SZ: Mr. McGinley, with your CV you are in demand before the Ryder Cup – now a German newspaper is coming and wants to talk to you…
Paul McGinley: With pleasure. You’re from Munich, right? Are you happy with Harry Kane?
Most people here are. Do you know him?
He is a very good friend of mine. A fantastic guy and an outstanding golfer. He plays handicap 1! I have to come over and play a game with him.
He’s just really busy. Including next weekend, when there is the Ryder Cup. For you as an Irish person – what does this event mean to you?
To understand the significance, you always have to go back to the time when the whole tournament was very one-sided. Before 1979, when only the British Isles played against the USA, the Ryder Cup was, to be honest, no competition at all – we had no chance. Then we became Europe and with all these great players like Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam and Nick Faldo, we all realized for the first time that we as Europeans could also have a team with superstars that competed against the Americans and won .
That was the foundation for the strength of European golf today?
Now we have a team that is good from first to twelfth. Three of the top four players in the world rankings are European, with Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Victor Hovland. But the breadth is important: the top players like McIlroy no longer have to play all five matches from Friday to Sunday, as was previously the case. We now have the chance to give them a break.
What drives Europe in the Ryder Cup?
Different things, but historically Americans’ disrespect has been crucial. For decades there has been disrespectful behavior from the American media and also the PGA Tour towards our top European players. These were great characters like Ballesteros and Colin Montgomerie, who were the heroes in their countries and here on the continent, while over there they were not allowed to compete or had to play their rounds late in the day without TV coverage. Montgomerie kept getting picked as the last player of the day, which was a disgrace.
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A German as a hero: In 2012, Martin Kaymer (right) made the decisive putt for the Europeans’ success, away at the Medinah Country Club, Illinois, in the USA.
(Photo: Tannen Maury/dpa)
He still prevailed. Typical of Europeans?
It’s important that we don’t lose this underdog mentality. Many of our players now play in the US, they have their homes in Palm Beach and are friends with the American players. That’s all well and good, but there has to be a clear difference when it comes to the Ryder Cup. I’m a big advocate of the feeling that you have to seek out these rivalries. Look at great athletes like Michael Jordan and Novak Djokovic: In order to feel stronger, they see everyone around them as an enemy.
It’s a good thing that the Americans have retained their arrogance. You yourself once said that you can’t do anything else.
Many of these American players are friends of ours, so let’s just talk in a sporting sense: the arrogance of the Americans helps us a lot. When Alan Shipnuck – a respected golf journalist in the USA – wrote before the 2018 Ryder Cup that America would be unbeatable for decades, it played right into our hearts. We love it, we do something like that as a team, it absolutely inspired us back then.
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Also victorious as team captain: In 2014, Europe celebrated winning the Ryder Cup title – with Paul McGinley (with trophy) as a respected leading figure.
(Foto: Matt Dunham/AP)
Aren’t the Americans unbeatable again now?
After winning so clearly by ten points two years ago, they have done it again. They once again became very careless about success and said that they would dominate unchallenged for the next ten to 20 years. I can tell you that this gave us new inspiration in the background.
What characterizes the European underdog approach?
Culture is very important in a Ryder Cup team. It was the top players in Europe who introduced this culture, the great personalities who set a good example and had this irrepressible will to win. I recently read a quote from Harry Kane in the newspaper about his first few weeks at Bayern Munich: He said that at Tottenham Hotspur it wasn’t so bad to lose a game or two, but that wasn’t possible in Munich. This mentality he described is exactly what every great team needs. Also at the Ryder Cup.
But that can sometimes be lost if you only rely on it, right?
An example: Sam Torrance was a big player in my Ryder Cup career. The culture is written on his forehead. He lives and breathes this competition. Every time you saw him at the Ryder Cup, you could see that smile and the grin on his face with the big mustache. And that’s exactly what we didn’t have in Whistling Straits. There were many reasons why it didn’t work out there. Covid certainly made it more difficult for us because we didn’t have support from the audience. But we also had an aging team that was in transition.
This change has now taken place. The generation around Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia is no longer there, instead McIlroy and Rahm lead the way – how do they do that best?
It’s definitely not about pretending to be Braveheart, standing on the table and shouting speeches. Take Poulter. He always seemed very emotional on the outside, but behind the scenes he didn’t beat his chest or talk much. But he had an incredible intensity, almost like Roy Keane used to be at Manchester United, who dominated the dressing room without constantly talking, but just by leading by example. This is particularly important in golf, where a group of individual athletes is not trained to be part of a team.
