Former U.S. Open and European Ryder Cup member, Graeme McDowell joins Smylie Kaufman for an exclusive interview. Graeme discusses the influence of Smylie’s grandfather in his early years and shares his experience playing in the Ryder Cup with the event quickly approaching this weekend.
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on sports grid. Hang in there it is. Smiley Kaufman for 61. Wow, I’m Smiley Kaufman, and this is the smiley show. Welcome back to the Smiley Show, where our Ryder Cup preview continues today with a really cool conversation featuring Smiley and Graham McDowell checking some first boxes on the show. Smiley. Always fun doing that, but I really the thing that I love the most was did not understand or fully appreciate the the depth of your familial connection to Graham McDowell and how far back you two really go? Yeah, not a lot of people know that. Graham McDowell played college golf at UAB for my granddad. So I’ve I’ve known Graham since I was like 8 or 9 years old. He’s always been somebody that’s been my favorite player. You know, he was a mentor to me when I got out on the professional golf tour, helped me out in college. So we talk a little bit about that in the interview, but of course, to this guy’s had just an incredible Ryder Cup career, incredible professional career. But the Ryder Cup specifically has had some key moments that he talked about in this interview, being a part of three winning teams, being a part of the captaincy side, being vice captain a couple of different times. So just the amount of depth of this conversation of stories, experience as we head to the Ryder Cup next week is as as good of a setup as you possibly could have for what is to come next week at Bethpage and and maybe what to expect a little bit from the European side that, you know, we’ve talked a lot about the US side. So kind of give a little different perspective for maybe how the European side thinks was a great way to set us up for, for next week. Normally we just get right to this interview. So why are we here talking to you right now? Well, that’s because we have to give you a producer, a production disclaimer here. We we don’t we can’t always get the tech quite right. We’ve been working through it this past few weeks behind the scenes. We have been on that run where you show up to your flight like you get to the airport, you get checked in and then you get a text flight delayed. We’ve we’ve been on a baggage, lost baggage, delayed flight production side of of what we’ve been dealing with over the last like 5 or 6 interviews. We apologize. It’s one of those ones. We couldn’t really help this time because there was no other solution. So, Charlie, I’ll let you kind of explain it to them is I’m not the tech guru. I just know how to connect my AirPods. I won’t bore people with the tech details. Just know that we tried to address the situation, and unfortunately, this was the best audio solution that you’ll hear. You might get some popping some spaces in Graham’s audio, about 80% of it remains intact, and that 80% is very, very good. So we wanted to apologize. Put the disclaimer out there. Bear with us. Enjoy this conversation because it’s a really fun one between Smiley and Graham McDowell. So let’s you have anything to add smiley. I think we should get people right to that. That chat right now. Right to G Mac and cheese. Let’s do it. Welcome back to the Smiley Show as we continue on with our Ryder Cup coverage. And we have quite the guest today, Graham McDowell, Ryder Cup legend and a very close friend. He was also a mentor of mine growing up, playing collegiate golf for my granddad at UAB and Graham. We have to start there. How does a how does a guy from Northern Ireland, Portrush, end up in Birmingham, Alabama, playing for my grandad who with all due respect, wasn’t necessarily the best developer of talent. Now he could take you to a good restaurant, but I mean just wild how you two ended up together and you ended up in Birmingham. Yeah. Smiley, great to be on with you and I love what you’re doing. I probably met you when you. When you were pretty small, right. Your granddad’s house there at. On the golf course. Vestavia. Vestavia country club. I can still picture the little dogleg par four that you guys that you had the house. But you know Chris Devil, obviously, I think Mike Dunphy signed Chris Devlin. You know, Dunphy was a little bit of an out of the box kind of guy, and he managed to sign Chris Devlin, who was another Northern Irish player. And, you know, and obviously when your granddad took over the program, he was looking for some other players and Chris gave him a few phone numbers. And I think I was the first guy he called the the story goes from, from his side was that he was calling about somebody else and not even it maybe it wasn’t Devlin, maybe it was somebody else. And somebody said, well, we got this guy named Graham McDowell who you want to talk to him. He’s like, yeah, sure. Is that is that true? Yeah. Well, I was probably somewhere on the list. I might have been a little further down the line I wanted to be. And I was actually in university back in Ireland, but I really wanted to play golf in the States, you know, because all my buddies had gone. They’d all gone to Toledo, but Toledo had run out of scholarship money and I couldn’t afford to go. And so then I, you know, my mom’s like, you know, go get an education and you can play golf afterwards. I was like, okay, mom. And and then coach K Kaufman called me. I was in November of my of my year in college in Belfast in Northern Ireland. And he said, come over and have a look at UAB and maybe play for us. And I said, yes sir. That’s pretty much what I want to do. And I knew, I knew before I set the plane, although I always tell people, and this is a true story, I literally didn’t know Alabama, from Alaska, from Florida, from New York. You know, I had no clue about college sports. I’d never been to the States before. I literally had no idea what D1 was, what junior college was. It was a it was a voyage of discovery. You know, I, you know, I really I look back at the three years that I spent at UAB as a big turning point in my life. You know, your your granddaddy, you know, he he took me from a pretty raw talent. I was a decent player. I wasn’t particularly standout or special. You know, those three years I, I grew a lot, you know, outwards and mentally and, you know, on the fresh, what do you call it, the freshman 15. I think I was good for about freshman 25 on a, on a, on a really bad and a really bad southern drawl on top of my Northern Irish accent, which people find very humorous to this day. But it was a big turning point in my life, you know, I was number one ranked Division one player my last year at UAB, and I think I won six times, and it was great, man. It was it was, you know, I genuinely believed that without UAB, you know, I wouldn’t be sitting with a US open trophy on my shelf and I, I wouldn’t have done anything like what I’ve achieved in my career. I really believe that. I think I was around nine, ten, 11 years old when you were in college at UAB, so my memories are pretty faint. But I do remember my dad and my granddad just talking all the time about how good this this player could be. Graham McDowell and of course, you would sometimes come over to Thanksgiving dinner, Christmas dinner if you didn’t go all the way back to home in Ireland. So it was a family for for so many European players that that would come over to play for my granddad at UAB, that I mean, there’s there’s countless guys that I still