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- Team Europe ran into some ‘ball issues’ at the Ryder Cup.
- The Europeans had a number of players that played different golf balls that forced them into switching pairings.
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As the dust has settled on the American’s 19-9 drubbing of the Europeans at the Ryder Cup, new rumors and reports are being shared about what exactly went wrong for Team Europe at Whistling Straits.
The Americans were heavy favorites and looking back on it now, simply had far too much firepower, even for the experienced European side to keep up with. Team Europe also reportedly ran into some ball issues leading up to the event, which threw the team’s game plan off.Telegraph Sport has learned that captain Padraig Harrington’s laid-out pairings were forced to be switched up on Wednesday, just two days prior to the start of the event, because of the different golf balls certain players played with.
Apparently, the team only found out on Wednesday that Lee Westwood and Paul Casey played different balls as did Matt Fitzpatrick and Viktor Hovland. Harrington decided to make the switch with his pairings and sent Westwood out with Fitzpatrick and Casey with Hovland. Both lost their opening matches and Fitzpatrick and Westwood went out again on Saturday to get beaten again.
“Maybe they should have thought about the ball issue earlier, as it is always part of the equation of putting two players together in a foursomes,” an insider said. “But all four play Titleist and you might have thought it would be fine. Yet there are different sorts of Titleist balls.”
Ball Issues Have Always Been A Thing At The Ryder Cup
All four players game Titleist golf balls, but different models, which can cause some issues during foursome matches with players playing alternate shot. Harrington saw this as a problem and switched things up at essentially the last minute.
The ball issue has long been a factor for foursome matches, it’s not as if this is a new scenario that just happened to come up for the Europeans at Whistling Straits. Pairings that do play the same type of ball obviously have a familiarity and overall advantage, but matches of course have been won with players playing different golf balls they’re accustomed to.
Even if Team Europe all gamed the same exact golf balls at Whistling Straits, odds are that it wouldn’t have made a big enough difference for them to even make it competitive against the Americans.
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