Juli Inkster: Profile of a Beloved Captain (Video)
Juli Inkster gets a 2nd shot at the Solheim Cup because she was a great captain! Here’s my take on why.
It’s no surprise that Juli Inkster got tapped to captain the United State 2017 Solheim Cup team. She was the galvanizing force for Team USA in 2015.
Inkster, who decreed there would be “no whining” on Team USA within minutes of being named captain of the 2015 team, pulled together an American team that hadn’t won since 2009 and that had suffered an agonizing, humiliating defeat on home soil in 2013. They wanted to win, and they wanted to win for Juli.
Listen to Team USA talk about the way Juli Inkster inspired and motivated them:
A fierce, indefatigable competitor in her own right, Inkster was able to infuse that spirit into the Team USA culture. The defeats, the disappointments, the humiliations were forgotten, set aside, as were the face paint and the elaborately painted fingernails.
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In golf, team captains don’t always come to the final press conference smiling and smelling the roses. Just remember what happened to Tom Watson, one of the grand old men of golf, when Phil Mickelson finished lacerating him. Over the course of the 2014 Ryder Cup Watson increasingly lost control of his team.
According the SB Nation’s Brendan Porath the failure of Watson’s captaincy hinged on his age – not an older and wiser peer – and on his problematic captain’s picks – Webb Simpson, specifically – and benching his hottest team, Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed.
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Let’s compare Watson and Inkster. He’s 66 and she’s 55, but Watson’s Ryder Cup team was, on the average, a bit older than Inkster’s Solheim Cup team. In both cases, about a generation separated the two captains from their playing team.
For Watson that age difference transmogrified into a generation gap but for Inkster those years translated into golf wisdom.
So far as problematic captain’s picks are concerned, I’d argue that Inkster’s pick of the slumping Paula Creamer was no more controversial than Watson’s pick of Webb Simpson. So what’s the difference? There are at least two: First, Inkster’s American qualifiers wanted Creamer on the team and in the locker room. They supported the pick. And second, Creamer was willing to bleed red, white and blue once she teed it up at St. Leon-Rot. She gave the team everything she had, and then a bit more.
Finally, there’s the matter of benching the hottest team. Inkster also benched her hottest team, Cristie Kerr and Lexi Thompson, for the Saturday foursomes. There was not a peep of discontent, not from the players, the fans, or the golf pundits.
I think the difference lies in the level of trust and respect that flowed reciprocally between captain and players in Germany, a missing dynamic for the Americans at Gleneagles. Captains are going to make problematic decision and teams and fans are either going to whine about it or suck it up and play golf.
Next: Golf: Is It Sport or Entertainment?
The American Ryder Cup team whined, led by the Whiner-in-Chief. The American Solheim Cup team played to win, and they did.