One of the more infamous moments in recent Ryder Cup history came in 2014 when Phil Mickelson responded to a question in the press conference about why the US had struggled so much since winning at Valhalla six years earlier.
The US side had just been beaten for the third consecutive Ryder Cup, with Europe winning 16.5-11.5 at Gleneagles. It was certainly the most comfortable win Europe had had since 2006.
Immediately, it led to questions about the decision to appoint Tom Watson as US captain. Watson was, by a reasonable distance, the oldest skipper in the event’s history. And what Watson did not need was for one of his own players to seemingly hang him out to dry as the dust was still settling.
But when Phil Mickelson spoke about the differences with 2008, he could not have been clearer about how much he enjoyed playing under Paul Azinger. It was telling that he did not mention Watson’s name once in his answer.
“There were two things that allow us to play our best I think that Paul Azinger did, and one was he got everybody invested in the process. He got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their pod, who — when they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod. In my case, we had Ray Floyd, and we hung out together and we were all invested in each other’s play. We were invested in picking Hunter that week; Anthony Kim and myself and Justin were in a pod, and we were involved on having Hunter be our guy to fill our pod. So we were invested in the process. And the other thing that Paul did really well was he had a great game plan for us, you know, how we were going to go about doing this. How we were going to go about playing together; golf ball, format, what we were going to do, if so-and-so is playing well, if so-and-so is not playing well, we had a real game plan. Those two things helped us bring out our best golf. And I think that, you know, we all do the best that we can and we’re all trying our hardest, and I’m just looking back at what gave us the most success. Because we use that same process in The Presidents Cup and we do really well. Unfortunately, we have strayed from a winning formula in 2008 for the last three Ryder Cups, and we need to consider maybe getting back to that formula that helped us play our best,” he said.
How Phil Mickelson behaved at the 2014 Ryder Cup before criticising Tom Watson
It was subsequently put to Mickelson that he had been particularly brutal on Watson’s leadership. But the six-time major champion insisted that that had not been his intention.
Mickelson’s popularity has certainly taken a real hit in recent years, particularly since his move to LIV Golf in 2022.
And after he faced the media ahead of that year’s US Open – the event where he made his return after missing The Masters and the PGA Championship – Brandel Chamblee suggested on Golf Channel what he had heard about how Mickelson had behaved at the Ryder Cup eight years earlier.
“Todd’s mentioned his run-ins with controversy and how he’s sort of evaded them in the media centre, but there’s one time where he didn’t really get away with it, and that was at the Ryder Cup when Paul McGinley over here was the captain for the winning side. And Phil Mickelson in the media centre that night, he tried to take down Tom Watson,” he said.
“He tried to blame Tom Watson for the US side losing when in fact as it comes to bear Phil Mickelson, at least in my view, and I’ve talked to players and heard some rumblings that he was corrupting that team from the inside out from the very beginning. If you remember that press conference when Phil was denigrating one of the greats of the game and blaming him for the loss, after he was finished, members of the media said, ‘how can you do such a thing? How can you denigrate your captain sitting here?’ And Phil said something to the effect of ‘how could you think that that’s what I meant?’ Almost incredulous that anyone would assume that that’s what he meant.
“So in that moment, you saw how Machiavellian he was, you saw how manipulative and you saw how insincere and disingenuous he was, because that’s exactly what he meant.”
How Tom Watson reacted to Phil Mickelson’s criticism after the 2014 Ryder Cup
Unsurprisingly, Watson was quickly asked about Mickelson’s comments about Azinger’s captaincy in that same press conference.
“I had a different philosophy as far as being a captain of this team. You know, it takes 12 players to win. It’s not pods. It’s 12 players. And I felt — I based my decisions on — yes, I did talk to the players, but my vice captains were very instrumental in making decisions as to whom to pair with,” he said.
“I had a different philosophy than Paul. I decided not to go that way. But I did have most of them play in the practise rounds together who played most of the time in the matches. I think that was the proper thing to do. Yes, I did mix-and-match a little bit from there, but again, you have to go with the evolution of the playing of the match and see who is playing the best and who to play with whom, and that’s what I did.”
It should be noted that Watson sat Mickelson out of the entire second day in Scotland. It was a controversial call given that Mickelson and Keegan Bradley were one of just two American pairings to win a match during the first day’s play.
Funnily enough, the scorelines were exactly the same one day later. USA won just two matches, and went into the Sunday singles 10-6 down and needing to replicate the Miracle at Medinah to win their first cup on European soil since 1993 – when Watson was captain.
The US team is still trying to figure out how to end that run. But it now looks highly unlikely that Mickelson will ever get the chance to try and succeed where Watson failed in 2014, with his move to LIV certainly tainting his legacy in the eyes of many.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
