LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Paul Azinger not only shocked the golf world this week, he also surprised it.
Yeah, there's a not-so-slight difference.
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| The celebrating is just getting started for Paul Azinger and his team. (Getty Images) |
But all week, the animated and outspoken guy who once was paid handsomely to talk a blue streak on television, kept mum about the stealthy plan of attack he brought to Valhalla Golf Club, the method to this madness.
No less than a hundred times this week, he had offered the same simple sentence and none of the details.
"I came here with a plan," he said, repeatedly.
Improbably, Zinger stayed zipped, which was doubtlessly a bigger longshot than his team of overachievers blistering the Europeans, who had won five of the past six cups, including the past two by record-busting margins. Come to find out, it wasn't so stealthy after all. Azinger's master plan was to divide the team into three groups of four -- the players ultimately were paired in practice and live play -- and assign an assistant captain to each group. Who knew that team-building could be born of divisions, right?
He took inspiration from a military documentary he saw years ago. Must have been about platoons, because the small American clusters had the Europeans surrounded and outfoxed all week.
"I never saw Anthony Kim hit one shot in practice until the 18th hole on Thursday," Azinger said of the team's last practice round. "I relied on Ray Floyd."
Whatever the reasons, the American pulled off the shocker, even without the ailing world No. 1 on the roster. The mini-teams were only one tactic that paid off, however.
When it came time to play in singles on Sunday, a session that always generates huge criticism for the losing side, Azinger sent his four aggressive players off first, his four Southern boys in the middle, and his four steadiest players at the tail end.
Meanwhile, counterpart Nick Faldo was getting grilled about sending off most of his horses at the end of the 12-man draw sheet -- even though Lee Westwood and Padraig Harrington played in the same 11th and 12th slots two years ago when Europe won. Faldo was bluntly asked how it felt to be responsible for turning the team from a winner into a loser.
It was the final question to the European team of the week.
