Initially, Harrington shared that sentiment but has since stated that the event might have to “take one for the team” for the greater good of sport. With that in mind, he’s continuing with his preparation, telling Sky Sports he’s trying to “prepare every day like I’m going to play in a Ryder Cup, not as normal in September, but to be as prepared as I can be” in a virtual interview on Tuesday.

Part of that preparation includes naming vice-captains, though Harrington only named one so far, and he did so back in September. His first choice was Sweden’s Robert Karlsson, a two-time Ryder Cup player who was an assistant on Thomas Bjorn’s winning staff in Paris in 2018. Since then, Harrington has been quiet on who will be joining him at Whistling Straits next.

That was until Tuesday’s interview with Sky Sports, when he all but gave away his second vice-captain. See if you can figure it out for yourself in the video clip:

Is there something you wanted to tell us, @Padraig_H?! ?

The Ryder Cup captain accidentally gave the #SkyGolfShow a big clue on who one of his vice-captains will be…?? pic.twitter.com/Rd7fbEtmPq

— Sky Sports Golf (@SkySportsGolf) May 5, 2020

“I had phone calls today with Guy Kinnings,” says Harrington. “Had a phone call with one of my–Lu-…oh, I nearly said the word. I possibly did say the word there, but one of my vice-captains there, yesterday.”

Hmmm.. Lu-? Luuu-? Oh, Luke !

As many on social media have already pointed out, Harrington obviously, and accidentally, was about to say Luke Donald. Technically, it’s not been made official, but we’ll go ahead and assume it’s the Englishman. If so, that would make the 2020 Ryder Cup his second vice-captain appearance. Like Karlsson, he was also one of Bjorn’s assistants at Le Golf National. Donald last played in a Ryder Cup in 2012, when the European team completed the “Miracle at Medinah,” overcoming a 10-6 deficit heading into Sunday singles. Donald earned the first point that day, defeating Bubba Watson 2 & 1 in the first match off.

If Harrington continues to pluck from the 2018 vice-captains, Graeme McDowell and Lee Westwood would likely be his next options, though Westwood could find himself playing at Whistling Straits.

VIRGINIA WATER, ENGLAND – MAY 22: (L-R) Ryder Cup Vice Captain’s, Luke Donald, Padraig Harrington and Robert Karlsson, Ryder Cup Captain Thomas Bjorn and Vice Captain’s Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell pose for a photo during previews for the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth on May 22, 2018, in Virginia Water, England. (Photo by Ross Kinnaird/Getty Images)

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“Everyone wants fans to be there, but the question is does sport need the Ryder Cup and should the Ryder Cup take one for the team?” Harrington, a three-time major champion, told The Times.

“Would it be for the greater good of sport? It wouldn’t be in the Ryder Cup’s best interests, but it could be in the best interests of enough people who want to see a big sporting occasion on TV.”

The Ryder Cup is scheduled for Sept. 25-27 at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin. Unlike the four major championships—three of which have been moved to later dates, while the Open Championship has been cancelled for this year—the Cup has remained in its originally scheduled date despite the coronavirus pandemic.

The comments represent something of a departure from Harrington’s stance just a few weeks ago, when he told BBC Radio that there was virtually no chance of a Cup without fans.

“There’s no doubt that [the crowd] makes the tournament so much better,” Harrington said at that time. “I think the common consensus now is the Ryder Cup will not be played unless the fans are there.”

In his more recent interview with The Times, Harrington also seemed to roll back his initial suggestion for allowing each captain to pick all 12 players for his team, given the truncated nature of this golf season and its effect on the qualification process. He told The Times there is “no scenario” in which that happens.

What, then, could explain his reversals? Perhaps it’s the plight of the European Tour, which co-hosts the Ryder Cup along with the PGA of America and relies on the biennial event for a great deal of revenue. The Tour has not announced a formal plan for re-starting its schedule, and CEO Keith Pelley has warmed to players that the coronavirus pandemic will have a “profound impact on the tour financially.” A delay in the Ryder Cup schedule, and the potential revenue it brings in, could make matters even worse.

Last week, PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh acknowledged the possibility of staging the event without fans.

“We have begun to talk about whether you could create some virtual fan experience, and we’re going to try to be as creative as we can,” Waugh told WFAN. “It’s [still] to be determined, frankly, whether you could hold it without fans or not.”

Should the Ryder Cup go forward without fans, it would do so despite multiple star players (and likely Ryder Cup participants) speaking out against the idea.

“A Ryder Cup without fans, it’s not a Ryder Cup,” said World No. 1 Rory McIlroy last week in an Instagram Live session with TaylorMade. “For me, I’d much rather they delay it until 2021 than play it at Whistling Straits without fans.

