Saint-Quentin-En-Yvelines, France
Phil Mickelson pulled out his driver, looked out at the fairway and hesitated. He was about to tee off on the third hole at Le Golf National on Tuesday, but someone was blocking his path. It was Tiger Woods, who was playing with him in a practice round and was still making his way over from the previous hole.
“Any other week, I’d hit it right at him,” Mickelson told fans behind the tee box, “but not this week.”
There was a time when such a statement might have been taken seriously, fuel for more headlines about the chilly relationship between Mickelson and Woods. But it was clear that Mickelson was joking, and not just because he smiled as he said it.
The evolution of the U.S. Ryder Cup team from doormat of Europe to defending champion and favorite to repeat this weekend can be traced to many things. A better system and a wave of young talent are foremost. But another notable difference in the U.S. team dynamic from much of the 2000s is that the two most recognizable figures in American golf actually seem to like each other.
“It definitely doesn’t hurt,” said U.S. captain Jim Furyk.
Since 2012, the last time they played on the same Ryder Cup team, Woods and Mickelson have evolved from distant rivals to friendly peers. They’re even business partners, with a $9 million made-for-TV duel between them set for Thanksgiving weekend in Las Vegas.
Though Woods and Mickelson long played on the same Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup teams, the unions were brief, forced and sometimes awkward. The biggest thing they shared was losing. Between 1997 and 2012, Europe won six of the seven Ryder Cups that both Woods and Mickelson played in. Both players had losing records.
The one time that a U.S. captain dared to pair the two—the first two days of the event feature 2-on-2 formats—went so badly that no captain has tried it since. Woods and Mickelson lost both matches they teamed up for on the first day of the 2004 Ryder Cup, the start of a blowout loss for the U.S. It struck a nerve with Mickelson as recently as 2016, when he blamed the outcome on not being informed of the pairing until two days prior.
But another Woods-Mickelson tandem isn’t out of the question this week. Though the Friday pairings will not be announced until Thursday—Furyk didn’t drop any hints Tuesday—practice round groups often foreshadow pairings. Woods and Mickelson played in a foursome with Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed.
“I think we would both welcome it,” Mickelson said of a potential pairing with Woods.
There is more reason for Mickelson to feel that way than Woods at the moment. Woods is coming off his first win in more than five years. He and the rest of the American team left on a charter plane from Atlanta just hours after Woods won the Tour Championship there on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Woods was still trying to respond to congratulatory text messages—he said he still had well over 150 to get to. Otherwise, he had little sense of how widely his win resonated, save for a brief clip of it he saw on a French news broadcast Monday. “I haven’t really had a lot of time to soak it in,” Woods said.
Even a reference to the Sunday television ratings confused him. “Are they good?” he said. (It was the most-watched non-major broadcast of the year.)
Mickelson said this is the best he has ever seen Woods swing the club, including the early 2000s when Woods was at the peak of his dominance.
By contrast, Mickelson finished last in the 30-player field and hasn’t had a top-10 finish since May. He won the WGC-Mexico Championship in March, his first title since 2013, but his selection as captain’s pick had more to do with past accomplishments than recent form.
Still, the mere plausibility of the two of them playing together represents a change for the U.S. And it is rooted in the Ryder Cup.
Newsletter Sign-up
After another U.S. loss in 2014, Woods and Mickelson were among eight players appointed to a task force to improve the selection process for captains, vice captains and players. Woods was recovering from back surgery in 2016, but as a vice captain that year, he immersed himself in the Ryder Cup strategy and planning process as never before.
Players who were far from chummy with Woods before were suddenly deluged with calls and texts from him in the build-up to the U.S. victory at Hazeltine. For a player who once appeared somewhat indifferent to the Ryder Cup and to team golf in general, it was a noticeable change. And it gave him and Mickelson a greater sense of shared purpose.
“I think we realized that we both have a lot more in common than we thought,” Mickelson said. “The way we look at details, our minds work a lot more similarly than what we might have thought, and working together has been not just special but it’s been really fun.”
They are the only American Ryder Cup players in their 40s—Mickelson is 48; Woods is 42—and it’s more than possible that this will be the last one they play in together. Neither of them has won a Ryder Cup in Europe. But as their budding bromance proves, these are new, strange times for the Americans.
Write to Brian Costa at brian.costa@wsj.com
Bagikan Berita Ini
