Phil Mickelson recently took a swipe at Tom Watson for the way he captained the United States in the 2014 Ryder Cup where the American side took a 16½-11½ loss to their European counterparts.
Mickelson questioned why USA strayed away from the successful strategy implemented by Paul Azinger, who was the last team captain to lead the Americans to a victory in the Ryder Cup.
When asked if he is willing to return as team captain if given the chance, Azinger said that he is not ruling anything out, but he also added that the PGA of America should also consider changing their philosophy and system.
"I'm not going to rule anything out," Azinger told USA Today. "But my goal is the bigger picture. It is time for the PGA of America to recognize the great disconnect and formulate the same business model for selecting a captain as it does for selecting its president and officers."
Azinger pointed out that the United States should consider emulating the formula used by Europe over the past several years when it comes to leadership and strategy, which worked well for them, winning in eight of the last 10 Ryder Cup showdowns.
"Europe consistently repeats a philosophy of leadership that every captain has learned from the captains in the past. It is an approach that is comfortable and familiar," Azinger said. "The U.S. approach is less comfortable and completely unfamiliar to every repeat player. The players have to adjust to a completely unique system to the previous two years."
In 2008, Azinger used his "pod" system where he divided the team into three groups with four players each. Each group has a leader and all four players will sleep, train and practice together for the tournament.
Mickelson said that Azinger's system gave them a sense of responsibility and all players felt comfortable about it in 2008, which is the reason why he is wondering why USA decided to change their approach.
"There were two things that allowed us to play our best, I think, that Paul Azinger did, and one was he got everybody invested in the process," Mickelson said via ESPN. "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, who, when they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod."
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