Phil Mickelson once questioned an eight-time major winner's Ryder Cup leadership
Phil Mickelson questioned the eight-time major winner Tom Watson's leadership after the 2014 Ryder Cup. Watson was the US Ryder Cup captain in 2014 and Paul McGinley was the European side's captain that year.
Under Watson's guidance, the US side lost the 2014 Ryder Cup to the European team with a score of 11.5-16.5. That year, the Americans had their third consecutive defeat and from 1995 to 2014, Europe won eight out of ten Ryder Cups.
Mickelson shared his thoughts on Watson's leadership after the 2014 Ryder Cup during a press conference where the then US team coach was also present.
“Unfortunately, we have strayed from a winning formula in 2008 for the last three Ryder Cups, and we need to consider maybe getting back to that formula that helped us play our best," Phil Mickelson said (via Golf Digest).
Mickelson also talked about Paul Azinger’s contribution to the US triumph at the 2008 Ryder Cup. It was the USA's first victory at the Ryder Cup since 1999 and hence Mickelson said:
“I'm sorry you're taking it that way. I'm just talking about what Paul Azinger did to help us play our best. It's certainly -- I don't understand why you would take it that way. You asked me what I thought we should do going toward to bring our best golf out and I go back to when we played our best golf and try to replicate that formula.”
At the 2014 Ryder Cup, Phil Mickelson won two out of three matches, including day one fourballs and day three singles with 1-up and 3 & 1, respectively.
Legendary golfer Sir Nick Faldo, said that Mickelson had "thrown his captain Watson right under the bus" with these comments. Former team Europe captain Colin Montgomerie had a similar response to lefty's comments.
Phil Mickelson detailed what worked for the US in triumph at the 2008 Ryder Cup
Phil Mickelson shed light on the fact that Paul Azinger involved every participant at the 2008 Ryder Cup and how he had been a great leader overall.
“There were two things that allow us to play our best I think that Paul Azinger did, and one was he got everybody invested in the process. He got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their pod, who -- when they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod. In my case, we had Ray Floyd, and we hung out together and we were all invested in each other's play,” Phil Mickelson said (via Golf Digest).
He added, “So we were invested in the process. And the other thing that Paul did really well was he had a great game plan for us, you know, how we were going to go about doing this. How we were going to go about playing together; golf ball, format, what we were going to do, if so-and-so is playing well, if so-and-so is not playing well, we had a real game plan. Those two things helped us bring out our best golf.”
In 2008, the US Team won the Ryder Cup with a score of 16.5-11.5 against the European side.