either run into to this day that played for UAB. I’m like, yep, maybe from Christmas dinner. You know, like Jason Shufflebottom comes to mind. Yeah, yeah, I’m pretty sure my first Thanksgiving in the US, I spent it at your granddad’s house at Vestavia. First off, apologies. My my my grandmother. Rest in peace. It was probably the driest turkey you’re ever going to eat in your life. Now, meanwhile, my granddad’s over there. He’s got the whole turkey leg, the best piece of the turkey, and he’s just gnawing at it. And we over here, we. I mean, we need all the water in Alabama to try to get this dry turkey down. I’m pretty sure we were probably over there in the corner, bust into the cooler and see what we could find at the bottom of the cooler. You know, that’s fair. That’s fair. 1920 year old college kids, you know, just trying to trying to steal a beer from somewhere. But no. And he was amazing. I always I always giggle to myself because, you know, I would become a decent putter my professional career. But when I first came to the States and started putting on greens, you know, faster than 11, the stimp that I’d never really seen before, I used to, I used to give coach K absolute connection. You know, he’d go, you know, I’d be drilling these things five, six feet by the hole all day. And he was he would lose his mind. You know, I remember getting very frustrated about the way I putted. And I definitely had a little bit of sort of some things to work out when I came to, to the States, you know, the short game and, and putting on some quicker greens like old Overton out there. They used to get those things like running beautifully and like I say, there was it was a big transition in my life and learning how to play the game a bit differently. But I, I used to give your granddad some heart attacks, watching me hit putts, for sure. He used to just stand like too close to the hole honestly most of the time. And he would just watch you putt. And as soon as he came off the face, he would go, whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa. And just immediately it would make you angry as a player because, you know, you don’t want anybody talking to your golf ball, especially when it hasn’t stopped rolling. It still has a chance to go in. And then, of course, the the verbal frustrations that he would have, he would always have his, his walking chair with him. So if Graham hit the ball in the water or UAB player hit the ball in the water, or if I hit the ball in the water when he’s watching, he’s slamming that thing down. And and he is. He was he was one of a kind. And I know you probably have 1 or 2 good stories from my granddaddy either driving the van, stories like that of getting frustrated on the golf course. Well, one of my favorite frustrated in the golf course stories from your granddad was, I think we were at regionals or I can’t remember where it was. Aaron Rodgers two year stint with the Jets that he’ll never want to remember when he goes into the Hall of Fame, he’ll just say, please don’t mention that. Now he’s with Pittsburgh and he had his best game since green Bay five. Is it five? Right? Am I right about that? Sam I don’t want to screw this up to five. Four touchdown passes. You got screwed up again. Four touchdown passes against the New York Jets. Buy or sell Aaron Rodgers will finish the season as a QB. One a 12 team league top 12 fantasy quarterback. Buy or sell. You’re the cop out here is he stays healthy? Yes. Right. He’ll he’ll do it. It’s not asking a lot. Top 12 Purdy’s already not going to be top 12 right. He’s already going to miss this week. Probably another week maybe as much as five. They’ve said so. He’s not. You knock him out there. There’ll be other quarterbacks that get hurt. You knock them out. I don’t think he’d ever get top five, top six, top eight. But the 9 to 12, I hate to say it, he wasn’t bad last year with the Jets right. They didn’t win games but he wasn’t bad. He had it when when he played. He was a good solid quarterback. You know he could still he still he could still sling it. He still can. On the first to admit those four touchdowns. It was like he had a monster game a couple of interceptions were dropped. You know that should have been picked off there. It seems like he did complete work for touchdowns the breakdowns by the Jets as well. So I don’t see him really going to win a league for you. But I’m going to buy this if he stays healthy, hell, just give me 15 games. I think he could be top 12. So I’ll buy this. I’m going to sell it. I’m going to sell it. Yeah I mean games against the Browns and games against the Ravens. And look, I don’t know if the Jets defense is as bad as they’ve showed. If it is, then this may be his best game of the season. So yeah I’m going to sell I think he’s on the outside of this looking in fantasy sports today Friday starting at 3 p.m. eastern only on sports Grid. I’m on the 18th hole. I’ll never forget it. And I see him up there by the green, you know, and he’s watching us hitting our approach shots. And my playing partner like, misses it kind of like short sides himself. Terrible shot you know. And I see coach K up there. He slams him into the ground and I start laughing myself. And I said my playing partner like my coach thinks that’s me. That just hit that shot. I mean, you know it yet. So that was that was a moment for sure. Right. If you had an umbrella in his hand and the greens were particularly grainy, he’d be over there like on the side of the green, like scraping the grain with his umbrella. And I’m like, coach you, you can’t you can’t do that. You know, he’s over there sleeping in the green. You know, I’m like, oh my God. But he was a butte. He wore his heart on his sleeve. And like I say, I think, I think probably my one of my favorite moments, you know, I have so many coach K moments, like the divan, like sitting at the board of those Dodge vans, you know, we used to have an over under how many U-turns we’d make on a road trip and, you know, stuff like that. And digging up the car to imagine to. Oh yeah. Yeah, he he definitely put a few dents in there. I’m not I’m not going to throw him under the, under the proverbial bus there. But when I won Alabama’s tournament, my last, my last year I played with JB Holmes all three rounds. And JB is this old Overton. No, this this was Alabama’s event. What was their golf course called down there? The university track in Tuscaloosa, Old Colony. That was it. Oh yeah. And I played with I played with JB every, every round of that those two days. And he didn’t make a bogey until 15. I’m about four back with about four to go and JB hasn’t made a bogey. I make a couple birdies. I get within two. I stand up on 16, which was a par three and I’m between wedge and nine iron and coach K goes to me, you know it’s a wedge I think the boys are hitting wedges you know. So sure enough I hit this wedge and I and I make it. Oh and JB hits in the bunker and makes his first bogey the tournament. And I go on to beat him by like 1 or 2. But coach K was always like, how about that? Listen to me. You got that club, baby. You gotta listen to me more often. Oh, gosh. He’s oh, man, he I miss him a lot. I know he was. He was always your biggest fan. The amount of times that that he would either call my dad or call me and say, hey, did you see what Graham how he played over on the European Tour this week and all of a sudden you’re you’re playing on the PGA tour having success. Next thing you know, you’re winning a major championship. So it was fun man. Watching you grow up. You’re always, you know, a hero of mine. You