MEDINAH, IL – U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker faces a dubious distinction: with his team trailing 10½‒7½ at the Presidents Cup, he could become the first losing U.S. captain since Jack Nicklaus in 1998. Funny enough, Snedeker approached The Golden Bear last year to pick his brain on what he needed to do to be successful in the job.
“He said just make sure that they have great sandwiches and great food and get the hell out of the way,” Snedeker recalled.
Nicklaus’s message was clear: Let them go play golf.
And that has been Snedeker’s approach all week – that he had a team that was loaded with talent and a band of brothers ready to go to battle. After getting swept on Friday, the U.S. battled back to win the morning session and tie in afternoon foursomes
to cut into the deficit, but it still felt as if the U.S. squandered a few potential points.
“So proud of how they've kind of hung in there this week despite all of my mistakes,” Snedeker said in his NBC interview. “They're doing great. I'm so proud of them. Can't wait to see them go out there tomorrow and compete.”
Despite all of his mistakes — was Snedeker being self-deprecating? Apparently not as it wasn’t the only time he said as much. In a separate TV interview with Golf Channel, he remarked: “I feel like I’ve let them down so far.” Pressed for specifics he added, “You’re always going to look back and second guess yourself,” without sharing specifics.
And if that wasn’t enough, Snedeker piled on himself again in his press conference after the matchups for Sunday singles were announced.
“They look to me to put them in the best position where they're comfortable. I hold myself to a high standard. I don't think I've done the best job for them in that room,” he said. “They've given me everything I could possibly ask for, and I've just got to figure out ways to get these guys in better situations. I don't think I've held up my end of the bargain.”
If it was an attempt to take some of the pressure off his players, Golf Channel’s Paul McGinley, who served as European Ryder Cup captain in 2014, didn’t agree with that approach.
“A bit surprising. You’re giving a lack of confidence to your teammates who are watching that interview. He was too open. He was too honest. That’s not the time to say it. The fat lady has not sung yet," McGinley said on "Live From." "I don’t think he’s made massive mistakes here…have they come prepared? The closure here of these games is not what I see on the PGA Tour. I’m seeing stalwarts of the Tour, guys who close out with a cold heart, duffing shots and making mistakes at crucial times.”
Somewhere along the way in the past year, Snedeker realized that the captaincy has grown to entail a lot more than making sandwiches. Before the Presidents Cup began, he called Davis Love II, his captain in 2012 and 2016, and said, “I really, really appreciate now what you did for us. How much time and effort you put into it.”
Snedeker’s team is down three points going into Sunday singles, and with 12 points remaining on the table, he knows a lot can still happen. He was on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that blew a 10-6 lead to Europe in 2012 in what went down as the Miracle at Medinah.
“The wins are obviously some of the best memories you have out here in your career, and the losses are some of the worst. There's no in between. It's not like there's a happy medium. If you win, it's gonna be awesome; if you lose, it's gonna be terrible. There’s no way around that,” he told Golfweek earlier this year. “That’s why team golf is so great. You get to experience the highs with somebody else other than yourself. Normally, if you win, it's just you and your wife, your caddie and your coach, and that's about it. When you win with a team, you celebrate with the 12 best players in the world who are also your buddies, and it's just unbelievable. You have these great memories together. Vice versa, when you lose, you have these horrible memories but you’ve stuck together. That’s what makes team golf special.”
All these years later, Snedeker still is haunted by what happened at Medinah and will go to his grave believing he let Love down.
“Davis is still known as the captain that lost that one. He's got to live with it a bit worse than I do. I lost a match to Paul Lawrie. I got smoked. I didn't play good on Sunday but Davis put a year and a half of his life into that and did everything right, and we just didn't play well on Sunday. I still feel bad about it,” he told Golfweek.
Asked if he cried that day after Europe pulled off its greatest upset in Ryder Cup history, Snedeker couldn’t even remember for sure as he’s tried to block out the moment.
“I got close. There were lots of tears, so I might have cried. I don't know. Can't remember,” he said.
But this exemplifies how much it hurt to lose at Medinah. “I didn't go have a beer [with the other team]. Wasn’t in the mood. Didn't think anything good could come of it,” he said.
There’s still time to determine whether Snedeker is doused in beer or crying tears.
“These guys are ready. I'm telling you, they're ready,” he said at the tail end of the press conference. “This place has a weird history. Lots of big things have happened here. Can't wait to watch it all unfold tomorrow.”
Adam Schupak is a Golfweek senior writer covering the PGA Tour and the Presidents Cup.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Sneds second-guessing: U.S. captain Brandt Snedeker admits he let his team down at Presidents Cup
