I want to start by saying it was wonderful serving as captain of such an amazing bunch of guys. This loss is tough to take, for all of us. We’re obviously extremely disappointed, emotions are running high, but nobody died out there. It’s a sport. We gave it our all; it just wasn’t enough.
To talk about the whole week here would take a while! So for now I’ll just sum up my overall feelings and emotions. It was an incredible week with these guys – the newcomers, the players I’ve known for a long time, the assistant captains, the wives, the caddies, the tour staff, the volunteers, everyone. Honestly, it has been my pleasure to work with all of them.
First and foremost, my team deserves an enormous amount of credit. They were open to a new formula, a new system. They absolutely embraced what I said to them and gave it 100 per cent effort and commitment from the get-go. I thank every one of them for that. And I’m so proud of the way they played over the four days, the way they battled. There was an opportunity at one point to really press home our advantage, which we didn’t manage to do. Obviously that was a big turning point. We lost 16-14 and we have to swallow that.
It must be said, however, that great strides have been made, especially in our team play. This week, that was the core of our team and it never was before. At the start of the competition we had a plan to get to 10 points by Saturday evening, which we did. People will say that I perhaps could have made different choices in the singles; I take responsibility for that. We followed a plan and it didn’t work out.
Let’s focus again on the positives, though. Compare our team on paper and a lot of people would have laughed us out of the building, but we came so close to winning and upsetting one of the greatest golf teams of all time. We were right there at the end and it really came down to just a couple of matches that didn’t go our way. We’re getting closer, though. Our team is going places. We have major winners, former world numbers ones, young guys, and they all showed their class and their talent this week. As I said, they deserve a lot of credit for that. The team’s collective performance and attitude gives us a lot of reasons to be excited for the future.
All that’s left to say right now is congrats to Tiger and his team. It was a great fight, a great week of golf, and they got it done in the end.