know being somebody that I watched you know, grow up and have all the success and inspired me honestly to play professionally. And so the next part of this conversation I want to take us to and, and I apologize here is Charlie’s going to eventually show this photo is that you were a mentor to me and brought me down over to Orlando. As you if you’re watching on YouTube now, you see this photo. This is like a sophomore college LSU Smiley Kaufman. And then we got a seasoned veteran, Graham McDowell. What do you remember about this day, man, besides the fact that this camera or this photo was taken with a toaster? Yeah, I mean, you were always taller than me. I mean, even when you were like 12 years old. I mean, look at that. I mean, I guess, I guess I’m a little short there, but I just remember. I just remember, like, you know, you’ve got that infectious kind of smile and that enthusiasm about the game. And I just remember you coming down. We played golf. I think you came back to the house for a little bit and yeah, you were just so great and so enthusiastic about the game. And listen, your family’s meant a huge amount to me and my career. You know, I wouldn’t be sitting here if it wasn’t for for your family. So, you know, obviously getting an opportunity to to be able to give back to the family and kind of help steer you a little bit was was obviously something I was, I was pretty, pretty proud of. Oh, Graham, I learned a lot that day because I was not a very good driver of the golf ball at the time. And you actually gave me one of your backup drivers and I used it for, let’s see, probably the next four years until it cracked. And I actually have it right here. If you want to take a peek at this bad boy. All right, we got the Cleveland Classic. If anybody remembers this beauty and if we can get the right lighting, this is where you can see this thing went off. Can you see the crack in the face about right. Right there in the top half. Yeah. See, I was never fast enough to crack anything, but there you go. I mean, you you’re always. You’re always pretty fast. Those. Look at those hips were. This is when you know it’s yours. You see the tape? I mean this is tape. So what what what did this do? I don’t even I still don’t know why I had lead tape on the heel of my driver, but I did because you did. Like, this is the driver you gave me as your backup. And I eventually started driving the absolute, you know what? Out of the golf ball. But why the heel? Say, why did this thing work for me? So, you know, interesting. And, I mean, I could go get my Titleist driver out of the garage right now, and I’ll have a piece of tape on it. And it’s just, you know, it’s became one of those weird little habits, right? I mean, going back to, you know, winning the US open in ten with an F3 Callaway. And I had a piece of tape on there and my coach had written with a tee box with a tee on the lead tape. He had written cut like as in keep your transition calm. So he wrote this little message to me on the piece of lead tape. And, you know, I had that piece of lead tape on there forever and pretty much every driver I’ve ever had subsequently, I’ve always put that little bit of heel. It’s one of those little weird, kind of like, you know, little things that we do. There’s absolutely zero reason to it anymore. I mean, to be honest with you, I like to try and hit my driver the other way. So a piece of heel tape made me, you know, makes absolutely zero sense. You want to hit fades. You should probably put it on the toe. But, you know, just one of those weird idiosyncrasies. But that Cleveland classic that was that was a driver, that thing for years. I mean, we were collecting these Cleveland Classic drivers, especially when they stopped making them and going into different versions of the driver. I was on eBay. I was trying to find any head that I could because I wasn’t ready to to move on from this beauty. I mean, it was it made a different sound. People, when they would look at it, they’re like not a fan of this, but the people that did hit it like yourself, Keegan Bradley, myself, we we swore by it. Yeah. No. It’s interesting. I’m sure we’ll talk about Keegan a little bit, but Keegan and I, I mean, I’ve been with Cleveland Srixon now for 15 years, and, I mean, it goes all the way back to my days with with Dunfee, you know, Mike Dunfee, who’s, you know, a long being, a Cleveland rep and obviously out there on the on the developmental tour helped me a lot over, over my career. And I remember being back in college and we’d call Dunfee up when we needed some fresh wedges. And, you know, he’d bring us around the house and, you know, we have a couple of beers and listen to some. And then we’d get the garage and go through the old bags and grab some wedges out of there. But, you know, I’ve played Cleveland for a big chunk of my career. You know, still to this day, you know, I’ve been with Srixon Cleveland, you know, great company. You know, interestingly, Keegan and I, we’ve always been really like, spookily similar on driver setup, you know, and the way we look at golf balls. And Keegan would always like when Srixon brought a new ball out or they brought a new driver out, like he would always text me or call me and be like, you know, what are you seeing? Like, you know what? What’s this driver doing? You know, you know, he he’d be kind of bouncing ideas off me just about kind of the way we saw the stuff, because him and I, even though, you know, he’s probably ten, 15 mile an hour ball speed faster than I am. But, you know, for some reason we had spookily similar setups on our drivers. We always kind of pretty much used the same golf balls as well. So him and I, we go back a long time and still speak and still text and obviously proud of, you know what he’s done. They have Boise State, they have Arkansas, they have USC. There’s no shot. And Purdue, those are the only big games that they have the rest of the way. They’re not getting back into the College Football Playoff. They’re not I don’t care if they’ve won ten straight. NIU. No way. No care what happens the rest of the season. They can’t get in. Who was in the college football championship last year? They had more wins at some point last year they lost to NIU Sports Grids College football today. I need a mental break when the season was over, like, because it’s a lot. It’s a lot. You get tired of training. But man, I never get tired of playing golf, I love it. I mean, every course is different, every day is different. And you like some days you’re like, oh, I got this, I got it. Then you go out there and shoot a 95. The next day, I’m like, damn, the smiley show! Only on Sports Grid. I mean, I think so you talk about how difficult it is to bring an expansion team into the league and have success in your first season. Like, that’s fairly unheard of. And not only have success, but they’re in the playoffs. So I think she certainly deserves to win coach of the year. There’s a lot of different candidates that could potentially you could make a case for him. But I think just with this being an expansion team and how difficult that is, betting above the rim only on sports grid. It was nice to see that even though they couldn’t follow the same blueprint as last season, or just the way that everyone thought their offense was going to run this year. Josh Jacobs struggled and Jordan Love stepped up. And if you’re a Packer fan, that’s what you were hoping to see. Is that in the moments where you can’t rely on the run, can the quarterback that you invested a lot of lot of money into now, draft capital, putting