“That’s from a European, going to America, knowing that I’m going to get abuse. Obviously it would be better for Europeans to play without fans because we wouldn’t deal with some of the stuff that you have to put up with, but at the same time, it wouldn’t be a great spectacle. There would be no atmosphere. So if it came to whether they had to choose between not playing the Ryder Cup or playing it without fans, I would say just delay it a year.”

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1. The fans make the Ryder Cup, and the concept of holding it without them—of watching Ian Poulter or Justin Thomas hole a critical putt, only to be greeted by the faint whistle of the winds whipping in off Lake Michigan—is unthinkable. It would diminish the event, lower the stakes, and be bad for the institution itself in the long run. Much worse, by far, than simply delaying by a year. Even the players who would benefit the most from a quiet course are in agreement. Rory McIlroy is saying it, for goodness sake, and this is a guy who was famously abused, sometimes in heinous terms, the last time the Cup was in the United States. He would rather be screamed at by hordes of drunken midwesterners if it meant upholding the spirit of the event.

2. Wouldn’t this cost everyone money? I’ve been to Whistling Straits three times this Ryder Cup season, and the amount of work going into the event already is staggeringly expensive and very fan-dependent. I’m sure a year-long delay wouldn’t be great from a money perspective, but it surely has to be better than just tossing all that revenue away, right? (Through a representative, the PGA of America declined to comment about any insurance coverage they have for the Ryder Cup, or whether it would apply in the case of holding the event without fans.)

Instead of giving in to these first impulses, I tried to fathom the other side …

… and I couldn’t. There’s just no argument that holds water.

Now, let’s put this in perspective: The PGA of America is absolutely not committing to a Ryder Cup without fans, and the words “mulling” and “exploring” do a lot of work in the headlines above. In reality, it’s difficult to tell how deeply this has been/is being considered. It’s completely understandable for someone to broach the topic in a meeting, but there’s a massive gap between throwing ideas onto the metaphorical dartboard and actually getting to a point where implementation is a reality. The pertinent quotes bolstering the story come from Seth Waugh, PGA of America CEO, in an appearance with Ann Liguori on WFAN radio in New York, and it all feels very speculative. As Joel Beall wrote on Monday, Waugh understands the central dilemma:

Talking on Sunday to New York’s WFAN, Waugh said while “it’s hard to imagine one without fans” and that “the fans are the Ryder Cup, to a certain degree” he acknowledged his organisation is discussing that prospect for the biennial match, set to visit Wisconsin in late September.

“We have begun to talk about whether you could create some virtual fan experience, and we’re going to try to be as creative as we can,” Waugh told WFAN. “It’s [still] to be determined, frankly, whether you could hold it without fans or not.”

Waugh went on to say that fans are “particularly important” at the Ryder Cup in comparison to other events, even majors, so we can rest easy knowing that he gets it, and the organisation is still very much in the just-asking-questions phase. In other words, no need to panic.

Still, organisations look at fan and media reaction as a barometer for trial balloons like this one, so let me add my voice to the choir: Please, please, please, PGA of America, don’t stage a Ryder Cup without fans. Every solution needs to be explored, we get that, but this exploration should be short and swift, and end with a definitive “no way in hell.”

The Ryder Cup was more or less a dud for decades upon decades, and the reason it changed can be summarised in two words: expansion and passion. The expansion brought continental Europe into the fold in 1979 and levelled the playing field in a way that would pay dividends by 1983, the first really competitive Ryder Cup of the modern era. But expansion alone wasn’t enough—it required buy-in from the players. Luckily for Europe, they had men like Tony Jacklin and Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer and so many others who loved the Ryder Cup and wanted badly to prove themselves against the previously dominant Americans. That passion eventually translated to a continental fan base, and despite the geographic boundaries separating the European nations, a team identity emerged, and with it a fan identity.

TIMOTHY A. CLARY
Fans celebrate the Team USA’s 2016 Ryder Cup victory at Hazeltine National.

As the matches became closer, and Europe began to win more than they lost, the event garnered more intrigue in America, too, and our own player passion and fan base grew. As the dynamic turned increasingly competitive, the tension skyrocketed, and fans responded by ratcheting up their fervor. Today, 40 years after the Ryder Cup re-invented itself so successfully, you simply cannot separate the event from the atmosphere. The songs, the roars and the general bedlam is symbiotic with the action on the course. They feed off each other in an act of pure energy escalation, and to remove one half of that formula is to neuter the entire spectacle.

Ask yourself this: Without fans, who would Patrick Reed shush? Who would Rory antagonise, one hand framing his ear, after sinking a massive putt? Would a darling duo like Moli-wood become instantly legendary or be just a cute couple?

