Ryder Cup Captain’s Critics Can Basically Go Fly a Kite

With his red hair, you might expect Tom Kite to have more of a temper than he does, but he’s actually as mellow as his fluid golf swing.

There isn’t much that ticks him off, but one subject is virtually guaranteed to do the trick--that Kite, as captain, is largely responsible for the U.S. losing to Europe in the Ryder Cup in Spain.

Europe won, 14 1/2-13 1/2, at Valderrama Golf Club in soggy Sotogrande, and while European captain Seve Ballesteros was hailed for his unorthodox but effective management style, Kite has received media criticism on several fronts.

Kite was: (a) not tough enough; (b) wrong because he didn’t play his best players in all five matches; (c) too nice.

Kite’s response, basically, is (d) none of the above.

“When we lost, I couldn’t figure out how we lost,” said Kite, who is playing in the Shark Shootout at Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks. “I still can’t.”

Now, Kite understands there is a certain amount of second-guessing associated with a failed Ryder Cup mission. He just doesn’t think what he’s getting burned for is valid.

“The captain can only do so much,” he said.

The captain is now, well, a civilian again. He will be 48 next month, which puts him two years away from the senior tour, but Kite said he thinks he can be competitive on the PGA Tour in 1998.

Despite the demands of the Ryder Cup, Kite won $631,252 this year and had three top-10 finishes in majors--second at the Masters, a tie for 10th at the British Open and fifth at the PGA.

The Ryder Cup in 1999 is Ben Crenshaw’s problem now, even if Kite still can’t get away from what happened in Spain.

Kite said the captains’ personality issue is bogus, basically because it wouldn’t have come up if the U.S. had won. Plus, Ballesteros had his wrist slapped by some of his own players for his hands-on style, even in victory.

Brad Faxon said he doesn’t think Kite deserves any criticism.

“The second-guessing is a joke,” he said. “I don’t know what the nice word to say is . . . a bunch of crap. He didn’t hit one shot or make one putt. You just can’t let the captains be the issue of why we lost.”

Kite, who said players who compete in all five matches usually fail in singles, thought all of his pairings were solid, except one. He said Justin Leonard-Jeff Maggert just didn’t work in alternate shot. They lost to Nick Faldo-Lee Westwood, 3 and 2.

The only matchup Kite had to alter on the fly was Faxon-Leonard, which Kite changed to Leonard-Tiger Woods because Faxon had gone 35 holes without a birdie.

Heavily favored, the U.S. lost as Woods, Leonard and Davis Love III--three of the four major’s winners--were a combined 1-9-3. Kite said that might have been his biggest surprise.

“You could say that, or maybe the biggest surprise is that our only three players with winning records were Scott Hoch, Lee Janzen and Jeff Maggert,” Kite said.

Chances are, Kite is going to be able to forget about the whole thing soon. What’s the statute of limitations on second-guessing?

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How low can you go? In Saturday’s best-ball format at the Shark Shootout, it was a 13-under 59. It was produced by Scott McCarron and Bruce Lietzke, two guys who use nearly identical putters that look like garden rakes.

The two long-handled putters might be quite similar, but Peter Jacobsen said they might be lacking something: “If they had wings on those things, they could fly.”

Lietzke-McCarron shot 28 on the back and birdied eight of the last nine holes. Their two-round total of 127 is 17 under par, two shots ahead of Jacobsen-John Cook, who had a 67.