NAPA, Calif. — Patrick Cantlay didn’t hit balls next to players. He hit over them.
Don’t worry. He’s a pro. But there he and his personal team were late Monday afternoon, posted up in the last spot on the left side of the range, just feet from a fence — and about 25 yards behind a few pros to his right. A member of his team said he was trying to create an angle for his driver.
Cantlay was in full grind mode. By all accounts, he was all in. The next morning, Cantlay and nine of his U.S. Ryder Cup teammates played a nine-hole practice round ahead of the PGA Tour’s Procore Championship. Wednesday, they played a nine-hole pro-am. Thursday and Friday, they played the opening rounds, and Saturday and Sunday, they’ll hope to win. All of it’s been planned to prep the Americans for the Ryder Cup in two weeks at Bethpage Black — or at least to prep them better than they were two years ago. Then, just three of 12 Americans played in the two-week lead-up, compared to all dozen of their European counterparts, and the Euros rolled, 16.5-11.5.
Has the week here been working? To a man, the answer’s been an unequivocal, deep-throated hell yes. Then again, no one will fully know until Sunday night at Bethpage.
And that raises this question:
Is there a drawback to playing this week?
This isn’t meant to dampen your American pride, or to be a Doubting (Justin) Thomas, so to say. But golf is being played at the Silverado Resort’s North Course. There’ll be good shots. There’ll be duds. They could stink, you know.
But the line from about the end of the last Ryder Cup to this week’s Procore is that reps matter most. Or, put another way, they’re better than inactivity. Two years ago, nine of the Americans played in the PGA Tour’s Tour Championship that ended on Aug. 27, then didn’t play competitively until the start of the Ryder Cup on Sept. 29.
This year’s team members talked Napa early on. Captain Keegan Bradley made it a priority. And here they are.
Said Scottie Scheffler: “Two years ago for Rome, we did that trip over there to get ready for the golf course. Basically, the conclusion that we came to was it would be nice to have some competition going into the Ryder Cup. And it would be unusual for me to have four or five weeks off before the Masters or the U.S. Open or something like that, so there’s no reason that I should be doing that going into the Ryder Cup. And like I said, I’m always focused on my preparation; that’s most important to me. So in order to stay sharp — you can practice and do all you can at home, but there’s something different about playing competition, getting ready for a tournament, and I think this will be good prep.”
Said Collin Morikawa: “Yeah, I think as you look back at a couple years ago, a lot of us came in taking four weeks off and at the end of the day we looked back and said how do we get better, right? How do we give ourselves a better chance to go out there and compete?
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“I know for myself I didn’t feel like I was as prepared a couple years ago even though I put a lot of work in those four weeks. Tournament golf is just different and you have to be able to show up. So it’s great to have pretty much everyone here this week. A lot of great vibes throughout the meetings and the dinners we’ve had. That’s what you ask for.”
But don’t sleep on rest.
Four years ago, the event here in Napa was again played two weeks before the Ryder Cup, held at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin, and zero Americans played. But one European did — Jon Rahm. And all but three Euros played in the DP World Tour’s event two weeks before the Ryder Cup (the BMW PGA Championship).
The result? The Americans dominated the Ryder Cup, 19-9.
Two years ago, it was more of the same then. The season’s long. The Ryder Cup’s an animal. Players opted for a break.
Said Brian Harman in the days before the 2023 Ryder Cup: “Yeah, a lot of it is resting up. Not enough gets made — our bodies take kind of a beating all year. So getting done at the Tour Championship, pretty much just a week of nothing, practiced a little bit, came over here, and then two weeks of just grinding on my game, just trying to get as ready as I can.
“I feel like I owe it to — it’s a different sort of feeling being on a team. Like you don’t want to overprepare. You don’t want to get yourself too psyched out about it, but at the same time, you really feel like that team — like, man, I want to play great for this team. I’ve been really focused on that.
“Just been trying to kind of lay low and not do a whole lot. It doesn’t make for good clickbait for the media, I apologize, but yeah, I’ve just been grinding. Resting and grinding.”
Said then-captain Zach Johnson in the press conference following the defeat: “There’s also something to be said about rest and recovering and getting your game in a position where you can go compete. I mean, these guys have won a lot of golf tournaments with weeks off. I have. So I don’t think so. We had prep time here. Again, two and a half weeks ago. Reps are reps. The schedule is the schedule. You can’t control that. We try to control what we can control. I thought I had a fairly appropriate plan in place. Again, I might reflect on that and there may be some changes in there that I maybe could have done or nuanced or altered or whatever it may be.
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“But I am not going to slight the preparation of these guys. Whether it was at home or here or wherever, I know they were working their tails off to retain and bring the Cup back home.”
Then there are the scores. Not all are sublime.
To that end, pros pride themselves on compartmentalization. This week is the Procore. In two weeks is the Ryder Cup. They’re related. And they’re not. Scheffler said his process works like this. He’s focused on the next tournament. But the majors are in his head, too.
“Like when I’m at home thinking about shots,” he said, “thinking about things in competition, I think the majors are always on the back of your mind just because they’re the greatest challenges.
“I think the Ryder Cup is a great challenge as well just because of the pressure that you feel not only playing for yourself but playing for your country, playing for your partner. It’s a really cool event and it’s one of the greatest experiences in golf. I’m present, I’m ready to play this week. I didn’t show up to Napa to talk about the Ryder Cup for four days. I’m here to play a golf tournament.”
At least that’s what you say in a press conference.
Thursday afternoon, we got scores. The bottom line. Four groups of Ryder Cuppers all followed each other on the first tee. A volunteer down the fairway said the crowd was Sunday-sized, and there was some wonder what size Sunday would be.
Out first were Scheffer, J.J. Spaun and Russell Henley, and Scheffler shot a two-under 70, Spaun shot a 67, and Henley shot a 65. Out next were Morikawa, Harris English and vice captain Webb Simpson, and English and Morikawa each shot a 72. (Simpson shot a 74.) Third was the group of Cantlay, Sam Burns and vice captain Gary Woodland, and Burns shot a 71 and Cantlay shot a 72. (Woodland also shot a 72.) Last were Cameron Young, Ben Griffin and Justin Thomas, and Griffin shot a 64 and Young and Thomas each shot a 72.
All trail leader Mackenzie Hughes, who fired a 63. The best of the lot, Griffin, was tied for second. As Thursday unfolded, there was some good. The three lowest scores among the Ryder Cuppers? All rookies. But there was a club slam. Some puzzlement over missed putts. Duds. Stinkers.
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Back to the original question then:
Is there a drawback to playing this week?
With mostly anything, of course there is. When asked directly, Scheffler went back to the thought of rest — but for someone else; he said he preferred not having the time off. Spaun wondered about incurring a bad week. But you can rationalize it, too.
“You have to chalk it up to kind of like a warmup week and keep the competitive juices flowing,” he said. “Maybe guys have things that they wanted to work on before Bethpage that they’re maybe testing out this week to see how it feels under competition. I think it’s more of that versus trying to win and proving something, I guess.”
Then there’s Griffin.
“I think it does way more good than harm,” he said.
He then corrected himself.
“Actually, I don’t even see it doing any harm because if we aren’t playing here competing this week, it’s almost four, five weeks off without playing in a tournament. I know for me, I play a lot of tournaments on Tour so I like to kind of stay on a pretty disciplined schedule of playing a bunch of competitive golf. I think it’s good for every guy on this team not only to hang out with each other, but to stay sharp competitively.”
They’ll all be back Friday.
The results of the week, though, won’t be known until two weeks from Sunday.
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