More than any other event, the spirit of the Ryder Cup is defined by the fans. It needs the fans, full stop. The Masters wouldn’t be quite as good without, um, patrons, and ditto for every other tournament on the planet, but they would still be meaningful and entertaining. That’s just not true for the Ryder Cup. If the players gather at Whistling Straits in September, joined only by their families and a small gaggle of media and officials, it will be a pale imitation of the real thing. Better by far to delay, even by a year, than to stage the golf equivalent of a faint, flickering shadow.

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By Daniel Rapaport
A general consensus seems to be forming among PGA Tour stars: a Ryder Cup without fans is not worth having at all.

World No. 1 Rory McIlroy became the latest high-profile golfer to come out against a fan-less Ryder Cup, which PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh said is a possibility given the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A Ryder Cup without fans, it’s not a Ryder Cup,” McIlroy said in an Instagram live session with TaylorMade Golf. “For me, I’d much rather they delay it until 2021 than play it at Whistling Straits without fans.

“That’s from a European, going to America, knowing that I’m going to get abuse. Obviously it would be better for Europeans to play without fans because we wouldn’t deal with some of the stuff that you have to put up with, but at the same time, it wouldn’t be a great spectacle. There would be no atmosphere. So if it came to whether they had to choose between not playing the Ryder Cup or playing it without fans, I would say just delay it a year.”

In releasing its revised schedule last week, the PGA Tour announced fans will not be permitted for at least the first four events after play is scheduled to resume June 11 at the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial Country Club in Fort Worth. The first event where fans could be in attendance would be the John Deere Classic in Silvis, Ill., which is set to begin July 9.

The Ryder Cup remains in its originally scheduled date of Sept. 25-27 at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wis. The Telegraph first reported that the PGA of America and the European Tour, which co-sanction the Ryder Cup, were considering staging the event without fans. Waugh confirmed to WFAN radio that there have been such discussions.

“It’s hard to imagine one without fans,” Waugh told WFAN. “We have begun to talk about whether you could create some virtual fan experience, and we’re going to try to be as creative as we can. It’s [still] to be determined, frankly, whether you could hold it without fans or not.”

Tom Jenkins
Fleetwood is carried off by fans after Europe claimed the 2018 Ryder Cup title.

The sample size remains small, but the early returns on that proposition are not positive.

“It doesn’t seem right,” Tommy Fleetwood, who went 4-1 in his first Ryder Cup appearance in 2018, said in an interview with the Golf Digest podcast. “It sounds strange to have a Ryder Cup [without fans], which I think so much of what makes that event what it is … you talk about guys that have played the Ryder Cup and they talk about not being able to put the ball on the tee, or the feeling that they have.

“Is the pressure the same [without fans]? I don’t think it can be if nobody is there. That’s what makes it. Sixty, Seventy thousand people watching and there are only four groups on the golf course. It’s amazing, and it massively makes the Ryder Cup what it is.”

Jim Furyk, who played in nine straight Ryder Cups from 1997-2014 and captained the losing American side at the 2018 Ryder Cup, said playing the biennial matches in front of no spectators would be “disappointing for all the players.”

“Not just for the U.S. players, who would have the bulk of the support,” Furyk said on the CT Scoreboard podcast, “but even for the European players. We enjoy going to Europe, and we know the cheers are gonna be greater for them. But I think all the players, all 24 kind of feed off that energy and that excitement. That energy is what creates a lot of the shots you see and a lot of the emotion you see out the players.”

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By Joel Beall
The Ryder Cup is exploring a spectator-less event, according to PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh.

Talking on Sunday to New York’s WFAN, Waugh said while “it’s hard to imagine one without fans” and that “the fans are the Ryder Cup, to a certain degree” he acknowledged his organisation is discussing that prospect for the biennial match, set to visit Wisconsin in late September.

“We have begun to talk about whether you could create some virtual fan experience, and we’re going to try to be as creative as we can,” Waugh told WFAN. “It’s [still] to be determined, frankly, whether you could hold it without fans or not.”

Last Thursday the PGA Tour announced that fans would be barred from the first four events when its season restarts in June. And Waugh made similar comments regarding the PGA Championship, saying the event could be held without fans or maybe moved from San Francisco to another site.

Still, those events, Waugh argued, are not quite the same when it comes to crowds.

“All of them are better with fans,” he said, “and I’m not suggesting it doesn’t change the experience, but in the Ryder Cup it’s particularly important. We’ll be very careful about that. It’s a very unique thing.”

