What makes a good Ryder Cup captain? For American chief Keegan Bradley and European counterpart Luke Donald, the next few days will be an examination of their ability to lead.
Here are four areas that are key to a successful guardianship of golf's most coveted managerial position.
MOTIVATION
As team captain, it’s your duty to inspire, to arouse that sense of patriotism that makes a player want to say "today, I feel European."
Forging that unbeatable spirit is key. Just ask Tony Jacklin.
In 1975, when leading the then Great Britain & Ireland team, he summoned his inner Maximus Decimus Meridius when stating "If we win, then we ought to be knighted."
A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man and with fire in their bellies, GB&I went on to lose 21-11.
Jacklin’s quote may have lowered expectations 50 years ago, but it did play a part in the competition’s survival.
Back then it was a turkey shoot for the Americans, but with US great Jack Nicklaus pleading the case, the opposition's pick was extended to Europe from 1979 onwards with Jacklin overseeing a continental renaissance that is credited with the Ryder Cup’s endurance.
Nicklaus’ sportsmanship was famed by that stage – his putt concession to Jacklin in 1969 remains one of sport’s most famed acts of honour even to this day – but 'the Golden Bear’ could deliver a good motivational quote too.
The 1983 Ryder Cup was finely poised after two days of action with the teams splitting 16 points evenly at PGA National in Florida.
Set in the era of American dominance, Nicklaus delivered a final message to his players before Sunday’s singles that left them in no doubt of what was expected.
"I will not be the first captain to blow this thing. Now you guys show me some brass."
They showed it too, winning 14.5 to 13.5 with Lanny Wadkins providing the pivotal moment as he hit a wedge – a lightning bolt illuminating the sky as it was in the air - to less than three feet on the last against Jose Maria Cañnzares
"He needs a wheelbarrow to carry his brass around," Nicklaus remarked afterwards.
The wheelbarrow has lasted the distance, Wadkins saying in the lead-up to Bethpage Black that "sometimes I think the Europeans are just a bunch of wusses and can’t handle the heat."
TEAM BONDING
One of a captain’s greatest tasks is picking the pairings.
This is no easy task, and many in the chair have deliberated for months over their decisions, looking at how differing temperaments and styles will compliment each other.
It’s a balancing act, a real act of skill that can make or break your stewardship.
A gentle touch is required, unless you’re Hal Sutton who went for the nuclear option in 2004 of putting Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson together for Team USA’s disastrous showing on home soil at Oakland Hills.
Woods and Mickelson’s relationship status differs on who you listen to, but it’s clear it’s a case of different shades of green as far as ‘Lefty’ is concerned anyway given how Woods caught up with his success and left it in a trail of dust by the time both had left their peak.
Green, as it happens, was where their feud is believed to have originated with Mickelson winning a practice round between the two, and being a bit too boisterous with the $500 dollars pocketed.
In the decades after, the adjective most used by commentators to describe their relationship has been "frosty" so Sutton’s decision to put them together for Thursday’s fourballs and foursomes was head-scratching at best. Idiotic might be more fitting.
Padraig Harrington and Colin Montgomerie, in the morning, and Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood were the beneficiaries as they banked two points for Team Europe. Woods and Mickelson would both pick up a point on Friday, but with different partners.
Mickelson would later accuse Sutton of putting them "in a position to fail" - not the last US captain to feel the sharp end of the six-time major champion's tongue. Just ask Tom Watson who had to grin and bear it as Mickelson ripped him to shreds as he sat beside him in the awfully awkward post-event press conference at Gleneagles in 2014.
At the other end of the scale, you can’t talk about Ryder Cup pairings without mentioning the iconic Spanish pairing of Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.
They played 15 games in each other's pockets and lost a grand total of two, winning 11 of those. Twelve points from a possible 15.
From their 1987 Friday 2&1 loss to Sutton and Tom Kite, they would go six years unbeaten as a partnership.
Other good European partnerships would include Bernhard Langer and Montgomerie (5-1-1) and Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood (4-1-2) while Mickelson showed he could be a team player with the right partner having earned a 4-1-0 record alongside this year’s American captain Bradley.
DELEGATION
The addition of vice-captains to Ryder Cup teams is a relatively new phenomenon having officially first happened at Brookline in 1999, one of the most famed editions of the competition given the behaviour of the Americans on the course and their fans off it.
For the record, USA’s vice-captains were Bill Rogers and Bruce Lietzke with European captain Mark James selecting Ken Brown and Sam Torrance.
Prior to ‘99, there were unofficial vice-captains with Bernard Gallacher regularly acting as Jacklin’s right-hand man while in ‘97 Miguel Angel Jimenez was a de facto number two.
This year there will be a bloated roster of 10 vice-captains dotted around the course, Webb Simpson, Brandt Snedeker, Kevin Kisner, Jim Furyk, and Gary Woodland for the hosts and Thomas Bjorn, Alex Noren, brothers Francesco and Edoardo Molinari and Olazábal for the Europeans. The younger of the Molinaris (Francesco, in case you’re wondering) is having his buggy driven by none other than Gianfranco Zola this week.
What do these vice-captains add? Well, that’s a pretty good question actually.
Speaking on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show, Pádraig Harrington revealed how captain Paul McGinley had made it very clear that he was the man in charge and if Harrington had any ideas for the players, he had to go through McGinley first.
"He mightn’t have selected me only we’re friends," he said of the dynamic.
For so long, vice-captains were the butt of the joke, disparagingly referred to as the cart drivers ("driving those things isn’t as easy as everyone thinks," Gallagher once said).
Now the vice-captains have their own cart drivers and these just happen to be footballing legends.
A Ryder Cup captain can only be in one place at one time, so the five deputies provide an extension all over the course and it’s becoming increasingly clear that they are being picked for their ability to read the moods and body language of the players.
Nicolas Colsaerts, who speaks five languages, was highly praised by captain Donald and a number of players for his vice-captaincy in Rome two years ago. This time, he missed the cut and admitted his disappointment at the decision.
Delegation isn’t always easy.
A GOOD BREAK ROOM
If you want your employees to work hard then treat them right when they have some down time.
Ryder Cup captains have famously been pernickety about the set-ups they enter and some go to extreme measures to make sure they can enhance productivity.
McGinley wanted European coloured fish in the European rec room (emperor angelfish we're guessing), Montgomerie had five-foot beds replaced with six-foot ones in Celtic Manor to help his players sleep while sporting minds like Alex Ferguson, Ben Stokes and, yes, Jim McGuinness have been sought out for their expertise.
On the American side, company seems to be a big thing. In Mickelson’s famed destruction of Watson in that press conference, he praised previous captain Paul Azinger’s pod policy with Ray Floyd shadowing ‘Lefty’ during the event.
Unsurprisingly, battle cries have formed part of their preparations too with then US President elect George W Bush giving a rallying call. With Donald Trump expected to visit on Friday, there’s likely to be another White House intervention.
Follow live updates on The Ryder Cup with rte.ie/sport and the RTÉ News app
