In the many months since their side lost another one, prospective U.S. Ryder Cup members dined at Jack Nicklaus' Florida home, lobbed wedge shots on the four-time Super Bowl champion New England Patriots' turfed field and were fitted en masse for designer outfits 12 of them will proudly unveil this week at Hazeltine National Golf Club.
Depending upon your viewpoint, those inclusive outings will beget a more unified, better-prepared effort in the biennial match-play team competition starting Friday or else it is enough excess to make a European's eyes roll.
Eight years after captain Paul Azinger's unconventional philosophies helped bring the Americans the only Ryder Cup they've won since 1999, the home team is back with a forward-thinking game plan formulated by an 11-person "task force" that brought back Davis Love III as captain from the 2012 team and modified the qualifying process, among its many decisions.
It was assembled with current players, past captains and PGA of America officials to reverse fortunes now that U.S. team has lost the past three Ryder Cups and eight of the last 10.
Three days at Hazeltine National won't answer whether team-building is more important than getting your best players _ Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to name two these past 20 years _ to play their best.
The easy answer for the Europeans' success since 1995 is their cohesiveness and a culture in which competitors from countries across their continent come together as a team because they spent their formative years traveling and socializing together. The Americans, by contrast, often are perceived as 12 corporations, each onto itself.
"It's a team competition, it's a team spirit," said former European team star Bernhard Langer, who played 10 Ryder Cups and captained a winning 2004 team. "That's what the Ryder Cup is all about."
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