weapons around him rise to the occasion. And he did. Game time decisions only on sports grid. With Keegan. You know, it was kind of a for a bit there. It always t like this Ryder Cup was going to be Tiger Woods as the captain at Bethpage. And when Keegan Bradley was announced I think you maybe like myself were like, yeah, I see it as a good fit. But also Keegan Bradley’s playing really good golf right now. How is this going to work? Was, you know, what were your initial thoughts when you saw that Keegan was named as the captain of this US Ryder Cup team? Yeah, I mean, I was skeptical in the beginning, you know, because, you know, Keegan’s obviously still a great player. And, you know, it felt like it was a bit of a deviation away from standard. I guess a little bit I mean Zach Johnson’s obviously he’s not one of the older guys either I suppose. And you know, he was captain in Rome. Right. But Keegan, I mean, to me being still an active, competitive player, I thought it was quite a quite an aggressive choice. And you know, to me the most surprising thing is the way he’s managed to play over the last 12 to 18 months with the Ryder Cup on his shoulders and everything that goes into all the activation with corporate sponsors and all the planning, everything to the modern day Ryder Cup. It’s such a massive thing, right? Trying to create the environment for the players, hotels and locker rooms and clubhouses and just everything that we know that kind of goes into a Ryder Cup. So the fact that he’s been able to play the way he has and obviously play his way into a position where, you know, if it’s another captain, is Keegan Bradley on the 12th? I think most people’s opinion is absolutely he deserves to. He played to a level where he is one of the, you know, one of the 12 players that should be going to Bethpage Black next week as a, as a. I was I actually watched the I watched the live press conference, you know, and as he was making his picks, I think it was when he picked Ben Griffin, I kind of said to myself, he’s not picking himself here. And I think you and I both as soon as that, that was the pick. I thought that was the guy that might get left off the team. Although nobody had earned their way on the team more than Ben, though, with how he had played this year for sure. And that’s absolutely no disrespect to Ben Griffin, but I kind of felt like Keegan was going to go down the list a little bit, and I kind of felt like he maybe jumped. And then when he jumped to Ben, who I thought was going to be in around 11 or 12, as far as maybe ranking the order of of the players that get picked, you know, when he jumped to him, I said to myself, oh my God, he’s not going to pick himself. Which, you know, was one part kind of a little bit of a shock, a little bit kind of a disappointment because we’re like, you know, first playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 67 or 69, whatever it was. And I would have been unbelievably exciting to see him go there next week and try and be playing captain. Would have been, would have been historic stuff. Right. So but then, you know, when I sat back and thought about it a little bit, you know, it felt like to me and this is just my opinion that, you know, he was in a damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t situation. Because if he if he if he takes himself as a playing captain, huge amount of pressure goes on to his shoulders going into their next weekend. Right. And like an unfair amount of expectation and pressure because if he doesn’t produce and he doesn’t play well, well, it’s like, well he shouldn’t have done it. You know, you know, nobody can do both in the modern era because of the asks on the captain and the amount of the amount of stuff that the captain has to do off the golf course, media, press, corporate, you know, all the planning, all the team stuff. Right? So, you know, if he if he picks himself and plays badly, he just sets himself up for disaster, you know? And to me that was just too much pressure to, to handle potentially. You know, he obviously could have picked himself and played well. And the team wins and he’s a hero forever. Right. But you know and it’s legendary stuff. But to me I felt like I thought the way he handled the press conference I mean I think he just, you know, he, he he’s such class, you know, I mean, he really felt like he was going to do the greatest job that he could for Team America by stepping aside and being the captain for these 12 guys and being the best captain that he could be, because, you know, to try and do both, you know, something’s got to give. There’s got to be a 10% or 20% maybe give on on one side or the other. Maybe he’s not going to play as much golf as he should because he’s got, you know, expectations off the course. So it was a really tough scenario. And I felt like he he the only decision, in my opinion, that he could covered himself in a huge amount of class by, by, by the way he looked at himself and the way he explained his decision making. And, you know, I think to go in there next week, being led by a guy who’s going to do a phenomenal job, he’s been extremely thoughtful and very good with communication throughout the entire process. I thought the press conference, he spoke entirely well about every single player in his decision making on why every player that was picked was picked, but there’s also feels like there’s been a little bit of mind games. Maybe I’m looking too much into this side, but when Rory was asked about the possibility of being a playing captain moving forward, he said, no, that’s not something that would do. I’ve actually already, you know, theoretically turned that down, potentially being a playing captain. Do you feel like the European side, maybe outside of of Rory was cheering for Keegan potentially to play just to feel like it would weaken the team a little bit, knowing how difficult that challenge would be to be a playing captain, I think introduced a little bit of chaos to the US side, I think. I think just the mental chaos that it will he or won’t be. I think the Europeans probably enjoyed it. A credit to the Giants who were so good in April and then since then just kind of fell apart and now they’re back in it again. I don’t I think the Mets will get in, but it is fascinating that they’ll play the Marlins here the last three games of the season. And I know without a doubt that the Marlins are going to line up Sandy Alcantara, Eury Perez and their top guys to try and beat the Mets. Game time decisions only on Sports gr. They trade Marina mabrey. Then they turn around and then obviously they fire Teresa Weatherspoon. And it’s been a hot mess. You go you know draft Cardoso and Reese basically two of the same player meaning bigs that can’t step out and shoot. So it’s a little bit of a clown show. When you talk about the Chicago sky betting above the rim only on sports Grid. He says, you can’t get in a position. Tiger, Rory, Justin, Thomas, those guys are this tall. You’re never going to be. You’re never going to be as flexible as them. You got a lot more leverage. And and like, you got a lot of more moving parts than those dudes. The Smiley Show only on Sports grid. I like the shadows coming in. Nealon Stadium. Show me those 330 back in the day. All our games on Saturdays. Maybe 1 or 2 games on a Friday night away. I always love. Same thing at college. Hated Friday night football games in college, I can’t, I don’t like. I understand why they do it prime time and we have to play. But going back to when we grew up, Keith Jackson yeah. Action. Throw another