The Captain Myth by Richard Gillis

Author:Richard Gillis
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Chapter 11

The Big Mo

Mark James first felt it about two hours in.

The final day’s singles matches were progressing and the European captain was walking between holes, making notes on club selections as his players passed through the two par 3s on Brookline’s front nine, the second and seventh holes.

His assistants Ken Brown and Sam Torrance were keeping tabs on the other groups, picking up information on clubbing and green speeds that could be relayed back to the later starters. The wind had changed, altering the nature of the course, playing havoc with club selection. Over the first two days Lee Westwood and Darren Clarke had chosen to hit 3-irons into the seventh green. On Sunday the hole was downwind, and in his opening singles match against Tom Lehman, Westwood had gone with a 7-iron.

These changes duly noted, James wandered back down the course to pick up Jesper Parnevik’s match against David Duval. The pair were playing the par-4 fourth hole, and the Swedish player was deliberating over his approach, talking it over with his caddie, Lance Ten Broeck.

James looked beyond the players to the large leaderboard on the other side of the fairway. It was ‘painting a picture I didn’t care for’ said James, in his trademark tone of wry understatement. ‘There was a sea of USA red, and it was not my favourite colour . . . we were rapidly going under, and nobody seemed to be throwing any lifejackets our way.’ The madness had begun.

3 and 2

4 and 2

4 and 3

6 and 5

3 and 2

5 and 4

To its advocates, this is what momentum looks like.

These numbers represent the scores of the first six Sunday singles matches at Brookline in 1999, all of which went America’s way. Over the course of five hours Tom Lehman beat Lee Westwood, Hal Sutton won against Darren Clarke, Phil Mickelson outclassed Jarmo Sandelin, Davis Love thrashed Jean Van de Velde, Tiger Woods beat Andrew Coltart and David Duval overcame Jesper Parnevik.

Tom Lehman recalled the exhilaration of that afternoon: ‘You had to have seen the scoreboard. It was all red. And not just red but big red. It was 1 up, 2 up, 3 up, 4 up in every match. All red. Duval was 4 up, 5 up, 6 up. Davis was 5 up, 6 up. It was a whuppin’.’

The session set Mark James’s Bad Captain story in stone as the man who got on the wrong side of momentum, sport’s most mysterious force. Since that afternoon in 1999, momentum has been elevated to the single most discussed area of Ryder Cup strategy. It is one of the first questions asked at every press conference, and underpins many of the captain’s decisions, from team order and pairings, to wildcard selection and even course set-up. Everyone wants to know who has got it, how to get it if you haven’t got it, and what to do if it’s coming straight at you.

The short version of the Brookline story is a mirror image of the four-point turnaround witnessed in 2012 at Medinah.

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