American champions at the ping pong table, not so much the Ryder Cup

SHEBOYGAN, Wis.

Bryson DeChambeau was so excited about making the last Ryder Cup team that he went out and bought a new ping pong table to bring with him to France. Patrick Reed celebrated the 2016 US Ryder Cup victory in Minnesota by playing ping pong with actor Bill Murray.

And when Phil Mickelson runs to dominate and hit the bombs, he could talk about his game of ping pong and not his golf.

Yes, the U.S. team has struggled hard on the golf course against Europeans in recent years, losing nine of the last 12 Ryder Cups and four of the last five.

However, give them paddles and the right ping pong table, and they will become world beats.

Stewart Cink said a few years ago about hand-eye coordination and competitiveness. I don’t know, golfers and the ping pong table, they just go together.

This is true, at least in the U.S. team room, where Mickelson has responded against Tiger Woods players over the years, and the action has become hot and heavy. The Americans want to describe it as a team-building exercise, even though it doesn’t seem to have built the kind of teams necessary to defeat the Europeans.

Still, every Ryder Cup talks about U.S. players and their ping-pong matches. A team that plays together, commits together, the theory goes, and if Americans desperately need something, there’s a good team bond.

So DeChambeau on Tuesday didn’t talk about his dispute with Brooks Koepka but about his match with Daniel Berger the night before.

He beat me. Obviously, I could make excuses, but I didn’t come up, DeChambeau said. I’m pretty sour about it.

The analytics-driven team does not have official statistics on ping-pong matches. Nor are devices that measure the speed of a paddle or the refractive index of a ball assembling a paddle.

And there’s no way to measure the impact of the games on the Ryder Cup, because to be honest, it probably isn’t.

But the fun is fun. It is important to do something when you spend hours at a time in a group room.

And bragging rights are bragging rights regardless of the sport.

Mickelson will not be playing in the Ryder Cup for the first time since his debut album in 1995, but he is here as vice captain. Instead of packing the walls, he packed his paddle and is presumably in the middle of table tennis.

Lefty is all over the Ryder Cup ping pong Hall of Famer. But Matt Kuchar is said to be the best player in the U.S. over the years, not getting into this year’s team.

Kuchar is also considered a champion garbage speaker, which he introduced after sending the young Jordan Spieth to the 2014 Ryder Cup in Scotland.

I think Jordan Spieth was one of the guys who challenged me to Singles and he got what he knew he was getting, Kuchar said.

While the Americans are trying to commit as a team at the ping pong table, their opponents don’t seem to have much need for a sport that has been interestingly invented by the Englishman. They combine the old-fashioned way this week covered an inspiring video of how rare it is to form a Ryder Cup team compared to other sports.

No need to prepare team spirit in euros. Not when it is engraved on an invitation to join a team.

To be honest, the atmosphere in my team right now is exactly what you want, European Captain Padraig Harrington said. Literally I don’t want to confuse it here.

The goal on both sides is the same, ping-pong or not. Europeans just seem to understand how to do it better.

We play for each other. I think that’s the best thing you can do, Rory McIlroy said. You play for the friends next to you. You are playing for everyone, which will help our team try to win this week.

Not to mention that you play to beat ping-pong-loving Americans.

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Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at [email protected] or http://twitter.com/timdahlberg