SHEBOYGAN, Wis. — As the day ended with a low sun lighting up a Wisconsin sky in powdery bursts of tangerine and pink, the U.S. Ryder Cup team filed one-by-one out of the Whistling Straits clubhouse, handing out souvenirs to a tunnel of fans lining the escape route. It’s rare that a team and its fans are equally inebriated, but this came close. One fan piped up front. “We’re gonna kick Europe’s ass in Rome, too!” Another responded, “And the one after that, and the next one, and the next one,” amid building laughter.
It is a decidedly American reaction to win one iteration of an event you previously lost eight of the last 11 times, and promptly feel you’re now so good that the competitiveness of that event could be rendered obsolete.
This U.S. team, on this week, though? It made it hard not to get ahead of yourself. Final scores of Ryder Cups are not supposed to look like first-quarter scorers of lopsided basketball games, but the American’s 19-9 victory at Whistling Straits was so one-sided that it was decided well before dinner on Sunday. Young Collin Morikawa dropped in a birdie putt on No. 18 to tie a match with Viktor Hovland and secure half-point the U.S. needed to reach the clinching magic number of 14.5. It was only 3:53 p.m. local time. There were still seven other matches on the back nine.
There was still golf to be played, but the 2020 Ryder Cup — held a year after the fact due to COVID-19 — was finally over. At last it was time to fully unpack how absurdly good — and potentially transcendent —this next generation of American talent is. The lasting postcard from Whistling Straits read: “Hello from a Post-Tiger & Phil World!”
“This,” U.S. captain Steve Stricker said during the post-round trophy celebration, “is the greatest team of all-time, right here.”
The 12 Americans behind him raised their hands.
Every one of them scored a point in this Ryder Cup.
Every one of them was worth seeing.