Ryder Cup: When individuals form a team

This year’s edition of the Ryder Cup once again delivered in spectacular style, bringing with it a level of drama, surprise, intensity and quality virtually unmatched by the rest of the year’s sporting calendar.

The golfing season already provides great entertainment from its four major championships alongside its other headline events on the PGA Tour. However, the Ryder Cup provides something altogether different from the norm, with its team format bringing out both the best and worst of the best golfers the USA and Europe have to offer.

As has already been discussed on our website by Graham Daniels, the New York crowds provided a ferocious atmosphere. This was matched by a sublime level of performance from the victorious European team over the first two days, before the hosting Americans mounted what was almost one of sport’s greatest comebacks, winning the singles contests 8½ - 3½, falling agonisingly short to lose out 15-13 overall.

Team Europe’s victory was the first in the competition on foreign soil since the same team prevailed at Medinah in 2012. The common consensus among onlookers is that their success was down to the fact that they found a way to perform better as a team than their opponents.

On paper, there is not much to separate the two teams individually, but in practice, the Americans could not live with the quality, courage and match play from the Europeans in the foursome and fourball formats, with their 11½-4½ lead following the conclusion of these sessions proving unassailable.

While the Americans played reasonably well over the competition’s opening two days, the European pairings proved far better at maximising each other’s strengths and mitigating their weaknesses, appearing more united than their opponents.

Time and time again, the European teams came up with special putts, just when the Americans appeared to be building momentum. Quite simply, the Europeans all performed at their absolute maximum, with the desire to aid the overall team effort seemingly providing extra fuel to win points.

This is a large part of what makes the Ryder Cup so compelling: golfers spend most of the two years between each iteration of the event performing for themselves, and it is fascinating to see how they cope when thrown into a team contest, when they are often only able to perform as well as their teammate allows them to.

It is worth noting, in this regard, that Scottie Scheffler, comfortably the world’s best player, struggled all weekend, losing all four of his opening matches before finally contributing a point in the singles.

Similarly, the all-conquering Tiger Woods before him struggled to perform at this event, which perhaps adds weight to the theory that some of the best individuals struggle to adapt to the different challenge of playing as a team.

Parallels can be drawn between the demands of the Ryder Cup and life as part of the church. We all bring different gifts and abilities to the body of Christ and serve it in different ways, but we cannot do everything ourselves and must learn to work together with other believers, all performing different functions of the overall body to achieve its maximum result.

The golfers at the Ryder Cup could only ever play as well as their partners would allow them, as - especially in the foursomes - each player only took 50 per cent of the shots. In the church, we are blessed with a rich variety of people of all levels of ability, but there is a key difference compared to the Ryder Cup environment: wonderfully, whatever our level of skill or ability, God loves us all in equal measure and will use all of us powerfully for His glory.

That does not mean we do not have a role to play. We must still live in grace and obedience, working to cultivate and develop the strengths of not just the most capable members of the body, but also to build up and encourage those who perhaps need a helping hand and a bit more guidance along the way.

Let’s make sure to build each other up and combine our individual strengths to great team effect, ensuring God is glorified. And then, rather than suffer the agony of defeat, as the US team did at Bethpage, we will get to enjoy the prize that is guaranteed at the end of our journeys.