Fred Funk was a member of the Ryder Cup time 2004 when Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson were paired. Speaking to the GOLF Subpar Podcast, Funk talked about the ‘failure’ of that tandem, given their poor results. Funk recalled the conversation with Woods in those moments: “I said, ‘How was it?’” Funk said. “And he goes, ‘How was what?’ I go ‘How was it?’ And he doesn’t reply.
And I go, ‘Tiger, how was it with Phil?’ And he’s just shaking his head. I said, ‘What’s the deal?’ “He goes, ‘He was useless! He didn’t help me one shot,’” Funk continued, as quoted by golf.com.
“And that was the year [Mickelson] just switched over to Callaway with all new equipment. He was never with us all week, he was always somewhere else testing clubs, testing balls, trying to figure out. And [Tiger] just said, ‘He doesn’t know where the ball is going, he doesn’t know how far to hit it, he can’t keep it on the goal course, he didn’t help me one hole!’.
… So we are just laughing.”
Phil Mickelson on Ryder Cup 2004
Mickelson also looked back on his team’s poor result a couple of years ago, but he was satisfied with certain things. Europe managed to win then, and the opposing team had many problems.
“Now, I’m not trying to knock anybody here, because I actually loved how determining captain Sutton was,” Mickelson said back in 2016. “I feel like that’s a sign of great leadership. Had we had time to prepare, I think we would have made it work.
But that’s an example of starting with the captain, that put us in a position to fail and we failed monumentally, absolutely. To say, well, you just need to play better; that is so misinformed because you play how you prepare.”