The last time that Team USA lifted the Ryder Cup trophy was back in 2016. They beat the International side 17-11. However, overall it’s the European Team who has had a dominant run. Their 2023 Ryder Cup victory was the 12th time that they had beaten Team USA since 1979. Fortunately, this year the American side found some redemption. Team USA, led by Jim Furyk, won the Presidents Cup at Royal Montreal.

Wyndham Clark who was present for both the defeat last year (which was notably his first ever Ryder Cup) and victory this year, recently sat down with the hosts of the No Laying Golf podcast. Talking about his first Ryder Cup experience, he explained that the expectation was different. “You don’t know as a rookie. So going in there you have certain expectations and you think it’s going to be this way, and then it’s different,” he said.

Clark notably had a great run last year. He appeared in twenty-eight events and bagged eight top-10 finishes. This included a win at the Wells Fargo Championship and the US Open. He also placed third at the 2023 Tour Championship. As a result, he was confident about going into the international event. Confident, but unprepared. And according to him, however, Scottie Scheffler and the entire US Team were ‘unprepared’ too. 

Clark added that after the Tour Championship, he did not even feel like being around golf anymore. It was likely that the rest of the team felt similar too. They all took almost a two-week break before eventually playing the Ryder Cup. Think included, not just the rookies like himself and Scheffler, but also the veterans like Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth.

“I honestly showed up to Rome not prepared and that’s my fault. But I was just so exhausted, and I felt like a lot of us did. We all took time off and we were like we just need to step away from the game.” Undoubtedly he’s thinking of what could have been.

Notably, Wyndham Clark was not the only one who still carries the regret of the Ryder Cup defeat. The way the American players could not hold back their emotions after losing the trophy in Rome, they’re certainly all thinking about how things could’ve turned out differently. Their Captain Zach Johnson himself was thinking it, as weeks after the loss, he opened up about his ‘regrets’!

Zach Johnson blames his time management game for the loss

In November, six weeks after they lost the trophy, Marco Simone, shared his point on what might have gotten wrong in the field. At the 2023 RSM Classic, he confessed his regrets for the first time in front of the media. “I’ve got a lot of 20/20-hindsight things that I certainly think about. Arguably, some regrets,” Johnson said.

According to him, something of that the game of golf was about. However, several factors could have been corrected. He began with the fact that the timings for the players that he had chosen was wrong. “If I could have put more value into time management, I could have put my guys in a better position to play golf at a better rate early on,” he added. Additionally, just like Clark stated, almost all the players went on a rest after the Tour Championship. On my Justin Thomas, and Max Homa played in the two weeks. Brooks Koepka was obligated to play in Chicago for LIV Golf. This had caused a lot of them to go out of form. “Ideally you want to have some fresh guys. I don’t know if it’s the captain’s role to say, hey, you guys got to go play,” Johnson said. What are your thoughts on the defeat?