pancake on that plate. That’s it Keith Jackson that’s my guy here. Sports grids college football today. I’m not sure Rory kind of teed that one up to play mind games per se. I think Rory was you know just being Rory gets asked every question under the sun. And eventually that one was going to come up. And, you know, I think, you know, obviously 27 in Ireland, I mean, Rory McIlroy playing captain, I mean, be pretty radical, be pretty legendary stuff. And he’s obviously, you know, thinking it and thinking to himself that, you know, he wouldn’t have the capacity to be able to do both of those things in Ireland. And, you know, and he’s probably just thinking out loud, just like, no, I’ve thought about it and I wouldn’t do it. But like, you know, being having a home Ryder Cup in Ireland, Rory McIlroy, you know, one of the greatest players to ever play the game, being a playing captain. I mean that’s just such a huge chaotic situation with a massive amount of amount of work to do there. So but no, I say the European team probably enjoyed the drama that was around the whole Keegan Bradley had to be popping off. It was probably like, here we go. Another article, just chaos, like you kind of talk about. Yeah, and those are a real thing. The old WhatsApp groups, you know, they’re flying around and you know, I’m sure the boys were having a pretty good themselves. But you know, I’m sure there was an air of disappointment in the European team room when Keegan decided that he was going to take a step aside and and obviously try and be the best captain. So, you know themselves. And I want to talk about your Ryder Cup career because you played in four. You were a part of three winning teams, and the first one that you qualified for was 2008. This is at Valhalla. And coming into that 2008 Ryder Cup, I believe Europe had dominated the last three Ryder Cups prior to that. So there was a huge emphasis in the US side. I believe it was. Azinger was the captain that week. There was a lot of emphasis on the pods and trying to get the team to play for one another. You know, you had Tiger, of course, being the best player in the world, but they haven’t necessarily had any of the results with having Tiger and Phil, the top two players in the world at the time, translate to a Ryder Cup. What do you remember about that first Ryder Cup in Valhalla? The the how, how much that US side needed to win that Ryder Cup. And just maybe, your overall experience of how nervous you were playing in your first one. Yeah. No, I mean, great memories. I mean like you like you mentioned, I’ve played four Ryder Cups and they’re all like really special in their own way. I ate them all up on the same level. And that includes Valhalla, where we, you know, we got beat pretty good there. But it was my first experience. I was a rookie and, you know, Nick Fowler was the captain, one of my heroes in the 90s growing up. And, you know, there were so many different elements to that week. And I was so inexperienced in many ways that I didn’t really understand the kind of mechanics of what makes a what makes a great week. You know, the vice captains, the role they play. We didn’t really have any vice captains that week at Valhalla. Faldo was kind of pretty much, you know, his own guy. And, you know, I mean, every captain kind of has their own thumbprint they put on things. But, you know, I, I love the Valhalla, but zinger zinger was obviously all over it, right? Pod system putting putting one vice captain with a with a set of three guys and really making sure nearly had, you know, solid coverage there, making sure communication levels were great. And I guess that’s one of the things I’ve learned as the years have gone on that, you know, when you have 12 players in a room and see if those players flow from a Tiger Woods to a Boo Weekley who played no. Eight, you know, you’ve got you’ve got 12 different personalities, you’ve got 12 different egos, you’ve got 12 different guys that want different things, and you’ve got guys that are very rigid in their schedules and they need to know exactly what’s asked of them for that weekend. And you can’t really throw them any curveballs because they go, wow, you know? And then you have players that are absolutely ready to do anything that’s asked of them. And they’re very flexible and very fluid. And that’s like one of the little psychology things that I feel like I’ve picked up over the years, kind of being part of Ryder Cups, that, you know, where the captains and vice captains manage each individual. Hugely important because, you know, you got to talk to Tiger Woods a little differently from maybe how you talk to Phil, from how you talk to, you know, like I say, Boo Weekley, I’m not sure why I’m picking boo. We’re talking about Valhalla and I’m and I’m seeing him, you know, riding the cowboy kind of driver off one of the boxes. I mean, that was legendary. Legendary. Boo at his. At his finest. But, you know, Valhalla was. Valhalla was interesting. I mean, you know, they beat us pretty good. And, you know, they had a good team. You know, it’s weird. I’m trying to think the Tiger play that Ryder Cup. Of course he did. I just I’m pretty certain that he did play in that Ryder Cup. I can double check as you’re talking here. As I got all this stuff pulled up right here. It’s so weird. I’m I’m visualizing it in my mind. I certainly didn’t plan my matches, but I just can’t remember him being there. And I’m trying to work out why he did not. He didn’t. He did not play. In 2008, Phil Mickelson was looks like their top qualifier Steve Stricker, Justin Leonard, Stewart Cink, Hunter Mahan, JB Anthony, Kim Boo Weekley, Ben Curtis, Chad Campbell, Jim Furyk and Kenny Perry. Got it. So it’s weird. You know, as we were, I hadn’t probably thought about that, you know, maybe in 15 years. But, you know, the fact that Tiger was obviously hurt that year. So he didn’t play. But it was an amazing Ryder Cup. I remember my first match was I played with Padraig Harrington on Friday afternoon in the Betterball match because t was very, very, very, very nervous. But it was actually it was actually kind of a big spread out first tee. Some of the tee boxes are like cauldrons now. And it’s you know, I’m curious to see what Bethpage looks like next week. But you know, they’re really making the first tee into something really big and special. And back in oh eight it was kind of a big spread out tee box. So it wasn’t crazy. But I remember I ripped it down the middle in the first hole and the better ball match, and I got up there and I was sitting in the middle of a divot and I was like, well, we got. But you know, I actually lost my first match with Harry and I played with Miguel Jimenez. So the next morning we got a match against Leonard and Mahan, I believe. And. Beat Perry in the afternoon, and then I beat Cink in the singles. But I remember I remember playing the singles match against Cink and we lost the Ryder Cup a couple holes in front of me. I was on the 16th tee and I was a couple up, and I and I heard the cheer coming back, you know, that it was over and I remember, I remember it felt like I’d just sucked the life out of my body. Of all the adrenaline that I had built up over the weekend, felt like it was gone in like a second because it was done. It was over. And it was. I ended up winning my match, but like, it was such an anti-climax at the end, you know. But you know, it was a great weekend. I mean, you know, we’ll we’ll talk a little bit about the cap to me. You know, there’s a lot of emphasis put on the captain, you know, the heroes and the villains