John “Spider” Miller is a beer wholesaler in his day job, so the US Walker Cup captain was a popular kind of fellow even before he empowered his team for the matches at Royal Lytham and St Annes this weekend.
Miller saw what happened at Gleneagles last year in the Ryder Cup and while far too polite to directly criticise, it does seem that this middle child of 11 siblings has long learned the power of compromise that his celebrated counterpart Tom Watson maybe needed a year ago.
Rather than Watson’s almost dictatorial approach which led to Phil Mickelson’s famous and public reaction once the cup was lost – Miller’s given his team as much say-so as possible, right down to letting them choose who hits the nerve-shredding first shot to the short first hole at Lytham this morning.
“I observed what happened (at Gleneagles) and I took it into account,” he said. “But the style that I have is the style I have in my business. I’m a beer wholesaler, I work with my guys and we’re a team.
“I listen to the guy that’s on the street, the one calling on the customer. I don’t go in and tell him what to do. I let him tell me how I can help him be better at his job.”
The same philosophy, succeed or fail, is what he follows in skippering the USA team.
“I wanted to make this competition more fun for them,” he explained. “I want each player to invest in the process.
“Each one of them has as much input as I have. Yes, there will be a hard decision or two to make, and I’ll make it, but (the players) are the ones that are doing the playing, and I’m listening to them.
“We’ve had pretty much consensus agreement on everything. It’s not me as an autocrat saying one thing or the other.”
The US players, not unsurprisingly, are full of praise for “Cap”, although it will be interesting to see how this goes if the player-power approach flounders over the next two days. They are an impressive and eloquent bunch of young men, and with a sizeable batch of perspective.
Hunter Stewart admitted that he took much more from watching the Europeans at Gleneagles than he did his countrymen.
“The Europeans puts guys together and they make one plus one equal three,” said the 22 year old from Kentucky. “They get more out of each other than they would in a normal week. Ian Poulter is a monster in The Ryder Cup and he’s a really good player, but you see things that he does in that event and it’s incredible.
“They kind of feed off of each other. That’s one of the things I love with Cap taking kind of a little more of a backseat role in determining partners; then we get guys that feed off each other well. You might get something better than you would get on your own individually.
“Europeans embrace that idea of being more of a team sport than the Americans do. They don’t get bogged down in the golf ball changes or the bad shots hit by their partners. I think the guys on our team have the ability to do that this week.”
Stewart could have turned pro this summer but spoke to Brandt Snedeker a year ago and the former FedEx Cup winner advised him it was one of his biggest regrets that he never played in a Walker Cup.
“I kept that in mind,” he continued. “I would say that the experiences that I’ve had this week, I wouldn’t trade them for three or four starts I would have been able to get on the PGA TOUR this summer.
“It’s been well worth the wait, and the guys that are on the team and the friendships that I’ll have moving forward, I’ll cherish. This has been one of the best weeks of my life in golf so far, and I’m so happy that I made that decision.”