Crushing foursomes sweep puts Europe 5-3 ahead

Jim Furyk opted to field the same four lineups that went 3-1 in Friday four-ball, but as the four matches made it to the back nine, Team Europe held commanding leads in three of them. “There’s a few guys sitting out who you would normally see in the first session but they were very keen to play this afternoon and prove we are a team and we did it with all 12”.

‘They’ve been great at re-focusing between matches and getting back out there to deliver.

A frustrated Woods spoke candidly after enduring his own troubles across the first two days, having twice played and lost alongside Reed, and it is not particularly hard to read between the lines of what he said. The U.S. only won one of its four-ball (best ball) matches in the morning before coming back to win two of the foursomes matches. That’s the frustrating thing about match play. That made the deficit swing to 8-4 in favor of the Europeans. Sunday’s singles should be fascinating as Europe looks to make it seven Ryder Cups in nine tries and the US tries to steal one in dramatic fashion in Paris. Down 10-6, the US needs an early momentum boost to have any chance at a miracle. The other took place at Medinah and resulted in a European victory.

The rest of the European team wasn’t too shabby either.

A par at the tenth extended Europe’s advantage, but America took the 12th only for Rose to hole from five feet at the 13th to restore a two-hole lead. With four birdies over their last five holes, they won 4 and 3.

Once again too many USA players were too loose off the tee and too aggressive with their approaches, captain Jim Furyk looking on in blank-faced disbelief as his team of star names and major winners failed to cope with the challenging but never vindictive course set-up.

Phil Mickelson (0-1) and Bryson DeChambeau (0-2) have each been skunked at Le Golf National. Mickelson has played in just one match, a Friday Foursomes in which he and DeChambeau were dispatched in 14 holes. What’s gone right for the U.S..

After being persuaded to retake a European Tour card by captain Thomas Bjorn in order to be eligible for this year’s Ryder Cup in France, he sealed an impressive 3 and 2 victory over Dustin Johnson and Rickie Fowler alongside Tyrrell Hatton.

Thomas Bjorn stuck by him, and after witnessing his demolition of Bubba Watson and Webb Simpson in tandem with Poulter in the foursomes that afternoon Europe’s captain felt fully vindicated. Jordan Spieth has been lights-out. It was a poor choice to hide Reed and play Woods three times during the pairings section of this competition. While Reed did the heavy lifting that year, he’s done nothing this year and the obvious difference is that he hasn’t been paired with Spieth. After dropping his match-winning putt, Spieth aimed a prolonged chest-thump in Poulter’s direction. Europe has kept the same lineup that allowed it to sweep the foursomes session on Friday.

However, the pair were reinstate this morning and fell to a four and three defeat. They’re finding the narrow fairways and setting themselves up with much easier approaches into the greens.