ShareThisEurope has won three consecutive Ryder Cups and five of the past six dating to 1995. So The San Francisco Chronicle asked two detached observers, Ken Venturi and Vijay Singh, why they think the Europeans have dominated the Americans in recent years. Venturi, the 1964 U.S. Open champion who grew up in San Francisco, played in one Ryder Cup (1965) and was captain of the victorious U.S. Presidents Cup team in 2000. Singh has won three of the past six PGA Tour events to essentially clinch the FedEx Cup title. As a native of Fiji, he's not eligible for the Ryder Cup (he's played in the Presidents Cup seven times).-- Venturi: "I really feel the Europeans are more of a team. They travel together, they dine together. They're more of a family. Our guys are more individuals -- they do their own thing and go their own way. ... The Europeans can legitimately pump each other up. It's different with our guys. When I played the tour, we'd have dinners together on Sunday nights and drive to the next tournament. A lot of these guys have their own jets and they take off as soon as they're done."-- Singh: "I think the Europeans want it more. The excitement doesn't start in the U.S. until they pick the players. In Europe, it starts from the beginning of the year. They're all planning for it, thinking about it and talking about it. And they love to beat the Americans -- they are more into beating Americans than the Americans are into beating them. So I think that has to change."(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Ryder Cup views from two outsiders
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