How can you raise such leaders?
If you ask someone like McIlroy or Rahm to be vocal in the group, they might not like it. You could put them in a position where they don’t feel comfortable because they’re not used to it. When I was captain, I simply told the key players: The other guys are watching you, they are following you, they are absorbing your energy. What I wanted from these top players was for them to cultivate the energy and sense of purpose around them.
Then suddenly one individual athlete pulls the other along.
All the things I’m talking about here are things I learned myself. I lived it, I was part of it. When I made the Ryder Cup team, I wasn’t one of the top players. I wasn’t a young guy like Ludvig Aberg, who at the age of 23 everyone already knew and admired for his talent. I was one of the guys who filled the twelve spots because we didn’t have that many top players back then. But then I was raised by the great players around me, they inspired me.
Each Ryder Cup team is led by a captain who nominates the players and then uses them in the duels over the three days. What makes this office so special?
It is a very unique job. I worked with London Business School after I was captain as they were very interested in the role of a person shaping a group of people who have been trained from an early age to focus on themselves must. Golfers have a deep-seated motivation to always look out for themselves – putting them on a team takes them out of their comfort zone. This is a very difficult matter because they are used to always being their own boss.
And what did you tell the London Business School?
One of the tricks I used was to keep them as individuals. In 2014, there was a large poster hanging in our team room that said: “The best teamwork occurs when people work as individuals towards a goal, but in unison.” The point is: you help the team when you perform well for yourself.
There were also captains who never managed to form a team. What mistakes can you make?
One difficulty is always keeping an eye on several arenas at the same time. There are four different games going on at the same time on Friday morning to start, and the mistakes I’ve seen captains make in the past are that they arrive in their golf cart, see two shots from a player, and then decide whether those players will also play in the afternoon should play again. Using this snapshot as a basis for making decisions is dangerous; You don’t really know anything about a player’s form if you only see him briefly. To be honest, I sat in front of the TV quite a bit. I didn’t try to be the guy standing behind the players and carefully controlling every shot, but rather working in the background.
Help number one: They have vice-captains.
And you have to rely on them when they are there. They play an important role, reading body language and recognizing the energy level during a game. I made my decisions based on this feedback. This is an important difference to other sports: In football, as a coach, you have a single game in front of you that you have to observe, so you can have full control. At the Ryder Cup, most things happen in parallel.
Help number two: There are now precise statistical analyses.
This has developed significantly over the past ten years. In 2014, I was the first captain on either side to bring a professional statistics team on board. I remember the European Tour asking me if I was crazy for spending so much money on analysis.
Do you still sound a bit skeptical?
The answer will never be on paper in the Ryder Cup. As old-fashioned as it may sound, heart and soul are a big part of being a captain. Feel, feel, have a gut feeling – and then combine that with statistics. You don’t manage via computer. I would say that I made 30 to 40 percent of my decisions based on statistics, the rest is an analysis of a player’s psyche.
You act as a kind of mentor for Luke Donald. What are you talking to him about?
When he asks me a question, I usually answer with one: What is your instinct? He was a fantastic Ryder Cup player, he has a phenomenal record, he was number one in the world, he understands this game and what it takes to win. So before he lets a table or someone else convince him, I advise him: trust your instincts.
What influence does it have that some of this team, including Martin Kaymer, are now playing on the Saudi Arabian LIV tour?
Many of the players who have played on the LIV tour have an incredible wealth of knowledge. Garcia, Poulter or Kaymer: their influence on the entire game would be very important, we have undoubtedly experienced a brain drain. But the European Tour has decided to exclude them, so we move on and find other solutions. That’s one of the reasons I became more involved. If Poulter, Lee Westwood and Kaymer were still there, I certainly wouldn’t have such an active influence on the current team, they would do that.
Kaymer was the last German player at the Ryder Cup, now Yannik Paul narrowly failed to qualify. How do you see his chances in two years?
Yannik was really very unlucky. I think he is a good example of how our qualifications system is very outdated. Two places were taken away from him by McIlroy and Rahm, who play in the USA every week, so Yannik had no chance of overtaking them. We need to find a system where guys like him, who play in Europe every week, are rewarded for their loyalty.
