FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Sometimes a captain makes a weird call. A gut decision. Something that doesn’t really make sense on paper, but maybe makes sense in vibes.
Jimmy Walker knows it well. Yes, that Jimmy Walker — the two-time Ryder Cupper who was in Manhattan on Thursday night as the speaking guest at a Ryder Cup party. We chatted at the bar for a few minutes, just enough time for me to ask him something I’ve long wanted to bring up.
“Remember in 2016,” I began, “when Davis Love paired you up with Zach Johnson in foursomes?”
The pairing made little analytical sense — even if Walker won the PGA Championship a month earlier — on a stretched-out Hazeltine, to have the short-hitting Johnson hitting a bunch of tee shots and longer irons.
“Yeah,” Walker said, bringing his mind back to that week. “We were surprised by it.”
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It happens! But these statistical mistakes are the figurative creaking of the door opening a little bit wider for your opponent to bust through. And they happen to the American side far more than the analytically-minded Europeans, who employ Edoardo Molinari — a data-obsessed player in his own right — as an assistant captain to build nearly every pairing.
So it was not surprising at all when the Europeans trotted out their eight best golfers Friday morning in basically the most-optimal pairings possible. The Americans weren’t too far behind, save for one pairing in particular. Going out third, against top five players in Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood, Keegan Bradley paired Harris English and Collin Morikawa.
It was an obvious experience play — Bradley electing to sit all three of his Ryder Cup rookies and lean on a duo who played well during the last domestic Cup in Wisconsin. But when it comes to the data behind the current form of English and Morikawa, it was the literal least-optimal pairing, according to DataGolf.
We’re not talking Ah, I woulda gone another direction. We’re talking 132nd out of 132 possible pairings. DataGolf gave English-Morikawa a 34.7% chance of winning, the lowest of any of the first session matches.
And it lived up to that billing.
McIlroy and Fleetwood won the 1st with a birdie and never looked back. They birdied holes 4 thru 6 to win three more. English and Morikawa didn’t make an alternate-shot birdie until the 9th, at which point they were already 5 down. The match would end about one hour later, with Europe winning 5 and 4.
So, Captain Bradley, remind us why you made that call?
“Collin Morikawa is one of the best ball-strikers in the world,” Bradley said when he made his picks. “So is Harris. Harris is an incredible putter. We really felt like they complemented each other. They have similar demeanors and they really like each other and they are extreme competitors. They relish the opportunity to play together.”
He’s not wrong about any of that. But this event is chewed up with hindsight like nothing else in the sport. And when you lean against the analytics, you crack open that door to criticism. According to DataGolf, Team Europe’s pairings were optimized to within one one-hundredth of a stroke, and after one session, they’re leading on foreign soil.
And given all that, there’s still a very important thing to remember. When you pair two top-five players in the world against two top-30 players in the world, the numbers won’t whisper. They’ll shout, probably a lot louder than these pros want them to. But they won’t be nearly as loud as those numbers that eventually take over the leaderboard.
The funny part about that 2016 match for Jimmy Walker and Zach Johnson was Europe’s data analysts rejoiced at the sight of that pairing that week. And about 15 hours later, they were met with one of the truisms of match-play golf at the highest level.
Walker and Johnson won handily, 4 and 2.
