FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — You’ve heard the Einstein quote before: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It was impossible not to think of it on Saturday night when Keegan Bradley trotted out the same foursomes pairing—Harris English and Collin Morikawa—that had proved so confusing the night before, since Data Golf had it as the worst possible American foursomes pairing of 132 options.
On Friday morning, their match against Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy played out largely as the analytics would have predicted, with an easy 5-and-4 victory for the Europeans. The concept of Bradley doing it again was so outrageous that several of us in the media joked about it … and then he did it.
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Now, to understand the absurdity of this decision, you have to also understand the wider context of the Bethpage Ryder Cup. For the first time since 2004, a home team will trail after the first day, and while the margin, 5½-2½, is not yet insurmountable, it is extremely dangerous for the Americans. It is imperative that they not lose another session, but that in itself is a big problem, because Luke Donald’s Europeans have constructed a foursomes lineup so fearsome that it has all the characteristics of a firewall. And it’s tough, if not impossible, to imagine the Americans breaking through on Saturday morning when they face it again.
Jon Rahm is now 5-0 in his career in foursomes. Tommy Fleetwood is the same. Rahm pairs with Hatton, and the two are 3-0 in their time together in the format. Fleetwood pairs with McIlroy, and those two have the same 3-0 record in foursomes dating to Rome. So does Ludvig Aberg, who won twice in Rome with Viktor Hovland and teamed with an outrageously strong Matt Fitzpatrick to win again Friday at Bethpage. (Those three victories all concluded before the 16th hole.)
Hovland will play on Saturday morning with Robert MacIntyre, and they were the only group to lose on Friday in foursomes, and it took 18 holes from the American team of Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay to do it.
“We do a little bit of profiling,” Donald said of his process. “So we look at people’s general characteristics and how they match up. I think that’s important with foursomes, especially. But, also, I’ve got to give a lot of credit to Edoardo [Molinari, a vice captain]. I think he’s so switched on statistic-wise. Probably out of all the vice captains, he’s the one I talk to the most just because he really has a big part of our strategy and how we go about the pairing, the orders. He’s very tuned in to that stuff.”
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The teams he and Molinari created are all back Friday morning, and if they can extend the lead to four points with a session victory, or to five points with another 3-1 win, the Ryder Cup itself is almost lost for the Americans. It was incumbent on Bradley to adjust and do everything in his power to pierce the firewall, hold on for dear life, and hope to make up ground in the afternoon fourball session.
And what did he do? Most egregiously, he brought back English and Morikawa, and as if the golf gods were punishing him for the decision, they were paired yet again against the Fleetwood and McIlroy team that thrashed them on Friday. When questioned, Bradley’s explanation felt unsatisfactory, to say the least.
“We have a plan of what we’re going to do,” he said. “They beat us today, but you know, we’re really comfortable with our plan. We’re really comfortable with those two players … and we’re sticking to our plan. We’re not going to panic. We’re not going to panic and make those sort of mistakes.”
To be fair to Bradley, there are examples of Ryder Cup captains sticking to a plan in the face of early setbacks—Thomas Bjorn maintaining his foursomes lineup in Paris despite trailing 3-1 after Friday morning, for instance—but none where the evidence against staying with the plan was so overwhelming. This, instead, feels like stubbornness at best, and egregious mismanagement at worst.
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The Morikawa-English reprise is the headline here, but there are other questionable elements, such as the return of Russell Henley, who struggled mightily Friday morning, and the exclusion of Justin Thomas (poor in the morning, but very good in the afternoon, with loads of Ryder Cup experience under his belt) and J.J. Spaun.
(It has to be mentioned, too, that part of Bradley’s problem in picking his Friday foursomes lineup was his insistence on not playing any of the team’s four rookies other than Henley until the afternoon. That philosophy only makes sense if you don’t look too closely, because while, sure, you don’t expose them to the first session nerves, their first match will be nerve-wracking whenever it takes place. And you know what’s more anxiety-provoking than playing your first ever match Friday morning in the first session? Playing your first match down 3-1, when there’s so much more pressure to win.)
Sticking to a plan, as Bradley put it, is fine until the situation becomes so desperate that you need to do otherwise. The Mike Tyson quote comes to mind: “Everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face.” The situation Friday night is punch-in-the-face desperate and is exacerbated by Donald’s foursome firewall waiting on Saturday morning. The time to make a change was then, and Bradley failed the test.
Golf is a funny game, and Ryder Cup matches are the ultimate small sample size, so, sure, things could go his way in the morning, and the Americans could pull off a miracle. Morikawa and English could even beat the super team of McIlroy and Fleetwood. But it’s my suspicion that this series of compounding decisions, coming up against Europe’s superior preparation, means that the Cup will be effectively over by noon on Saturday.
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