The Ryder Cup is of critical financial importance to both the PGA of America and European Tour, and postponing the event until 2021 could have major implications on both institutions. Moreover, the Euro Tour remains without a return date, its tournaments cancelled and postponed through July. Last Friday Commissioner Keith Pelley warned things could be radically different when the tour does come back.

The 2020 Ryder Cup is scheduled to begin Sept. 25 at Whistling Straits in Haven, Wis. The Europeans are the defending champs.

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By Daniel Rapaport
A cursory scroll through our 2019 Newsmakers package makes one thing clear: Trying to predict who and what will be the year’s biggest stories in golf is often a fool’s errand. Sure, there are the usual suspects, those who will almost assuredly make headlines in 2020—Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, etc. But 2019 saw Matt Kuchar, Amy Bockerstette, the Presidents Cup and three players who didn’t turn professional until June crack the top 10 of our year-end list. Try forecasting that!

All this is to say the following list could look very silly by this time next year (or maybe even sometime next month). But that’s not going to stop us from predicting some less obvious people, places and things that, as we see it, will help define golf’s first year in a new decade.

The Tokyo Olympics
In 2016, golf’s return to the Summer Games after more than 100 years away should have been a celebration. Instead, on the men’s side, the lack of big-name players competing in Rio on a newly built, untested course became the primary story. Woods missed it because he was in the throes of his back issues, but the healthy scratches included many of the game’s biggest stars: McIlroy, Jordan Spieth, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Adam Scott. Most cited concerns with the Zika virus, but indifference to adding another tournament to their late-summer schedule just two weeks after the year’s final major and two weeks before the FedEx Cup playoff push might have been a silent contributor, too.

Four years later, the Olympics will be held in golf-crazy Japan, where remarkable crowds showed up at the Zozo Championship in October when the PGA Tour held a tournament in the country for the first time. Interest on the ground won’t be an issue—it’s whether the world’s best players will make the trip to Kasumigaseki Country Club outside Tokyo. More seem amendable this time around, and whether they do so will go a long way in determining the long-term impact of winning a gold medal in relation to a golfer’s career accomplishments. Woods has already made clear he wants to participate, as competing in the Olympics is basically the only thing he hasn’t done in golf. His presence has the potential to single-handedly elevate the tournament.

Phil Mickelson
On June 16, Phil Mickelson turns 50, a significant birthday in the golf world. Lefty becomes eligible to play the PGA Tour Champions just two days before the tournament he wants to win most, the U.S. Open, begins at the place where he was closest to winning it: Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, N.Y. He’s already older than history’s oldest major winner, and Father Time seemed to make some inroads against Mickelson last year, as he dropped out of the top 50 in the World Ranking for the first time in 26 years.

Still, we can’t put anything past Mickelson, who might be hitting the ball farther than he ever has, and 2020 feels like a bit of a crossroads. There’s the potential he’ll continue to slide down the rankings and transition to a more-limited tournament schedule, or he’ll rediscover some lost accuracy and deliver another late-career flourish. One thing to keep in mind: Lefty will be eligible for the U.S. Senior Open, which will be held at Newport Country Club the week after Winged Foot. How cruelly poetic would it be for Mickelson to win the Senior Open in his first try after an elusive three-decade quest for the U.S. Open?

Warren Little/Getty Images
Mickelson continues to be a fan favourite at the U.S. Open, but he’s running out of chances to win the championship.

Distance Insights Project Report
Sixteen months ago, the USGA and R&A launched the Distance Insights Project, a study to determine the effects of distance on golf writ large. The distance debate, primarily at the professional level, has been going on for years, with critics suggesting several factors, including modern equipment, are rendering classic courses obsolete for high-level tournament play and blurring the lines between truly elite ball-strikers and bombers who wouldn’t be as dominant in other eras. The most common suggestion has been a bifurcation of the rules: one set for the pros, one set for the Joes, with a rollback of the ball among the ideas floated. Officials at the USGA and R&A have gone quiet on where they might stand on the issue, having sent mixed signals in the past and wanting the work of the report to finish without bias. The PGA Tour would have to be on board with any change as well, with it being unlikely they’d be interested in any significant alternatives. (Interestingly, PGA Tour driving distances were down 2.2 yards in the 2018-’19 season.)

No matter its findings, the opening statement of the report, which is expected to be released on Feb. 4, will mark a turning point in the debate. Distance could be deemed a serious problem with an aggressive course of action suggested. Or, more likely, the report will acknowledge increasing distances but prescribe less radical solutions than equipment-based fixes. Put simply: this document could turn the game on its head or be a whole lot of nothing. Smart money is more on the latter, for better or worse.

