Team USA may have arrived in Scotland singing off the same hymn sheet, but it was ripped into shreds and tossed into the Perthshire winds before they all flew home.
In an astonishing post-Ryder Cup press conference, Phil Mickelson sat just yards away from captain Tom Watson and as good as told him his management of their side was doomed to failure.
There are post-mortems after every US defeat which are becoming more and more common but never has one taken place as openly and as quickly as this.
Watson was in the middle of the podium and had fielded the usual, and expected, questions about where it all went wrong for the Americans with his customary tact.
You would have expected Mickelson to likewise take a straight bat to the question that came his way about what worked in the 2008 victory and hasn’t worked since.
The veteran Ryder Cup campaigner chose to be painfully honest with his reply, however, caught the grenade, pulled the pin out and chucked it straight into his captain’s lap.
Possibly motivated by Watson’s decision to keep him out of action for the whole of Saturday, Mickelson responded: “There are two things that allow us to play our best I think that Paul Azinger did, and one was that he got everybody invested in the process.
“He got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their pod, when they would play. And they had a great leader for each pod.
“In my case we had Ray Floyd and we hung out together and were all invested in each other’s play.
“The other thing that Paul did really well was he had a great gameplan for us. Those two things helped bring out our best golf.
“We all do the best we can and we’re all trying our hardest. I’m just looking back at what gave us most success because we use that same process in the Presidents Cup and we do really well.
“Unfortunately, we have strayed from a winning formula in 2008 for the last three Ryder Cups and we need to maybe consider getting back to that formula that helped us play our best.”
When it was put to Mickelson that his critique felt like a brutal destruction of the Watson leadership, he stated: “I’m sorry you’re taking it that way.”
“You asked me what I thought we should do going forward to bring our best golf out and I go back to when we played our best golf and try to replicate that formula,” he added.
“That didn’t happen this week?”Mickelson was then asked.
“Uh…no. No, nobody here was in any decision. So, no.”
By this point some American team members were sinking into their seats, others appeared to look on in agreement with Mickelson and Watson himself kept his emotions in check with a fixed indifferent look on his 65-year-old face.
He insisted he felt he came to Scotland with a winning philosophy and hasn’t changed that opinion. Nor did he view Mickelson as disloyal.
“Not at all,” Watson insisted. “He has a difference of opinion. That’s OK. My management philosophy is different than his.”
Jim Furyk sat nearest the exit. When he was asked to take sides on the “difference of opinion” he would have been happier to run out of the door than offer up his thoughts.
“Gee, thanks”, Furyk said. “Just sitting over here minding my own business!
“I think that I have a lot of respect for both gentlemen. I’ve known Phil my entire life. Since I was 16, I’ve competed against him. He’s one of my dearest friends on the PGA Tour.
“I have a lot of respect for our captain. I know he has put his heart and soul into it for two years. He worked his hardest to try to provide what he thought would be the best opportunity for us.
“I don’t think it’s wise for either one of us to be pitted in the middle of that. I respect both of these gentlemen.
“I’ve been asked five times already what the winning formula is and what’s the difference year in, year out. If I could put my finger on it, I would have changed this a long time ago but we haven’t and we’ll keep searching.”
Mickelson and partner Keegan Bradley, who also had a golf-free Saturday, were quizzed on the hurt they felt at missing an entire day’s play.
“Go ahead Keegan,” Mickelson jumped in. “I’ve probably said enough.”
Bradley was a bit more diplomatic.
“The big excitement for me coming into the Ryder Cup was playing with Phil,” he said.
“We talked about it for months and months beforehand. It was a bummer. We want to go help the team but the captain has put out great players. It’s not like you call up my uncles to come play. You get the bestplayers in the world to back you up.”
With that, as despondent a group of men as you could have wished to see traipsed away, homeward bound.
And it would be safe to say that the flight back across the Atlantic will be the last time Messrs Mickelson and Watson will be spending much time in each other’s company for a while.