Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods’ pairing at the 2004 Ryder Cup was one of the most infamous moments of the tournament’s history.
They were the faces of American humiliation, as Team USA lost 18.5-9.5 on home soil. Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods were paired together on Friday, losing both matches to leave the American team shellshocked.
There are several theories as to why this pairing of two all-time great players never worked out. They were two fierce rivals and colossal personalities, who some believe simply couldn’t work as a team.
Mickelson and Woods had poor Ryder Cup records. They were a combined 31-43-10 at the event, and Team USA lost with them on the team far more than they won.
In the build-up to the 2016 tournament, Mickelson gave his reasoning for why the pairing failed. But captain Hal Sutton had an emphatic response to his claims.
Phil Mickelson gave his reason for failed Tiger Woods pairing
Mickelson argued that it wasn’t ego, or their general lack of success at the Ryder Cup which caused him to lose alongside Woods. Instead, he blamed his captain, Sutton, for failing to prepare them sufficiently before the event.
Speaking before the 2016 Ryder Cup, the six-time major winner said, “It all starts with the captain. I mean, that’s the guy that has to bring together 12 strong individuals and bring out their best and allow them on a platform to play their best.
“That’s the whole foundation of the team. I understand and I hear, ‘Well, guys just need to play better or they just need to putt better.’ Absolutely, you do. But you play how you prepare.”
Mickelson said that he and Woods weren’t compatible because they used very different golf balls. That’s a problem for Team USA currently, as they struggle to find a partner for Bryson DeChambeau, who uses a low-spin ball.
According to Mickelson, attempting to adapt to Woods’ ball on short notice derailed his entire tournament. He continued, “We were told two days before that we were playing together. And that gave us no time to work together and prepare.
“[Tiger] found out the year before when we played at The Presidents Cup in 2003 that the golf ball I was playing was not going to work for him.
“He plays a very high-spin ball, and I play a very low-spin ball, and we had to come up in two days with a solution. So I grabbed a couple dozen of his balls, I went off to the side and tried to learn his golf ball.
“And it forced me to stop my preparation for the tournament, to stop chipping and stop putting and stop sharpening my game and stop learning the golf course in an effort to crash-course and learn a whole different golf ball that we were going to be playing.
“Had we known a month in advance, we might have been able to make it work. I think we probably would have made it work. But we didn’t know until two days prior… That’s an example of starting with the captain, that put us in a position to fail and we failed monumentally, absolutely.”
But Sutton’s response to Mickelson shows that he has to shoulder some of the blame.
Hal Sutton said why Phil Mickelson let Team USA down at the 2004 Ryder Cup
Sutton later revealed that Mickelson left out one crucial piece of information during his criticism. He said that Mickelson changed his golf ball shortly before the Ryder Cup and didn’t tell Sutton.
Sutton explained, “Yeah and then he didn’t even call me and tell me he was changing the equipment. He had [his agent] Steve Loy call me and tell me.
“And he changed not only equipment, he changed ball, too. So, print that. Print that. Print that. He let his whole team down. So he’s talking about Hal Sutton? He let his whole team down.”
Mickelson said that he later apologized for his comments about Sutton, and called his criticisms one of the biggest regrets of his career.
But it’s all a demonstration of how, even to this day, Team USA cannot seem to get on the same page.
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