Sutton could not get stars to coalesce

Ryder Cup Analysis: So, for the Americans, what went wrong? Everything should have favoured them: five major winners on their team, to none on the European team; positions on the world rankings stacked top-heavy their way, and a US Open-style home course - one, supposedly, that would leave the visitors licking their wounds - to boot. The odds should have benefited them at Oakland Hills.

Yet, as we all know, golf - apart from Ryder Cup weeks - is an inherently selfish sport and the biggest problem for the United States team is they simply didn't get the team message until it was too late. As one of America's favourite sporting sons, Casey Stengel, a baseball Hall-of-Fame inductee and known as "The Old Professor" when he moved from playing to managing the New York Yankees, once observed, "Gettin' good players is easy, getting them to play together is the hard part."

Unfortunately for Hal Sutton, he didn't get his men to play together. For two days, they didn't play as a team. More often than not, the body language between his players in foursomes and fourballs was that of players who'd been introduced as strangers to each other on the first tee and, at that, had little confidence in what the other was doing.

Before a ball in the 35th Ryder Cup was hit in anger, worrying signs had emerged about the US preparations. While Bernhard Langer put out his men in structured pairings in the practice rounds, Sutton left his players to their own devices. One morning Tiger Woods wanted to play early and the only player ready to go out with him was Chris DiMarco, so they played a two-ball. The same day (Wednesday), Phil Mickelson - who had done the unthinkable and changed his equipment two weeks before the event - decided he wouldn't play a practice round at all, preferring to rest.

Then, the next day, US captain Sutton handed Mickelson a couple of sleeves of Tiger Woods's golf balls and told him to head over to the North Course to practise. When he'd been given the job of captain, apparently, Sutton immediately decided - on leaving the PGA of America offices - that he would pair Mickelson and Woods together. As he said at the opening ceremony, "history demands it."

By Friday evening, he was to learn why no previous Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup captain had paired them together in the past. They were dysfunctional, simply not compatible to playing team golf together. But they weren't alone. Most of the other Americans too were struggling to demonstrate adequate team spirit. It was apparent that each of the Europeans had bonded, even consulting each other on yardages and lines on the greens. The Americans were playing as individuals. That was fine for yesterday's singles, but the damage had been done in formats where it is vital to gel.

Ironically, when you would imagine that hindsight would have aided him, Sutton - on Friday night - was still insisting that he'd prepared as he thought right. "To be honest with you, no," he replied when asked if he thought his team should have practised more foursomes and fourballs rather than preparing as individuals, the way they would in the week of a major.

In truth, Sutton appeared to adopt a superior attitude from the start, believing that his men - obviously ranked ahead of the Europeans - would be able to play their own games and win out.

It didn't tun out that way, and rather than focusing entirely on the inadequacies of the American play once the Ryder Cup started, it should be recognised that the Europeans, without any real world stars, played by far the better golf.

As Padraig Harrington pointed out, "the depth in Europe has been growing. We haven't had the stars maybe in the last couple of years that we had when we were winning majors, but the young guys coming through are very strong.

"We are still missing the guys winning the majors, and we're putting ourselves under a lot of pressures to follow in the footsteps of the Faldos, the Seves and Bernhards. When you look back, we had so many great players in the 70s, 80s and 90s and there is a whole continent of pressure on us when we turn up at majors and obviously we're not performing once there. But give us time. It will happen."

That sort of confidence wasn't just confined to Harrington over the three days. It could be found all through the ranks. Okay, so they haven't won majors, but many have contended and, also, there was complete trust in Langer. That belief in Langer went as far as listening to him on the tee when he suggested what club should be played, or what part of the green they should aim to.

Unfortunately for Hal Sutton, that same confidence didn't seem apparent from his team. As the legendary baseball player Babe Ruth once said, "The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the team won't be worth a dime."

That observation may have been made years ago, and have been totally unrelated to golf - but, this time, it hit the nail on the head. The United States played as individual units; the Europeans played as a team. That was the difference.