CHASKA, Minn. – The U.S. Ryder Cup team had one captain and four assistants at Hazeltine. Phil Mickelson might as well have been the fifth.
“He’s gotten a lot of finger-pointing at him, saying he’s the reason we haven’t won,” Brandt Snedeker said. “We all know in the team room that couldn’t be further from the truth.”
Mickelson was the driving force behind the formation of the task force and the six-person committee that examines everything from how a captain is chosen to wildcard picks to tournament-week activities.
Mickelson responded by going 2-1-1 this week.
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“Phil deserved this as much as Davis (Love III),” Snedeker said. “He needed to get that monkey off his back. Phil shouldered a lot this week. He realized how this turned out would reflect on him 100 percent. To have shoulders that big and realize that he’s going to have to shoulder it one way or another, it shows you the kind of person he is and the player he is, to push that out and play the way he did.
“We all felt invested in that. We’re not going to let Phil go down as a scapegoat or that he didn’t have his best interest of this team in his heart.”