Nelly Korda
Causal LPGA fans are likely to assume Lexi Thompson is the top-ranked American female golfer, but that title belongs to Nelly Korda, currently third on the Rolex Rankings after starting 2019 ranked 22nd (Thompson is currently 10th). Moreover, there’s reason to think Korda, 21, could continue her rise in 2020; she won two of her final five starts in 2019 and finished tied for third at the CME Group Tour Championship.

The LPGA Tour could always use more star power, and Korda has the potential to be a transcendent player. No American has been ranked No. 1 since Stacy Lewis in 2014. A major championship in 2020 could see the hyper-focused Korda make that leap, or at least become one of the most recognizable faces in golf, male or female.

Michael Reaves/Getty Images
This spring, Korda quietly overtook Lexi Thompson to become the highest-ranked American female golfer.

American Ryder Cup chances
Somewhat lost amid the Presidents Cup drama-vortex is the fact that an extremely strong (on paper) U.S. team nearly lost to a hodgepodge International side that had only two players in the top 20 and an average World Ranking outside the top 50.

The sample size is still too small for a scientist’s liking, but it’s not so small that we can’t say recent U.S. national team performances have fallen short of the sum of their parts. The Americans have lost seven of the past nine Ryder Cups, and 2018’s shellacking at Le Golf National still feels fresh. The U.S. will surely field another loaded team at Whistling Straits, which will be set up to the Americans liking—something approaching 8,000 yards, soft, minimal rough and fast greens. If the Americans can’t win back the cup in September, well … it may be Task Force time again.

Takumi Kanaya
Who’s the best candidate to follow the Matthew Wolff/Viktor Hovland/Collin Morikawa expressway to future pro stardom in 2020? Try a 21-year-old Japanese college student set to graduate in the new year. Takumi Kanaya attends the same school (Tohoku Fukushi University) as Hideki Matsuyama did and, like Matusyama, has become the World No. 1 amateur. Last month, Kanaya won a Japan Tour event and finished tied for third at the Australian Open, earning a spot into next year’s Open Championship. Kanaya’s performances in pro events have him at 216th in the Official World Golf Ranking, ahead of major champions Jimmy Walker, Charl Schwartzel and Jason Dufner.

When Kanaya plays at Royal St. George’s in July it will be his third major appearance after the former Asia-Pacific Amateur champion made the cut in the 2019 Masters, finishing T-58, and missed the cut at the Open at Royal Portrush. There’s no official word on when Kanaya will turn pro, but he’ll surely receive several sponsor’s exemptions whenever he does. He’ll have every chance to prove himself on the biggest stage soon.

Andrew Redington/Getty Images
Kanaya plays a practice round with Hideki Matsuyama ahead of the Open Championship at Portrush.

Grayhawk Golf Club
In late May, the Scottsdale facility will host the men’s and women’s NCAA D-I Golf Championship in back-to-back weeks, the two events sharing the same venue since 2015. This time, however, things are a bit different as Grayhawk’s Raptor course begins a three-year run as site of college golf’s grand finale, a move that has its advocates and detractors.

On one hand, having the championship at the same course annually will help the tournament develop something of an identity, and weather issues that have hampered past championships as the event has rotated to various sites around the country shouldn’t be a problem (save for the Arizona heat). On the other hand, with all due respect to Grayhawk, a relatively unheralded desert course can feel like a bit of a buzzkill for a tournament that has been held at Riviera, the Honors Course, Hazeltine National, Prairie Dunes and Eugene Country Club.

Jordan Spieth’s strokes gained/tee-to-green
As far as Jordan Spieth’s slump goes, you’ve read enough in the way of narratives. We’ll focus on one statistic: strokes gained/tee to green, which measures how a player compares to his peers on every shot that isn’t a putt. Here are Spieth’s rankings in that category for the first six years of his career, starting back in 2013: seventh, 38th, fourth, 25th, second, 23rd.

In 2018-’19, with a -.403 strokes gained/tee to green, Spieth plummeted to 157th. That’s why he struggled so much this summer despite finishing second in strokes gained/putting. Spieth’s swing has been off for more than two years now, and despite his repeated assertions that a fix is right around the corner, the signs of a turnaround have been few and fleeting. Spieth’s putter drew all the headlines, but as he was winning three majors and 11 PGA Tour titles before age 24, it was thanks to being one of world’s very best iron players. He will need to vastly improve his ball-striking from last season if he’s to return to the world elite. And if he doesn’t, you have to wonder whether a more radical change within the Spieth camp might be in the offing.

Matthew Lewis/R&A
Spieth and his caddie, Michael Greller, look on from the 17th fairway during the first round of the 2019 Open at Royal Portrush.

