U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Steve Stricker and European Ryder Cup Captain Pádraig Harrington met with the media upon arriving on site on Monday at Whistling Straits for the 43rd Ryder Cup. Both Captains weighed in on how much thought they’ve already put into their plans for the week, the importance of having fans as part of the Ryder Cup experience, and the role the Captain plays in the outcome of the Ryder Cup.
STEVE STRICKER: Pádraig, welcome to Wisconsin. We've got to get you a cheese head -- have you ever seen those?
PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: As I say, at the end of the week the experience versus the non-experience will be thrashed out many times to determine what the result was. Certainly it's pretty tried and tested in Europe that we're going to go with experience when we're coming across here. We do have a few rookies on the team to provide that enthusiasm but we are strongly relying on that experience.
PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: Clearly we have a game plan, a pretty strong game plan, all the way through, well-prepared.
Even though we don't know what's going to happen, you still have an idea of, you know, X, Y or Z comes along, and, well, we can pivot this way. We have plenty of options and that's the main thing.
PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: It's one of those things for us that sometimes, many times, the Captain will not be the actual difference but it's possible that we could be the very difference. We could make that difference at the end of the week. We have to prepare like we are the ones that are going to make a little bit of a difference that just get our team across the line.
STEVE STRICKER: You're going to get blamed if you lose, right, and all the credit goes to the players if they win, which is fine. We understand that I think coming into this.But you wouldn't trade it for the world. You want to be part of these competitions and you want to be the guy leading this team and being in charge, and you wouldn't want to have it any other way.
STEVE STRICKER: I've seen a lot of different things. I've seen some things that worked. I've seen some things that haven't worked. I've put all those in my memory bank over the years and hopefully lean on those things that I've learned and apply them to this week.
PÁDRAIG HARRINGTON: From our perspective, our players play for the glory of this event. If there were 40,000 U.S. fans and no Europeans, we'd prefer that than having no fans. That's just the reality. We want the noise. We want the excitement. We want the buzz of it all.
STEVE STRICKER: [Tiger Woods has] been, you know, obviously in my ear a lot and I call him pretty regularly. He's part of our Ryder Cup Team. He's part of what we do.
STEVE STRICKER: Europe brings a strong team and they play well and are tough and we always have tough matches that seem to have gone their way more times than our lately. But we look to try to change that this week and move on.
