players. So when they leave a hole, they begin following in order to get a good position on the next T- box. This is something that Phil Mickelson talked about in Alan Shipnook’s biography about him because it was a tactic that Tiger Woods would use on him during his career. Tiger would try to finish out first and then walk to the next tea and so the crowd would follow. You know, Tiger knew that as soon as he was done with the hole, a big chunk of the gallery would take off to the next T- box to try and get a view. And so that would leave Mickelson or the other opponent, whoever it might be. But especially with Phil, they would have to putt through all that noise and disturbance. And um so again, this is all well within the rules, but and it’s very subtle, but it’s a real thing because I mean, you’ve been out there in those galleries like when you have 20,000 people all deciding to head to the next T- box and and someone’s got a downhill, sidehill, you know, 4 and 1/2 footer like um that that’s a distraction and you know, Tiger used that to his advantage. But the more effective and frankly evil strategy is to do the opposite, to hit the brakes, to slow things way down. And this is sadly very effective. It really benefits players who are comfortable playing slow because the governing bodies are typically afraid to issue stroke penalties on tall players. It’s why there’s never been a slowplay penalty issued at the Ryder Cup. Not that he was ever considered a slow player, but Phil said that sometimes Tiger would use this tactic, too. He would hang way back in the fairway so that your opponent is waiting forever to hit his own shot. And there are variations of this too. You’ll see it often on the first tee during final rounds. A popular player with big crowds or often the home team in rally cups will linger on the practice screen to make sure they arrive on the first tea box second. That way opponents who are already standing on the first tee have to hear a huge roar from the crowd as soon as the home team walks in. And this interestingly can create a kind of comedown effect which I wrote about before the last Ryder Cup. During regular rounds and especially at Ryder Cups, players’s heart rates and stress ramp up like crazy on the first te because of these crowds. It holds for a bit, then it starts to dive into a kind of lull on the back nine. The heart rate can dip to a point where it’s actually harder to stay focused. Rory Maroy actually admitted this crash happened to him on Sunday at the 2016 RDER Cup. I just ran out of steam on the back nine. You know, I I I felt not physically but mentally just a little I just, you know, I was trying to summon up energy. I was trying to do everything I could. I was, you know, taking on loads of fluids and trying to eat plenty and and just trying to give it my all. Just one last one last round of golf before I have a little bit of time off. And um it just wasn’t meant to be. So, it would stand to reason that slowing things down at that point of the match could create more lapses of concentration mid round for your opponent. But that’s just kind of a theory. Ar found that for every half hour you add onto the overall pace of play, scores get about half a stroke worse. So, if you’re a player who’s comfortable playing slow, the sad truth is that it probably benefits you to try slowing down the overall pace of the group. But it should also be said that playing slow and bleeding out the clock is just a really lame thing to do. But I guess that’s kind of what gamesmanship is. Anyway, this final concept is a really interesting one, at least to me. Think of any annoying person in your life. There’s a good chance they don’t do a good job of respecting your personal space. They might get a little too close or they’ll talk or laugh a little too loudly. They’re missing whatever social cue is there that’s telling them that what they’re doing is annoying to someone else. In the writer cup, it becomes a tactic of physically dominating a kind of shared space which makes the other person uncomfortable. It happens all the time in life. And honestly, you can see politicians try to use this tactic any time they’re in a room with another politician. And yes, you see it in golf, too. Sevy was the true master at this one, especially in Ryder Cups. There’s actually been a lot of studies on this and researchers have found that most people operate with a kind of comfort ring around them. It goes from about 1 and 1/2 ft to 4 ft. That’s the personal space that we control and feel comfortable operating in. When somebody who isn’t your spouse or kid gets within that space and especially when they’re standing right behind you facing your back, we can often get really uncomfortable. Researchers found that our heart rate starts ticking up. Our muscles, they tense up too. Basically, it begins to activate our fight orflight response. So, naturally, it becomes a kind of strategic tool that players use on others. A kind of gamesmanship. In golf, you see it happen on tea boxes a lot. One player getting in another player’s personal space or standing really closely behind them. Sevie would do this, and Tiger seemed to do it a lot, too, like he was stalking his prey. But when you see it really flare up is during rulings. A player will be talking to a rules official or looking at their ball and an opposing player will get right up in their space. They get in their business and make a tense situation even worse. Keegan famously got in a heated exchange with European Rder Cup legend Miguel Angel Gimenez about exactly this during the 2015 WGC match play. Gimenez inserted himself into a rule situation. Keegan got really heated, then lost the hole and the match. I I really dislike in match play situations when you’re getting a ruling and your and your player your player you’re playing comes over and tries to get his hands in in the ruling. I’ve had that happen a few times and that’s that’s a trigger point for me. I don’t enjoy that. But Sebie would employ this invading other people’s space tactic all the time in Ryder Cups. He’d do things like wear bright shoes to interfere with his opponent’s eyelines. He’d break the unwritten rule of walking and standing in golf’s through lines, which is considered a big etiquette no. And he would do all these other little things to interject his way into another player’s personal space. And you’d see this a lot during rules issues, famously the 1991 Ryder Cup when he called a penalty on his old foe Paul Azinger. Sevy would literally force his way into the conversation between a player and a rules official and it would really annoy the player. Golf isn’t like other sports. Most of the time, it’s a solitary thing. You’re alone, walking your own journey, fighting your own fight. You’re only responsible for yourself and what you do. But that’s what makes stuff like this at the Ryder Cup so fantastic because it pits golfers directly against other golfers. It’s not just about you anymore. It’s about you and the guy who is standing in your way. It’s why the common theme in all this gamesmanship stuff is control. Who can control not just themselves but their opponent and by extension the outcome of the match? And it’s why in these high pressure situations, you see the knives of gamesmanship come out. Hi everyone, I’m Luke Cardin and thanks for watching another episode of Game Plan. We hope you enjoyed it and learned a little something. We love hearing from you guys, so please leave any questions or comments you have down below. Find me on social media and of course subscribe to Golf Digest on YouTube if you haven’t already. We’ve got more episodes like this coming up, so you won’t want to miss them. [Music] [Music]