that, that I’ve been part of over the last sort of 20 years that, you know, you know, captains have been thrown under the bus for not doing great jobs, and captains have been put up on pedestals because, you know, they did, you know, such a, you know, such an amazing, you know, you know, created amazing environment for the guys. But to me, you know, it’s such a small part of of what, you know, makes the Ryder Cup competitive is, is the job the captain does. I mean, he picks his 12 guys. You know, obviously putting the pairings together is a little bit of an art form too. But like after that, you know it’s really got to play. Well. It comes it comes down to who holds putts. It’s like I you know, I was part of I was part of Harrington at Whistling Straits. I was one of his vice captains and I thought Padraig did a phenomenal job that week and I was a big part of it. You know, obviously, I mean, part of the mechanics of the week and the team room was phenomenal. The buzz inside of the team room, the camaraderie, great team, great bunch of guys, and they got absolutely hammered. The does that mean they got hammered on Sunday night? But I mean they got hammered in the match as well. But that’s fair I think that’s fair for any Ryder Cup I want to say I want to say it was historic loss. It was the biggest loss since it went to Europe versus America. On, you know, you think to yourself, Did Harrington do a bad job? And the answer, I mean, I would categorically say no, he did not do a bad job. He did a great job. And the camaraderie inside the team room was phenomenal. Yeah. And so, you know that that that’s to me is an example of kind of, you know, the captains get the end of the day. If the team plays great, they’ve got a chance to win. If they play badly as a team, they’re going to lose. So you talked a little bit about maybe being maybe a little unprepared for what to expect as a player in that 2008 Ryder Cup. And Graham, I’m curious, was there anything that you learned or picked up through that first Ryder Cup experience, things that maybe you weren’t expecting to to inherit as far as information goes from veterans on that team, on how to handle certain matches, whether it’s momentum, certain things to do and not do that maybe you weren’t prepared for heading into the Ryder Cup, but after that Ryder Cup heading in to the next one, you’re like, yep, I know exactly how to handle myself. As far as the ebbs and swings of of Ryder Cup matches. Yeah, I mean, it’s a great question. It’s a very kind of apt question, kind of, you know, as the European team goes into a New York crowd next week, I think it’s going to be something a little special, a little different. And, and I think, I think the, the crowd interaction is something that you have to learn how to deal with. And I remember being in a match on Friday afternoon with Harrington, I, I made a nice putt from the back of the eighth green, the par three from about 20ft. And I’m kind of like fist pumping like and and then I realized that, like, no one’s clapping at all. Like I’m like, this is you’re not used to that. You’re not used to it. Yeah. There are right now ten teams who are. Oh, and two, every team on this list is. Oh and two, these are the seven teams through two weeks who have already been eliminated from the Super Bowl picture. First, the Cleveland Browns, who I believe were the worst team coming into this season. The Cleveland Browns are absolutely done. Game time decisions only on sports grid. Josh Heupel. I mean please. Dude, you got to be kidding me. Are you okay? How doo you lose this game at home when you’ve got Georgia on the ropes with a iffy quarterback? At best, they’re in gunner and and you somehow figure out a way to lose that game. A game, Donnie, which was pretty much in hand for Notre Dame. Three quarters of it. The early line only on sports grid. It’s the most beautiful time of the year. No, not because of foliage or pumpkin spice lattes. It’s because of football. Sports grid has you covered all season long, covering every snap, every score, and every line. Move. Prepare. Watch. Win. Weekends are for winners. Only on sports grid. I need a mental break. When the sen was over. Like. Because it’s a lot. It’s a lot. You get tired of training. But man, I never get tired of playing golf, I love it. I mean, every course is different. Every day is different. And you like some days you’re like, oh, I got this, I got it. Then you go out there and shoot a 95 the next day like, damn, the smiley show. Only on Sports Grid. Doesn’t matter where you are in the world, if it’s a decent sized crowd, it doesn’t matter who you are. They might give you. Yeah, yeah. You know, well done. But I realized that no one was reacting to this putt. In fact, he hated it. You know, and it took me a second to kind of be like, that was really weird. But then obviously you play subsequent Ryder Cups, you play, you play back in Europe and you know, you’re just walking onto the green and they go bananas, you know. So it’s there’s there’s different styles of energy. You know obviously playing in a way Ryder Cup in America. You know you’re not going to be able to take any energy from the crowd. And that’s something, you know, something we talk to the players about back in. You know when you’re playing in Europe, it’s like, you know, if you’re having a moment on the course where you’re maybe you’ve had a couple of bad holes or something, you can kind of like let the crowd kind of energize you back up again. You can kind of use their vibe and use their noise to try to kind of charge the batteries back up again. And obviously you don’t have that ability when you’re in the States because you know, they’re they’re not going to react to you. And in fact, they’re probably going to have a negative reaction to you. So there’s very different mindset expectation levels of, you know, if you’re playing well or maybe you’re not playing well, kind of the noises that you’re going to hear and just understanding kind of what they mean and obviously being ready, I see, you know, I read obviously that the kind of news about these virtual reality headsets that they we just recently talked about it, we have we have so many questions on what what is being fed in these VR. We all have questions. But you know, it’s like it goes back to kind of where the Ryder Cup is today. It’s the no stone left unturned kind of thing. And you know, I think the hostility level next week’s going to be interesting certainly for certain players. Right? I mean obviously, you know, Sergio Garcia obviously being a live player and like at one point it looked like I thought he was going to be potentially one of the top 12 players in Europe. But, you know, really didn’t have the year that he expected from himself. You know, I was imagining him being on that team and being in Bethpage because I remember being at the US open in oh nine and they were just pummeling Sergio, you know, it was like I was like, this could be this could be horrendous. But, you know, certain players are a bit more divisive. You know, like the Poulter days. You know, Poulter used to just absolutely get it from every angle when he played Ryder Cup in the States. But he loved it. You know, he had that type of personality where, you know, Poulter feeds up, he feeds off any publicity positive or negative. And he, you know, he pours it back into the tank. But, you know, I mean, obviously Rory. Rory will kind of get the attention and trying to think what other players in the European team are going to get the attention of Tyrrell Hatton. There you go. Shane Lowry is a pretty fiery competitor to what you get him going. Yeah. You know and I read some quotes from Rory I think maybe was it last week at Wentworth or the week before in Ireland. And he was talking about the way you react to the crowd. You know, if you if you start giving it back to them, you know, you’re, you’re in for a long weekend, you know. So, so I think, you know, unless you can handle it right, you get a Poulter who’s enough to kind of thump the chest and take whatever comes at him. Right. But certain players may want to try and fly below the radar a little bit and just kind of tip the hat and go, yeah, yeah. You know, I, I hear you swearing at me and you don’t like me, but so I’m going to I’m going to love you right back in return, you know. And totally. Yeah. So you know, certainly interesting I think definitely the, the mental expectation of kind of what’s going to happen out there, you know, especially for some of these. I mean obviously the European teams very interesting. 