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The world No.8 won the Turkish Airlines Open in 2017 by one shot and emerged triumphant in a play-off against Haotong Li last year at Regnum Carya just down the road from this year’s venue, the Montgomerie Maxx Royal.

“You talk about doing things for the first time in your career, you don’t get the opportunity to do that very often, so three-peat would clearly be a first for me,” said Rose, the highest ranked player in the $7 million Rolex Series event.

“To win the same event three years in a row would be incredible. It would be a huge honour to join that seriously illustrious list and something I’m keenly aware of. I am going to enjoy the challenge to try and do. It’s definitely a focus for me and an inspiration.”

The 39-year-old Englishman has won a major, an Olympic gold, two WGC titles and also been the No1 player on either side of the Atlantic in a career that just seems to be getting better with age. A three-peat would just add to his already impressive CV.

“I think it is just one of those things that you don’t necessarily rank. I think winning the major championships, that’s where you really have to absorb the pressure and really you get asked the most questions of yourself when you’re sort of trying to win those tournaments that you’ve dreamed about as a kid,” said Rose.

“I think a three‑peat, so to speak, is something that sneaks up on you. Obviously, now the third time, the pressure becomes probably a little bit more because it becomes a bit more than just the tournament itself. You’re trying to achieve something for the first time.

“To rank it is very hard to do. It’s one of those little asterisk moments in your career, where you actually did win three tournaments in a row. It’s just a cool moment.”

Rose said the task becomes even more difficult at a different venue, even though he played good enough to finish tied third alongside Tiger Woods when the inaugural edition of the tournament was held at the Montgomerie-designed course in 2013.

“When you switch venues, that’s probably more difficult to do,” he explained.

“With major championships, you can get one Augusta specialist who has a great opportunity to win there year‑in and year‑out because the course suits their game. But winning at Royal Portrush and going to Royal St George’s is a completely different animal for example. It is very difficult to win major championships consecutively and multiple times.

“Obviously, that’s the one unknown factor for me this week. I have played here, but as long ago as 2013. When you win back‑to‑back on a certain golf course, you’d rather it was the same venue.

“But definitely something in the water here in Turkey. I really enjoy being here. I think it’s sort of the weather, and the style of golf is really nice here, too. You’d liken it to Sotogrande, Valderrama…tree‑lined and really, really fun golf. Courses are always in great condition and I like the overseed sort of style of the rough and the surrounds this week.  We shall see.”

Rose had been critical of the new schedule in the past, voicing concern about the four majors being played in four months. The 2020 schedule is going to be even tougher, considering it being the Olympics and Ryder Cup year.

However, he changed his tune slightly and said: “It is condensed and I was maybe critical of the major championship schedule this year in terms of saying that  I feel like they are all just lumped together and we aren’t able to focus on them individually.

“I’m just going to try to keep my game at a level and just sort of roll through the season and try and just focus on that, rather than in the past when I have always tried to wave the peak and trough and try and hit it at the right time.

“But thinking about it, the best you can do is six weeks between the majors. So four to six…I mean, as a pro, that is quite a big difference with the peak and the trough, but it is not completely different. You can’t have three months between each major geographically with weather and all other things. I kind of changed my opinion on it a little bit when I sat down and thought about it.

“But 2020 is an even more condensed because clearly the FedEx Cup is important and The Ryder Cup is important and the Olympics are important and that all happens in the blink of an eye through the back end of the summer. I think I’ll make good, intelligent choices the beginning part of the year, and that will kind of feed the summer.

“And we are independent contractors. That’s the difference between us and football. No one is telling me I have to play anywhere. So, if I make bad decisions, it’s my problem.”

Rose has been paired on the opening day Thursday with reigning Open champion Shane Lowry of Ireland and the current Race to Dubai leader, Austria’s Bernd Wiesberger. They tee off at 12 noon local time (1300 UAE time).

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“I remember with Bernhard Langer, he sat there at the evening meeting after the first day’s play,” Harrington recalled, “and nearly the first words at the meeting—it was at a boardroom table—and he turns around and says, ‘Now, we’ll have nobody laying up into the hazard on No. 5 tomorrow.’ I was the only one who had laid up into the hazard that day.”

The three-time major winner went on to describe Langer’s hands-on approach as a captain, and though Harrington believes his style might be a mixture of the nine captains he has served under as a player or vice-captain, in the end, he figures to most emulate the laconic German leader who guided Europe to a record-tying nine-point win.

Like Langer, Harrington will have to formulate a plan to retain the cup that Europe recaptured in the previous outing. It’s likely to be a much stiffer challenge with the Americans ready for payback after a devastating seven-point setback at Le Golf National outside Paris—the second-largest defeat the U.S. team has ever absorbed.

