Davis Love III Knows Sunday Heartbreak in Cup Play, But He Has a Different Plan Now - Sports Illustrated

The 2012 Ryder Cup will always sting for captain Davis Love III, but he's on the verge of winning the Presidents Cup behind a strong U.S. side.

Peter Casey/USA Today

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In a 30-second span on Saturday afternoon, the Internationals got an infusion of adrenaline, flipping two of the four four-ball matches and giving captain Trevor Immelman a chance in Sunday’s singles and potentially its second win in the Presidents Cup.

The first flip came when rookie Tom Kim made a right-to-left 10- footer for birdie, turning a tie into a win on the 18th hole for a full point instead of a half.

The second flip came when Cam Davis and Adam Scott were leading on the 18th hole, where Davis made a 9-footer for birdie and saving a 1-up victory, giving the Internationals a 3-1 session win and trimming a six-point lead at the beginning of the day to just four.

The significance of a four-point lead is not lost on American captain Davis Love III, whose Ryder Cup team owned a four-shot lead going into Sunday singles in 2012 at Medinah.

“Four points is four points,” Love said. “It's been a big number. I've been four behind before too. We've been four ahead, four behind. We've watched the Solheim Cup be four ahead. So, it's a magical number.”

None of those 12 players are on this USA team that lost 8.5 points in Sunday singles and the Ryder Cup 14.5 to 13.5, but three of the four assistant captains—Zach Johnson, Webb Simpson and Steve Stricker—did play for Love outside of Chicago in 2012 and Love’s fourth assistant captain, Fred Couples, served in the same position at Medinah.

After the loss there was plenty of second-guessing, but the biggest mistake that Love made was not front-loading the pairings, starting with Bubba Watson and Simpson in the first two matches. Both lost.

“We were pretty happy with 4 up and we never considered that they could carry that momentum all the way to that big a win,” Love said the week after the loss at Medinah.

Love would talk about how he made his picks that Saturday night before Sunday’s singles by asking every one of his players, except for Brandt Snedeker, where they wanted to play in the lineup.

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“You never know what would happen if you switched this or you switched that,” Love said in 2012. “Would it have been better if you went Tiger, Stricker, Furyk, all those guys first against their bigger names? Would Tiger intimidate Rory McIlroy or Poulter more than Keegan Bradley or ... but I didn't think anybody wanted any part of Bubba or Keegan Bradley the way they were playing. You go back and look at it, Bubba wasn't making quite as many birdies, but he was ... seemed like he was playing great.”

Love has had 10 years to simmer on what happened at Medinah and on Saturday night, with the help of Couples specifically and Johnson, Simpson and Stricker, the picks were more focused and calculated for maximum effect.

“There's a lot of similarities, but think we just feel real confident in our 12,” Stricker said of this team and the singles lineup. “I mean, from top to bottom, they're really strong and playing really well. And we took our time, we had some pairings there that we wanted to pair up against, and we got those. So, I think this is a little kick in the butt to our guys, saying 'hey, this isn't over yet.' You know, we all know there's been history of comebacks from far down.”

The first seven players are arguably the best the USA have on a team stacked with talent.

Starting are Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, 4-0 as a pair this week and clearly the hottest players on the U.S. side.

Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, Scottie Scheffler, Tony Finau and Xander Schauffele round out the top seven.

Cantlay and Schauffele succeeded in the first two sessions, but Saturday’s afternoon four-ball was a disappointing defeat for the U.S. when Kim made his clinching birdie.

“I usually give myself a little bit of time, I don't play very well pissed off,” Schauffele said on Saturday after his loss. “I play like a toddler when I'm pissed off. So, I play my best when I'm focused and, you know, very present. So, you know, use tonight, get rid of it, sit in an ice bath until I can't feel my body, and then I guarantee I won't be pissed off anymore.”

This is how Love wants the whole team to feel going into Sunday’s singles, mad and pissed off.

This was a different approach from going into Sunday singles in 2012, when it seemed more like a love-fest, rather than a mentality that there was still work to do.

“We did what we thought was best and what the guys wanted to do,” Love said then. “It all sounded good.”

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2022-09-25 01:41:35Z

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