11 of the 12 players played in Rome. But some of these guys have never experienced an American, you know, a US soil Ryder Cup. And it’s a different it’s a different noise. It’s a different feeling. And you got to have some thick skin. And you know especially out there Friday, Saturday when you’re playing with your, you know, your teammate, you know, obviously getting into your getting in your bubble with your teammates, getting on with it, keeping your head down, you know, obviously trying to win your point, trying to play the best you can. You know I’m excited to see it. I think it’s going to be something pretty special. I you know, it’s going to approach the line at some point. I just hope it stays. Sure. Yeah, I think I hope it stays in the right. I think we all, as golf fans and sports fans, we all hope it stays on the right side of the line, but I hope it will. It will. It’s definitely a topic that’s being discussed a lot, just with the New York crowd and how tough they can be on their on their teams, the home and away. It’s there’s a chance the US team might get booed by the New York fans and that wouldn’t surprise anybody either. So that’s definitely a storyline I’m going to be watching. But okay, so you were on the last away Ryder Cup winning team. This is back in Medinah in 2012. Of the last nine Ryder Cups, eight of the nine have been won by home teams. So you’re in that locker room Saturday night. You guys are down ten six. That United States team. You go back and look at that lineup they had over there. Most of those guys were at the peak or the top of their form or their career. And that was a strong of a US team as we’ve had in a long time. I mean, I think the performance from the guys at Whistling Straits obviously was incredible, but that was a very, very strong lineup in 2012. So when you guys are getting ready for that next day, knowing that that Sunday singles the United States and overcoming four points is a lot. I mean, did you think you had a chance and and how what was the game plan going into Sunday. Yeah. You know it was a really it was a really strange week. Jose Maria was was the captain and I’d been on a couple Ryder Cup where he was vice captain and he was a phenomenal vice captain. But like, you know, as a captain, he was a bit different. He was a little bit more cerebral, a little bit less emotional. He was very emotional as a vice captain. Just he I remember him coming in at Valhalla, you know, he had just passed away, maybe not long, maybe a few years before that, I think. And I remember him make a speech at Valhalla on the Saturday night. I mean, we were getting we were getting pretty stoked. But, you know, we were all everyone was pretty much in tears, you know, in the team room, listening to Jose talking about savvy and kind of, you know, how much savvy would give to be there. And Jose was, was, was not not particularly fit himself at the time. And, you know, just talking about how much he’d give to to be playing and be in our shoes, you know. And it was very, very emotional stuff. And, you know, like I say, as a captain, he was great, maybe a bit more cerebral. But Friday we lost five three. And we came into the team room that night back at the hotel, and he just pretty much ripped us a new one. Or was that a bit like it was surprising because, you know, Jose, you know, normally kind of he’s he’s normally a lover, not a fighter. He’s just kind of one of those guys who’s going to give you a hug every time he sees you. But like we we sit down in the team room and he chooses out, you know, for our behavior on the golf course that day, he basically said, you know, one player is walking down one side of the fairway, the other one’s down the other side of the fairway. He said, you guys, you guys are a team. You need to act like a team. And I was thinking to myself, well, I thought, I thought I was pretty good with my team mate out there today. I played with Rory that day, but yeah, I’m not sure what particular group he was talking about, but he was upset about the way we had conducted ourselves as a team. And he he basically kind of said to us, you know, that next day that, you know, the two players needed to, you know, walk down that fairway like they were one, you know, and protect each other and play for each other. And and that was kind of the message on Friday night. You know, he was off and he was off at what he’d seen. And we all went to bed with our tail between our legs a little bit. So then, you know, fast forward like 24 hours and we lose Saturday five three as well. But you know, Poulter birdies those last five holes that afternoon with Rory. You know Rory stunning the 18th green. That image of him just shaking his head as Poulter rolls in another 1215 footer. You know and just you know goes full Ian Poulter on it. You know full Ryder Cup Poulter and. Look at the weather. Try to look for some anytime touchdowns or maybe some props that you really feel confident about. But it’s always the time for urgency, especially for a team like the New York Giants. I think that defense is something that can give Giants fans hope, and if you get dart under center, it’s hope. And then if you can get scatter blue out there in the whole building’s going boom, it’s hope. And as we know, hope works. Fantasy sports today only on sports grid. If you’re in the Super Bowl market, if you’re in the futures market, that’s a big deal. Yeah. Tyreek Hill is heavily connected to the Kansas City Chiefs. I am sure it would be Tyreek first place if he could pick to go back to at least I would think it would be. And the Chiefs have a need. And the Chiefs are interested and they’re not worried about any of his other question marks. Pro football today only on sports grid. It’s the most beautiful time of the year. No not because of foliage or pumpkin spice lattes. It’s because of football. Sports grid has you covered all season long, covering every snap, every score, and every line move. Prepare. Watch. Win. Weekends are for winners. Only on sports grid. They had clearly in hand at the end, especially in the second half. And yet somehow they managed a shank of a 60 yard field goal and a flag comes in with no time left on it for a penalty. Do you want to know how many times that penalty of leverage was called all last season? Want to take a guess? How many for the early line? Only on sports grid. We go o that locker room ten six down. But like there is an energy in the team room which was first of all, no idea where it came apart from the obvious, you know, Poulter turning the match around. But still, you know, we’re in a massive