The unpacking of what happened to the U.S. Ryder Cup team at last month’s matches began almost immediately, but for Brandt Snedeker, the lessons of Bethpage take on even greater meaning.
Snedeker, one of U.S. captain Keegan Bradley’s assistants at the Ryder Cup, now turns his attention to next year’s Presidents Cup as the U.S. team captain, and there was plenty to glean from the European’s two-point victory at Bethpage.
“You’re always kind of picking the good and the bad and what you see. So yeah, you’re always learning something, taking it for every situation possible. I think Bethpage, there was a lot of positives to take away,†Snedeker said Tuesday during a conference call with the media.
“I really enjoyed the job that Keegan did and how hard he worked and the position he put the guys in and the amount of time he spent.
“Each captaincy is a little different. Each team is going to be different. There’s not one cookie-cutter model of how to do this. I’m going to use the best I’ve seen from all the captaincies I’ve been around.â€
Given the European team’s play at Bethpage, which included a seven-point lead heading into Sunday’s singles session, the more interested captain is likely Geoff Ogilvy, who will lead the International team at next year’s Presidents Cup.
The International team has won the event just once (1998) since the matches began in 1994 and has never won on U.S. soil.
“I’ve had some chats with [European captain] Luke [Donald] well before last week. I would certainly love to pick his brain a little bit. Europe as a collective for the last, for a really long time, but especially the last four years, they’ve done a really good job at the last two Ryder Cups of feeling like getting very organized and having everybody on the same page, everyone involved seems to be so committed to the event more so than ever before,†Ogilvy said.
“Luke’s obviously had a big part of that and they all come off the course saying, wow, we love Luke, he’s the best captain we’ve ever had.
“There’s got to be something there that would be interesting for us to learn because we haven’t cracked the code in this event.â€
Next year’s Presidents Cup will be played Sept. 24-27 at Medinah (Ill.) Country Club, which was recently redesigned by Ogilvy’s design firm.
