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Is the Presidents Cup better way to decide matches than the Ryder Cup? | sports

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Is the Presidents Cup better way to decide matches than the Ryder Cup?

IIf you ask Paul McGinley, Ernie Els’s biggest captaincy mistake in the 2019 Presidents Cup in Melbourne came on Saturday night as he was preparing to decide his singles lineup the next day. With a 10-8 lead that could have been greater, the captain of the internationals chose to keep some of his best and most experienced players until the end of the line-up, it seemed that if the game was a close match overall, he would have his champion. Ready for tense closing moments. Els kept some of his strength up front, but threw some of his less experienced and less successful players into the fray into early positions.

This surprised McGinley as he was impressed with the way the Els picked early power in his formations over the first four sessions. Why does Sunday deviate?

“It wasn’t for me to go and tell Ernie what to do,” McGinley said in a 2020 interview, “but if he had come to me for advice, that’s what he should have done… The way to beat America should you go to them.” Early in the first couple of days while they’re so far behind and not used to the golf course.You need to build a big lead and you need to pump your best players in the first couple of days.He almost did that I think he could have killed him [Sunday] The way the team laid out in the first few days.”

McGinley’s theory, borne out by experience, is that the psychological impact of putting points on the board early in the session is worth more to the team than saving your best players for late games.

Here’s where things get tricky: If the Presidents’ Cup used the same system as the Ryder Cup to set up pairs—that is, a blind tie where both captains set their order without knowing what the other was doing—then Ellis might have done exactly that. The fact that the Chiefs Cup is different, where the captain uses an alternate snake draft method where one captain takes out a team or player, the other captain responds and then puts in his next player/team, and so forth, creates a very different dynamic.

As it happened, Els put Abraham Unser first, and even though Unser was strong that week, he set up a tough matchup with Tiger Woods that probably took Els off his mind. Then, he basically sacrificed CT Pan and Hoatong Li when he put Tiger (wearing the captain’s cap) Patrick Reed and Dustin Johnson into third and fourth. Suffice it to say that the day played out terribly for the foreigners, as the Americans won by 31/2 points in the first four games. This killed the momentum on the course and silenced the crowd, eventually eliminating Internationals veterans such as Scott, Mark Leishman and Louis Oosthuizen at the back of the line-up, who were unable to arrive as Els had envisioned.

It was a great showcase of the differences between the two methods of setting up matches, and the effects they can have on the course. Go deep enough into this, and it’s easy to come to the conclusion that these different systems not only produce different strategies, but also different results.

Is the Presidents Cup better way to decide matches than the Ryder Cup?

In Ryder Cup, there’s magic in two separate formations that are built into the confines of team rooms, then brought together in a convincing discovery of who to play from.

In the Presidents’ Cup, there’s the palpable drama of the captains and their lieutenants sitting on opposite sides of the dias, huddle and whisper as they engage in a head-to-head game of wit and out teams as if they are issuing – and responding to – challenges.

Which is better? As the younger brother of the more famous Ryder Cup, the Presidents Cup is often given a bit of faint praise: in this respect, allowing interaction between captains in setting up matches, they surpass the older event. Certain times, especially when watching back and forth, it’s easy to agree. Kevin Kisner is the one who prefers the President’s Cup style.

“I think going back and forth is a great way,” Kessner said, “because then you can see if some players want to play against other players, and you can get a little chip on your shoulder. If they serve against you when you first post, they obviously want to they disagree with you.”

Fellow American Tony Finau explained that it opens up opportunities for back-channel communication between players and captains if someone is keen to play against a particular opponent.

To really compare the two methods, the best sources are the Americans who held leadership positions in both events.

“You have to kind of change your frame of mind,” said Zack Johnson, who served as an assistant in both formats and will captain the American Ryder Cup team next year in Rome. “The bottom line is: depending on what we’re doing this afternoon, you control who you knock out two or three times on Thursday and Friday, and then you control four games on Saturday and six on Sunday. That’s different from the Ryder Cup.”

His point was that your influence can be halved in the Presidents Cup – you may be blind to the opponent’s machinations in the Ryder Cup, but you also don’t have to react to what they do.

Despite this, both Johnson and Steve Stricker were adamant that they did not favor any one method over another. Stricker was a leader in both events, and he truly believes that team strategy isn’t too different between the two formats.

“I feel like it’s the same every year,” he said. “We’ve reached that point.

This is why you see better team results from USA Golf because it has become more consistent from team to team. From the player stats that we use, from the pairs, to the communication with the players, it all becomes more consistent, I think, than each team.”

In the end, it’s hard not to agree with Johnson, who simply values ​​diversity.

“I think the beauty of our cups is that they are different,” he said. “I think that’s the unique thing.” –Golf Digest

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