HAVEN, WISCONSIN | It has already been a good week for Steve Stricker.
While going about his duties as captain of the United States Ryder Cup team on Tuesday at wind-blown Whistling Straits, Stricker kept part of his attention on his phone where his oldest daughter, Bobbi, updated him with details of her sister, Izzi, who won the individual title in her high school conference tournament about 100 miles away.
“Very cool,” said Stricker, whose daughter Bobbi won the Wisconsin Women’s Amateur this summer.
The same could be said for Stricker having the role he does this week. The patriarch of the first family of Wisconsin golf, Stricker has been tasked with putting the American team in position to retake the Ryder Cup from the Europeans.
Stricker didn’t get the coveted role because he’s an ambassador for Wisconsin golf or because his gentle temperament is as renowned as his heavenly putting stroke. He belongs in the captain’s chair because he’s the right guy at the right time.
“Instantly he’s someone that you respect because he’s going to put in the work to help prepare the team as best as possible. Really that’s all you can want out of a captain.” – Patrick Cantlay
When the decision was made to abandon the long-standing tradition of requiring a captain to have won a major championship, preferably the PGA Championship, the window opened for Stricker, who won 12 times on the PGA Tour while also becoming one of the most respected players in the game.
Stricker was, according to Tiger Woods, the overwhelming choice to follow Jim Furyk as captain and, if experience is all it’s cracked up to be in these team events, he comes prepared. Stricker played on three Ryder Cup teams, has been a vice captain three times and was captain of the victorious 2017 U.S. Presidents Cup team for which he’d previously played on five winning sides.
Like Paul McGinley, who captained Europe’s victorious 2014 Ryder Cup team, Stricker is in this role as much for who he is as for what he has done.
“Instantly he’s someone that you respect because he’s going to put in the work to help prepare the team as best as possible. Really that’s all you can want out of a captain,” Patrick Cantlay said.
“He’s a hundred-percent invested, and he’s not a rah-rah big ego guy. I think that’s something that the guys on the team instantly respect in that he knows the most important thing he can do is setting up the 12 guys he has on his team for success. So he doesn’t make it about him.”
In a sport built upon stars, Stricker has never gone in for the glamour. With Phil Mickelson and Fred Couples among his vice captains, Stricker isn’t the most recognizable face on his own staff but he is the one who knows what he wants and has a plan to get it.
He’s a guy who drove a truck for a lumber yard when he was in college and worked for a time as an assistant in his father’s electric company. If there is an element of accuracy in the stereotype of sturdy, grounded Midwestern values, Stricker personifies it.
Stricker doused the Brooks Koepka-Bryson DeChambeau brushfire before it could reach the team room. He determined power could win at Whistling Straits and filled out his roster with long hitters and set up the course accordingly.
He has worked to simplify not just his role but everyone’s role within the team by devising a plan with minimal variables. Stricker knows what he wants and how he wants to achieve it. He is resolute and respected.
“There’s no ego with Strick,” Jordan Spieth said.
The bulk of a captain’s work is done before play begins on Friday. For three years (the postponement last year due to COVID gave Stricker and Pádraig Harrington an extra year), Stricker has planned out this week.
“I’ve seen it, great captains win and lose. I’ve seen poor captains lose. … You’re going to get blamed if you lose, right, and all the credit goes to the players if they win, which is fine.” – Steve Stricker
Players have a sense of who they will play with – Xander Schauffele with Patrick Cantlay, Justin Thomas with Jordan Spieth, etc. – and Stricker has done his best to make allowances for individuality within the team setting.
He convinced the team to make a preliminary trip to Whistling Straits to get comfortable with each other and the golf course. Among other things, it helped the first-time players feel more comfortable when they returned this week.
On Tuesday night, Stricker took the team to a nearby barn for a dinner, getting them away from the hotel but in a relaxed atmosphere.
“Very casual,” Stricker said. “I don’t enjoy getting dressed up.”
Heavyweight champion Mike Tyson said everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face and it’s possible Stricker’s team could face that Friday morning when the Ryder Cup begins with four foursomes matches, a format that has typically favored the Europeans.
Stricker isn’t the type to panic.
“I think Stricker will stick to his plan, and I don’t think he’s going to be one who, ‘Oh, boy, we’re behind on the first day, we need to change everything up,’ ” said John Wood, a long-time caddie turned television analyst.
“That was huge (at the Presidents Cup) in Melbourne with Tiger as captain because there was a point where it looked like we might be down 9-1 or 8-2. At that point, you kind of mail it in. You’re not coming back from that. But Tiger never seemed to waver in, ‘These are my partnerships. This is my team. We’re not changing anything. By the end of all these matches, we’re going to be ahead.’
“I think Stricker is going to be very much like that. ‘This is my plan. I’ve been working on it for three years now. Just because maybe we had one bad session or two bad sessions, to throw all that out the window,’ which is the worst thing a captain can do.”
The role of Ryder Cup captain has perhaps been overvalued because it ultimately comes down to the 12 players competing and which side plays the best.
Jim Furyk didn’t expect Woods, Mickelson and Patrick Reed to post a combined 1-8-0 record in the loss outside Paris three years ago. Paul Azinger was practically canonized for his use of the pod system in the American win in 2008 while Tom Watson was torched by his own team after a 2014 loss.
This is Stricker’s team and, from the sound of it, the Americans wouldn’t have it any other way.
“I’ve seen it, great captains win and lose. I’ve seen poor captains lose,” Stricker said.
“But I keep saying, I think it’s a thankless job. …You’re going to get blamed if you lose, right, and all the credit goes to the players if they win, which is fine. We understand that coming into this.
“But you wouldn’t trade it for the world. You want to be part of these competitions and you want to be the guy leading this team and being in charge, and you wouldn’t want to have it any other way.”