[KC_Connection]

Originally Posted by Joe Posnanski

I’m saying that without sarcasm – it seems probable to me that American players will only respond to a nice guy captain. That’s fine, but then you don’t hire Watson. He’s not a nice guy, not in that way. And that’s what I mean when I say that they really didn’t want him as captain. Mickelson’s record coming into this the Ryder Cup was 11-17-6. That’s spectacularly bad for a player of Mickelson’s skills. Look at the Ryder Cup records of other players with at least five major championships (winning percentage in parentheses):

• Arnold Palmer: 22-8-3 (71.2%)

• Tom Watson: 10-4-1 (70%)

• Lee Trevino: 17-7-6 (66.6%)

• Jack Nicklaus: 17-8-3 (66.0%)

• Seve Ballesteros: 20-12-5 (60.8%)

• Nick Faldo: 23-19-4 (54.3%)

• Tiger Woods: 13-17-3 (43.9%)

• Phil Mickelson: 13-18-6 (43.2%)

From this, you might determine that Mickelson is the problem and not the solution (ditto for Tiger). You would think the PGA of America brought in Watson to deal with the issues of the recent generation of great American golfers, not cater to their whims. Watson likes Mickelson (or did before the Ryder Cup, don’t know about now) but his job was to try and pull a major upset and win a Ryder Cup in Europe. Mickelson has never been on a team that has done that. The thought had to be that Watson would change things.

But the team wasn’t ready for Watson. They didn’t respond to Watson. They didn’t want a captain like Watson. Mickelson’s passive-aggressive rant after the United States' overwhelming loss about Paul Azinger’s magical pod system was a perfect summary of events. The U.S. just got its butts kicked all over Scotland, and this guy’s talking nonsense about pods.

http://www.golfchannel.com/news/joe-...tain-it-hired/