That challenge now is roughly a year away. As part of the occasion, Harrington and U.S. captain Steve Stricker met Tuesday at Whistling Straits in Haven, Wis., to offer their thoughts on the next edition of the biennial matches, scheduled for Sept. 25-27.

The United States leads the series that began in 1927 at 26-14-2, but Europe, which joined the Great Britain & Ireland side in 1979, has won four of the last five and 10 of 13.

A 15-time winner on the European Tour, including two Open Championships and a PGA Championship, Harrington has played on six of those teams, compiling a record of 9-13-3, and he has been a vice-captain for the last three matches, including that overwhelming performance in France.

RELATED: We are one year from the 2020 Ryder Cup so here are 8 extremely premature predictions for Whistling Straits

Asked what worked so well for his side last year, Harrington, 48, was careful in his reply, and then summed up his answer by saying, with a wide grin: “As you can see, I’m really trying to avoid anything that actually gives away what exactly happened behind the scenes. I’ve got to say, it was really a quality team.”

It’s too early to determine what the two teams will look like—and the Americans first will compete in the Presidents Cup this December in Melbourne, Australia, under captain Tiger Woods—but with a year to go, Harrington, who still competes on the European Tour and the PGA Tour, is feeling it is time to gear up on his preparations.

“We kind of turn a corner soon,” the native of Dublin, Ireland, said. “From now on, I think it’s going to turn more to my time with the team, my time getting to know the players and understanding what’s going on. I’m hoping from now on, it will be much more of what people perceived of what the captain’s job is of just, you know, watching his players, getting an understanding, getting a feel for what my captaincy … how I want my captaincy, what I want it to be like.

“It’s going to get more into the real Ryder Cup stuff, the stuff that I would be certainly more interested in, and the stuff that will hopefully make me a better captain when it comes around to the event in a year’s time.”

If it sounds like Harrington relishes digging into details, you’re not wrong. Guy Kinnings, the European Ryder Cup director, called Harrington “a deep thinker” who knows what it takes to prepare as a player in big events, be it majors or the Ryder Cup.

Who was the deepest thinker of all of Harrington’s predecessors? Langer, naturally. Again, not a bad leader to emulate. See Oakland Hills.

“I’d be more of the Bernhard Langer style of captaincy than the warm and fuzzy Ian Woosnam style of captaincy or Sam Torrance,” said Harrington, who admitted he wasn’t trying to bring new ideas to his role. “I will try and be the guy to put the arm around the shoulder, but I will definitely be more on the Bernhard Langer style of being practical, and try to be organised and give the guys as much help as I can.

“I suppose it’s a different challenge to being a home captain. There’s no doubt when you’re a home captain, a lot of your captaincy is setting up the golf course and the challenge that everybody is going to get. You get to make a lot of choices when you’re the home captain.

“As the away captain, you are presented with certain options, the only options. Mostly about my captaincy would be just managing my team, the nine players and then the three captain’s picks. When I have that team … it’s managing their expectations during the week for what they are going to see and the ebbs and flows of the event.”

Harrington has seen it all, starting with his rookie year in 1999 when he thought he had secured the winning point after beating Mark O’Meara, only to see Justin Leonard sink a miracle putt on the 17th green during a stunning comeback.

Nothing is likely to surprise Harrington next year at Whistling Straits. Europe might be defending in America, but its captain, who, by the way, has competed in all three PGA Championships on the Straits Course, is likely to find footing on solid ground.

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That light jab, directed at the PGA of America’s Julius Mason from United States Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker, elicited laughs from around the Irish Barn at Whistling Straits on Tuesday morning. There, inside the beautiful, dimly lit stone-and-wood building on a grey Wisconsin morning, Stricker and his European counterpart, Padraig Harrington, shared a stage as they held their first joint press conference, 360 days ahead of the opening session of the biennial match.

Stricker wasn’t actually upset, and Mason—who hosted the event with his usual sangfroid for the live Golf Channel broadcast—was more than fair in his questions. But there’s truth behind every jest, and for a moment it was possible to see the stress underlying Stricker’s challenge. Yes, he has to be concerned about the team’s performance in France. Yes, he has to be concerned that the U.S. has won only three of the last 10 Ryder Cups. Yes, he has to be concerned that Whistling Straits might be slightly harder to modify to his team’s advantage, compared to a course like Hazeltine National was in 2016, because it’s a lakeside links course that’s naturally more difficult to alter (less room to change/expand fairway widths, more waste areas that can’t be altered, etc.). And yes, to the point that provoked his joke, he even has to worry that Americans are 0 for 3 at the PGA Championships played at Whistling Straits.

