Phil Mickelson will regret his comments about Tom Watson at the extraordinary press conference at Gleneagles on Sunday night in the wake of the Ryder Cup defeat, believes former European captain Bernard Gallacher.
The three-time skipper, whose European team won at Oak Hill in 1995 after two losses, including the last time the USA won in Europe under Tom Watson in 1993, recalled his own post-mortems in the wake of defeat.
“Everybody wants to pull apart every decision when you’re a losing captain I know all about that,” said Gallacher, the uncle of European team member Stephen.
“Phil wears his heart on his sleeve but I think it was the wrong moment to start a debrief.
“In the heat of the moment they’re all looking around to blame somebody, but it needs to be done when everyone has calmed down.
“I think Phil will regret saying that in a few days. I think it was very unfair (to Watson). At the end of the day, the players weren’t good enough.
“There were three players Tom would have loved on his team, two missing through illness (Jason Dufner and Tiger Woods) and one for personal reasons (Dustin Johnson).
“In the old days, they could have put any team out and given us a good match. Now, those three players are critical.”
Gallacher believed the match was won and lost in foursomes, and by Graeme McDowell’s performance at the top of the singles order.
“That was a master stroke by Paul (McGinley), putting G-Mac out first on Sunday,” he said.
“Tom was looking for his team to make a big start on Sunday and you would expect Jordan Spieth to hold on from four holes up.
“Jordan was just too inexperienced, as it turned out, for that position at the top of the order.”
Gallacher also was dismissive of the “pod” system advocated by Mickelson and promoted by Paul Azinger when the US last won, at Valhalla in 2008.
“It does say something about them that they would need to do that. When Azinger came out with “the secret” after he’d won, I thought it was interesting that he hadn’t told anybody about these pods before he’d won.
“I always thought, I’ve got 12 guys who can play with anybody. There were natural partnerships, Ollie and Seve, Monty and Faldo. But I could have put anybody with anybody.
“They were happy to play with each other. In other words, they were a lot more friendly.”