Butch Harmon on 'horrendous day' for Team USA at Le Golf National

Butch Harmon

Golf Columnist

Saturday 29 September 2018 14:38, UK

Butch Harmon looks back at what went wrong for Team USA in the Ryder Cup Friday Foursomes and discusses what Jim Furyk's side need to do to bounce back on day two.

We can all hash out the reasons why what happened this afternoon did, but the fact was that all four American games got off to a horrendous start. You can't come back from that in foursomes if you're not playing well and all four of the combinations played badly.

Pars are golden in this format, especially in this condition in this wind, and that was the mentality of this European team. They knew that pars were golden and the first group went out and set the tone.

You look at the scores and see just how far the American groups were over par. It was just one of those horrendous days where it was like a snowball going downhill, where the more it rolled the bigger it got.

Anything that could go wrong was going wrong and every time they had a chance to ride the ship, they missed a little putt, like we saw Dustin Johnson three or four times today.

These matches, whether you want to believe them or not, come down to putting contests. I think that's the reason that Europe has been so successful over the past 25 years, it is because they've out-putted the United States. They outplayed them, out-putted them and out-smarted them today.

For me, you write if off now because it's done and you can't go back and play the day again. You've got to sit down in the team room, the team has to talk about their own games and have to say that it's a done deal and move on.

The pairings didn't mix, they didn't hit the ball well, didn't putt well and didn't do all of the things they know this team can do. I think it was a one-off, so I would just write off the afternoon, have fun tonight and go out and get them tomorrow.

There are two more days to play so you have to look forward. You almost can't even go back and look at what went wrong today, because it all went wrong today and none of it went right.