Out of the Woods?

Much has been made of the superior effort of the European team in Ryder Cups over their higher-ranked and more illustrious American counterparts. The theory goes that Europeans are more suited to the team game, and the solipsistic yanks are just not team players - the stats back this up, as Gavyn Davies shows. Tiger Woods in particular is often cited as having a very poor Ryder Cup attitude and record when stacked next to his 12 majors and umpteen titles.

So far, so true. But a couple of things look out of place here.

Tiger Woods may have performed badly, but his record in Ryder Cup play is as follows:

Cups played: 4
matches: 20
Overall W-L-H: 7-11-2

This is a scoring record of 40% - not good for the outstanding golfer of his generation.

However, the US team in the four Cups in which Woods has taken part have scored 13.5, 14.5, 12.5 and 9.5 points, out of a possible 28x4=112 - a return of 44%. So Wood's contribution is not that much worse than the rest of the team. It's only a 4% difference.

If Woods had played 4 percent better, he would have won only one more match overall in Ryder Cup play - enough to have swung the 1997 cup to the US away from Europe if, for example, he had beaten Constantino Rocca in the singles, but not enough to make a difference in any other cup.

So - Woods may be poor, but the rest of the team is not doing much better. Given that since 1997 only TWO majors have been won by Europeans (the 1999 Masters by José María Olazábal and Open by Paul Lawrie) and another 13 Americans have won Majors aside from Woods, Tiger should not be the scapegoat.