The unpacking of what happened to the U.S. Ryder Cup team during last month’s matches began almost immediately, but for Brandt Snedeker, Bethpage’s lessons take on even greater significance.
Snedeker, one of US captain Keegan Bradley’s assistants at the Ryder Cup, now turns his attention to next year’s Presidents Cup as captain of the US team, and there was plenty to take from the European’s two-point win over Bethpage.
“You always choose the good and the bad and what you see. So yeah, you always learn something, and use it for every possible situation. I think Bethpage took away a lot of positives,” Snedeker said during a conference call with the media on Tuesday.
“I really enjoyed the work that Keegan did and how hard he worked, the position he put the boys in and the amount of time he spent on it.
“Every captain is a little bit different. Every team is going to be different. There’s not one standard model for how to do this. I’m going to use the best I’ve seen from all the captains I’ve experienced.”
Given the European team’s play at Bethpage, with a seven-point lead heading into Sunday’s singles session, the more interested captain is likely to be Geoff Ogilvy, who will lead the international team at next year’s Presidents Cup.
The international team has won the event just once (1998) since competitions began in 1994 and has never won on American soil.
“I’ve had a few conversations with [European captain] Lucas [Donald] well before last week. I would definitely like to get inside his brain a little bit. Europe as a collective for the last, very long time, but especially the last four years, they’ve done a really good job at the last two Ryder Cups feeling like they’re very organized and have everyone on the same page. Everyone involved seems so invested in the event more than ever before,” Ogilvy said.
“Luke has obviously been a big part of that and they all come off the court saying, wow, we love Luke, he’s the best captain we’ve ever had.
“There must be something there that would be interesting for us to learn, because we haven’t cracked the code in this case.”
Next year’s Presidents Cup will be played Sept. 24-27 at the Medinah (Ill.) Country Club, which was recently redesigned by Ogilvy’s design firm.
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