To be fair, those tournaments were won by Martin Kaymer, Vijay Singh and Jason Day, only one of whom has a remote shot of playing for Team Europe. But it doesn’t disguise the truth that Stricker has a challenge ahead of him, and the heartening part of Tuesday’s press conference for American fans is that he seems to clearly grasp that challenge.

RELATED: 8 extremely premature predictions for Whistling Straits

It’s hard to unearth any huge revelations this far ahead of the Ryder Cup—both captains have been mostly involved with administrative details to this point, and both sounded politely excited to moving past the “choosing clothes” portion of their duties. But to the extent that we can get sense of leadership styles, Stricker came across with his usual self-effacing humility. He’s been an assistant captain for three Ryder Cups, along with captain of the victorious 2017 U.S. Presidents Cup team, and he gave every indication that he’ll be a system captain, insofar as the U.S. has a model to follow after the post-2014 Task Force.

A telling moment: When asked about his first or most compelling Ryder Cup memory, Stricker reverted not to his childhood, but to 1993, when he was 26 and Davis Love III made the winning putt at The Belfry.

“I’m sure I watched them before then, but that one sticks out in my memory, being an away match and a tight match,” Stricker said. “Just an iconic kind of picture when he made that winning putt and raised his arms. Knowing Davis now, you know what that meant and what that feels like.”

Streeter Lecka/Getty Images
Stricker worked as an assistant captain for Davis Love III during the U.S. Ryder Cup win in 2016 at Hazeltine National.

It’s interesting, too, that this was the last time the Americans won in Europe, which is the most common shorthand used by journalists to depict U.S. futility in the past 25 years and counting. And it’s hard not to notice how Stricker invoked Love, the captain of the last two home Ryder Cups, and the man who received high marks even in the bad-luck loss at Medinah. Love holds the only blueprint for recent U.S. success, especially in the crucial opening two-man team sessions, and though Jim Furyk is Stricker’s only assistant captain to this point, there’s little doubt that Love will play his own critical role at Whistling Straits.

Like Love, it was always a given that Stricker would be a “player’s captain,” considering his reputation as one of the PGA Tour’s nicest men and his general popularity. Yet so was Furyk outside Paris, and a critical question hovering over next year’s iteration will be the obvious one: What have you learned from that loss?

“We have been looking into stats,” Stricker said, late in the presser. “We gave a lot of holes away in France by making something other than par. We made almost as many birdies, if I remember right, during that week in France, but we just gave so many holes away in making different numbers.”

He went on to explain the need for conservatism in key moments, but acknowledged the difficulty in achieving that mentality. American players tend to play aggressively, pursuing birdies on every hole in stroke play, and it wouldn’t necessarily be wise to urge caution and take them out of their games, but Stricker pointed out how that tendency has worked against them in Cups played in Europe. Which is why he’ll have faster greens—”It’s not going to be 8 on the Stimpmeter like it was in Paris,” he said to laughter, with a pointed look at Harrington—and why the rough won’t be anywhere near as high. Still, he acknowledged that tweaking the course is a harder prospect at Whistling Straits.

Of course, Stricker wasn’t about to spill any real secrets to a room full of journalists, much less to Harrington sitting beside him. Following his answer on the course setup, Harrington smiled: “Didn’t give much, did he?”

It’s too soon to think much about pairings, though Stricker said in a Sky Sports interview after that he’ll be using December’s Presidents Cup as a test, of sorts, which has borne varying results over the years. (The U.S. rout at Liberty National in the 2017, for instance, said exactly nothing about what would happen in France.) And it goes without saying that he’ll hope certain players—Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, and Patrick Reed, among them—will find their form and earn a place on the team without needing a captain’s pick.

Scott Halleran/Getty Images Stricker holds up the trophy after his U.S. team won the 2017 Presidents Cup in a runaway.

The greatest riddle Stricker will have to solve, though, is not the future—it’s all that came before.

“For me, it’s about moving forward, learning from the past a little bit,” Stricker said. “Taking some of the things that we haven’t done so well in, and then trying to apply that to this next time and next year.”

That’s vague, and purposefully so, but it tells the story of his captaincy just as well as his quip to Mason did earlier. Before the U.S. can establish the kind of prolonged success that Europe has enjoyed in recent decades, it needs to correctly diagnose the problem. The Task Force yielded success at home in 2016, but Paris raised more questions. Stricker’s success will be determined by the players on the course, yes, but perhaps equally so by how well he can parse what worked in 2016 and what has failed so often otherwise. In that sense, we learned on Tuesday morning that Steve Stricker will have to be just as much detective as he is captain, and that he’s ready to begin the great search.

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