Making Sense of Tiger Woods’s Ryder Cup Record

Joseph LaMagna: KVV, like many others, I struggle to reconcile the excellence of Tiger Woods with a dismal Ryder Cup record. A 13-21-3 (4-2-2 in singles) lifetime record for arguably the greatest player to ever swing a golf club simply doesn’t make sense, nor is it the product of a small sample size.

You can get paired with a bad partner once or twice, sure. You can run into a hot putter and lose a match despite playing well, of course. But over nearly 40 matches, you’d figure the most dominant player of all time should probably win at least half of his matches, no?

I don’t know that I fully believe it, but I am intrigued by the idea that Tiger Woods is one of the biggest underachievers in the history of golf. I cannot claim this as my original take, nor is it intended as a knock on Tiger Woods. If anything, more to the contrary. However, witnessing the consistent dominance of current world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who has three major championships and an additional 11 official wins over the last 20 months alone, I cannot help but think that a player of Tiger’s caliber should have won more often.

Yes, I know, he won over 80 times on the PGA Tour and bagged 15 major championships. And that a litany of injuries and off-the-course issues derailed his career. It’s not like it’s a career to scoff at anyway.

But I’m attempting to make sense of a 1-7 team record along with a poor individual track record at one of the biggest events in golf for quite possibly the best player in the history of the sport. Surely the answer involves more than variance.

Is there any sense to be made of his Ryder Cup record? Is there any credence to the notion that his record reflects the oft-described individualistic American mindset, where elite 72-hole stroke play performance doesn’t necessarily translate to success in team events? Or is it simply an anomaly that we should stop grasping for straws in trying to understand? What say you?  

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Kevin Van Valkenburg: Joseph, I feel like I’m a great person to author a defense of Tiger’s no good, awful, very bad Ryder Cup record because I just rewatched his infamous 2004 partnership with Phil Mickelson at Oakland Hills as part of some Flashback Friday research. My biggest takeaway? The Euros often played out of their minds against Tiger. Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington were 6 under on the front nine, and Tiger and Phil were somehow only 2 down. Phil was basically a bystander in the match until they were dormie with three holes to play, then he made a meaningless birdie. In their foursomes match in the afternoon, Tiger set up Phil for an easy eagle on the second hole, and they raced out to a 3-up lead through the first five.

The macro, admittedly, is not good. And I won’t defend his performance in France, where he sleepwalked through multiple sessions, having emptied his tank the week before at the Tour Championship. That 0-4 performance was truly the nadir of his Ryder Cup career.

But I feel like I can cite a half-dozen matches where he played well and ran into someone on a ridiculous heater. Take 2012 for instance. In a fourball match against Lee Westwood and Nicolas Colsaerts, Woods and Steve Stricker played their asses off, making nine birdies. They still lost the match, despite Westwood contributing next to nothing, because Colsaerts (a Ryder Cup rookie!) made eight birdies and an eagle. Every European went into a match with Woods like the fate of NATO was on the line, and Woods did what he often did — play steady, disciplined golf that was short on heroics but also mistakes.

I’m pretty firmly in the camp that Tiger is the GOAT, even though he is going to fall short of Jack Nicklaus’ major record. But the American philosophy of pairing him with its weakest link in every Ryder Cup never did him any favors. Here is a list of some of Tiger’s partners in his first four Ryder Cups: Paul Azinger, Mark Calcavecchia, Tom Lehman, Steve Pate, and Chris Riley. He played more matches with Pate as his partner than he did David Duval! The strategy never made any sense.

The U.S. should have stuck Woods with Jim Furyk or Davis Love III and told them, “You need to be our Seve and JMO. Figure it out. For the next decade.” Woods and Love were great together in 2002! Hal Sutton could have cemented that partnership. Instead, he stuck Tiger and Phil in an arranged marriage that made them both miserable.

Are there some glaring holes in my argument? Of course. I would point to Tiger and Steve Stricker getting drummed, 6 and 5, by Luke Donald and Lee Westwood in Celtic Manor as Exhibit A. That is — to put it bluntly — unbecoming. But it certainly wasn’t Tiger’s fault when Patrick Reed was shooting a score in the 80s in Paris, then claiming Tiger apologized to him after the match.

It felt like there was some kind of Ryder Cup curse around his neck. The only way to truly break it might be to captain the U.S. to a victory two years from now at Celtic Manor.