If You Watch The Ryder Cup Singles Re-Airing...
...from 4-9 ET Tuesday on Golf Channel, watch the moments immediately after Martin Kaymer sinks the winning putt and pay special attention.
We'll talk about it on Wednesday, class. There might even be a pop quiz.
Meanwhile, historian Cliff Schrock of Golf Digest posed this in a GolfDigest.com column Monday:
But an opportunity was missed for the European team to have a double victory at Medinah. If the final match was allowed to end with a halve on 18 for a Woods victory and 14-14 tie, it would have demonstrated that Ryder's code of fairness has stayed foremost among the minds of players and captains. The Europeans would have demonstrated a respect for the effort and huge advantage the Americans had made to go into Sunday with a 10-6 lead. A tie would have given the home crowd and madly supportive Chicago-area crowd a kiss on the cheek for how much they made the event a success with their financial backing. It would have been a "thank you" to the state trooper who made sure time-zone confused Rory McIlroy didn't miss his tee time.
And the tie would have followed some notable gestures of its kind, such as Jack Nicklaus' famous concession in 1969 with Tony Jacklin, which ensured an overall tie, and, quite interestingly, something that occurred in 1999, the year a team -- the Americans -- first came back from a 10-6 deficit to win.
Monday, October 1, 2012 at 11:38 PM
Reader Comments (31)
They should also pay homage to Nicklaus for the chance to have magic moments like this.
I believe he was a prime mover in making the format how it is today.
No more moaning about Brookline. This is the opinion of a neutral (jealous one!) from down under.
Stephen
No golfer on the planet gives his opponent a putt longer than his own which gives his opponent the win. Even when playing golf to cement a business relationship or influence a business decision no one gives a putt to lose on the 18th.
Molinari was under orders so it was not his prerogative to manipulate the match to make the score a nice and friendly 14-14.
He did the right thing.
Focusing on this is, to borrow words from Tony Jacklin in today's quote, is sour grapes.
cant be much wrong with letting a match finish and wanting to win outright.
what is wrong is running around a green where play is still going on.
euros had to deal with people shouting on their backswing, shouting geting in the water, laughing at bad shots. thats not right, and harder to deal with than what tiger had to.
Obviously everyone is comparing Nicklaus and Jacklin but Nicklaus conceeded for a half. He was happy to share his match. If that option had been open to Molinari he might have taken it but instead he would have had to give his match away. Does anyone think Nicklaus would done the same just to manufacture a draw? In addition, Nicklaus was the undisputed best player in the world with a hat full of Ryder Cup points. Molinari is grinder, struggling for points, who had played the modern great of the game to a chance of victory after being hammered the previous year. Put it another way, I'm sure I don't have the same charitable record as Bill Gates.
I was corrected in thinking that Stewarts concession had been for half - it actually was for a loss - but in any event I don't think its comparable. When Stewart made his concession, the US had already won outright so the concession had nothing to do with allowing a draw - it was purely a reaction to the crowd treatment of Monty. While Stewart is to be congratulated on the gesture, it's a bit of reach to argue it as any kind of precedent for Molinari.
Finally, does anyone still really want to see teams manufacturing draws? In the 70's the Ryder Cup was in danger of becoming irrelevant and the balance of golfing power was never in doubt. That is the context in which a game UK & I team got a pat on the head from a great player. It's a real competition now and is the better for it.
The context was very different in 69, and the putt was NOT very long (it's grown like a lost fish over the years in the retelling of the tale), and Jacklin at THAT time (not a few years later) was a fearless and brilliant putter.
It was a great gesture because it was Jack Nicklaus, playing for a US team that had been utterly dominant for so long. He, (and maybe Hogan, Tiger, Arnie), is allowed the element of condescension that comes with conceding ANYTHING other than a tap in. In the end, what causes bad feeling is when players expect to be conceded from 2 and 3 feet when they know they might miss. If it's a tap in then tap it in. If not, make it or miss it, and if it's the latter then you only have yourself to blame.
Plus, I think it would be very hard to look at Tiger and say "Good-good?", either on fairway or green. Now, after he missed his putt, Tiger says that he didn't care. But his whole persona over the years with playing partners has been that if you offer him good-good he'll throw it back in your face and call you a pussy.
Just play it out with a smile unfussily, with a smile on your face, and shake hands.
End of!
In an earlier thread I argued that the decision to concede is defined by unique circumstances (and that 18th hole was a unique circumstance) but that a mid day 16-7 thumping-in-the-making should not terminate the matches. I've changed my mind. The nature of match play almost guarantees the Ryder cup goes very deep into singles day. If a team is getting trounced that so bad that
ten golfers are left on the course, stop the pretense of some bygone days, put it out of its misery, pick up the balls and let the party begin.
Somehow the narrative has gone from "wouldn't it have been wonderful" if Nicklaus' gesture had been repeated (missing the point that it couldn't have been repeated) to it being "ugly" that it wasn't. By turning Nicklaus gesture into some sort of required action, you actually diminish it.
There is no right to a concession and can be no expectation of one. And the first rule of matchplay is you can't whine about not being conceeded a putt if you go and miss the damn thing.
It works perfectly well.
If you don't have the cup you have to WIN it back.
If have the same points the match is a tie and the holder retains it.
If you have more points you WIN.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
the 18th. Maybe Geoff was correct in naming it the Kumbaya Cup earlier in the week. Or maybe they should have conceded and renamed it the Candy-Ass Cup. Europe did proper.
Let Nicklaus in 1969 stand alone.
We don't even have an agreement here on how it should have been done.
My opinion is to have ended it and let the party begin~ Molinari is a grown man- he should have done what he wanted to do and not bow to Joseph and Mary, whom he will never oowe any allegience(sp) to, but he will have to live with his own feelings forever. And it mattered not what TW had done. TW has his own personal agenda, and while he certainly appeared to have been more of a team player here than ever before, he could have made a gesture as well.
John
However, if you are playing a competition and the other team score more points than you then you played for the losing team.
Hard, but fair.