hole, but we’re absolutely buzzing. We’re we’re you know, the locker room is jumping. The energy levels within the team was just like for absolutely you know zero reason. Like we had no reason to feel we were. It was like honestly six I had our behavior, but the energy in the team was just unbelievable. Go back to the hotel, set this all down. And he said exactly what I wanted to see Team Europe today, you know, and he and he energetic. And it was really weird. It didn’t make any sense. Like I say, mathematically, it made no sense whatsoever. But you know, I’m not going to say there was like a Crenshaw moment where he’s like, you know. Yeah, I have a feeling there was none of that. I have a feeling it was just like the was an unbelievable amount of energy within our team going into that Sunday. And, you know, it was a weird day for me because I actually it was the only singles match I ever lost in a Ryder Cup. I lost to Zach Johnson on Sunday. He beat me on 17. But I remember being out on the golf course. I think it was around middle of the pack. Maybe, maybe, maybe top half of the pack about maybe fifth or sixth match. And I just remember the energy getting sucked out of the the whole crowd, the whole piece of real estate just kind of started to go silent. Was that middle of the day kind of middle of the middle of, like, you’re making the turn or was it later in the back nine, probably two thirds into the day, I would say the last matches were making the turn. Justin Rose hadn’t done his thing against Phil yet, but something, you know, the match, things were turning and I remember looking around to my caddie, Kenny, and I was like, whoa, that’s something is happening here. You know, we I think we were a couple down. So, you know, I’m in grind mode trying to win my match, you know? But like, you could just feel you could feel the, you know, the whole place. The whole place. Just the life just was going out of the crowd and that, that, that the noise was just changing. And yeah, that noise is the noise. Can you tell a difference? Obviously I imagine a us one hole you could easily tell, but was there enough of cheers throughout the course that you could tell that, hey, I know the life got sucked out of the place, but could you hear the European chants throughout the golf course at times? Were there enough fans to at least give you an idea that that that you got some support out there? Yeah. I mean, you know, it was more of a murmur, right? You know, the European crowds kind of murmur. And, you know, the US fans cheer when you’re in American soil, so you can tell a difference between a European and an American putt, you know, and, you know, going back to 2010, when I’m in the last match with Mahan at Celtic Manor and Rickie Fowler birdies the last three holes against Edoardo Molinari, and I’m on the 16th fairway and I can hear the American murmurs coming back from the 18th fairway. And we were like, oh, that does not sound good. Because, you know, you you could just tell. And I guess that day at Medinah, you could tell that it was European stuff. It was European momentum. And the crowd felt it like early, you know, they felt it with about certainly 5 or 6 holes to go, you know, with multiple matches still on the golf course that, you know, you could feel the atmosphere changing. It was it was pretty incredible. When you’re in that anchor anchor position at Celtic Manor the year prior. And of course, you just talked about Rory, you know, flipping the match in front of you. You know, you’re in that spot for a reason. Did that captain who was the captain at Celtic Manor that year? Montgomery? Colin did he did he tell you heading into that day? Graham, I want you as the anchor. I want you to be the guy to be able, if we need you, that I’m going to be able to rely on as the captain come up to you and tell you all that, or you just kind of find out when the pairings come out of where, where you’re going to be placed. Yeah. I mean, I think different captains communicate themselves in different ways. I mean, some captains will, you know, McGinley in 2014 told me. Victor and I and myself, one our alternate shot match on Friday afternoon and we hadn’t played well in the betterball in the morning, so I figured we were going straight back out Saturday morning. And McGinley told me that I wasn’t going to be playing Saturday morning. I was going to play foursome Saturday afternoon, but he wanted to keep me fresh because he wanted me to lead the team off on Sunday. So like, I was disappointed because I wanted to get back on the golf course Saturday morning. But then all of a sudden he goes to me, but this is why I’m doing it, because I want you ready for Sunday morning to lead Europe off. And I was like, wow. But Montgomerie was a little bit more like he put me in 12th and he told me afterwards why he did it. And you know, he’s like, well, you’re a US open champion. I need a street fighter out last. And that’s just the end and that’s what you’re doing. Okay. I was like, all right. I remember being super off. I was off because I want to say we had we had a decent lead going into the singles. I think we might have been three and a half. I think it was three and a half points is what I read, or 3 or 3 and a half is what Google was telling me. Yeah, okay. So we had a decent lead, right? Not not quite the ten six but just a half point or not. So you know we you know, so when I’m playing 12th I’m like off. I’m like I’m going to miss all the fun here. These boys are going to be up in front. It’s going to be all over. I did that once in Valhalla. I hated it, but obviously little did I know that. You know, it obviously end up coming down to our game, so I ended up having all the fun. They have Boise State, they have Arkansas, they have USC. There’s no shot. And Purdue, those are the only big games that they have the rest of the way. They’re not getting back into the College Football Playoff. They’re not I don’t care if they’ve won ten straight when they lost to NIU. No way. No care what happens the rest of the season. They can’t get in. Who was in the college football championship. But they had more wins at some point I don’t care. They lost to NIU Sports grids College football today. I need a mental break when the season was over, like, because it’s a lot, it’s a lot. You get tired of training. But man, I never get tired of playing golf, I love it. I mean, every course is different, every day is different. And you like some days you’re like, oh, I got this, I got it. Then you go out there and shoot a 95. The next day, I’m like, damn, the smiley show. Only on Sports Grid. I mean, I think so you talk about how difficult it is to bring an expansion team into the league and have success in your first season. Like, that’s fairly unheard of. And not only have success, but they’re in the playoffs. So I think she certainly deserves to win coach of the year. There’s a lot of different candidates that could potentially you could make a case for him. But I think just with this being an expansion team and how difficult that is, betting above the rim only on sports grid. It was nice to see that even though they couldn’t follow the same blueprint as last season, or just the way that everyone thought their offense was going to run this year. Josh Jacobs struggled and Jordan Love stepped up. And if you’re a Packer fan, that’s what you were hoping to see. Is that in the moments where you can’t rely on the run, can the quarterback that you invested a lot of lot of money into now, draft capital, putting weapons around him rise to the occasion. And he did
