United States captain Keegan Bradley took full responsibility for his side’s Ryder Cup defeat as their attempt at a “miracle” comeback fell just short.
Bradley endured a chastening first two days in the American hotseat as his side slipped to a record 11.5-4.5 deficit which left a European victory looking like a formality.
But his side turned up on Sunday and threatened the greatest recovery in Ryder Cup history, winning eight and a half points from 12 singles matches.
Europe just got over the line to claim a historic 15-13 victory at Bethpage Black in New York.
“The Europeans won one match today. You think about the odds of something like that happening, just on a coin flip would be incredible,” he said.
“When you go out in sports and you’re battling your butt off to win, it just shows you just how proud these guys are and how much they want this and how much this means to them.
“To go out there today and do what they did is close to a miracle.”
He continued: “This is no one’s fault but mine.
“When you are the leader of the team and you’re the coach, the captain, whatever you want to call it, and you lose, you have to take the blame.
“This is no one else’s fault.
“This is no one else’s, the PGA of America or whatever it is. Sometimes in sports, you go up against an opponent that sometimes beats you; they play better. And they played better than us. We gave it a great fight, that’s for sure.”
Bradley has faced a lot of criticism, especially for some of his foursomes and fourballs pairings, while the set up of the course, with wide fairways, light rough and soft greens, also appeared to suit the Europeans.
“We tried to set the course up to help our team,” Bradley added. “Obviously it wasn’t the right decision.
“I think anytime you’re the leader of a team or the captain or the coach, or whatever, we talked about this last night, you’re going to get the accolades and you need to take the blame for when things don’t go well.
“I definitely made a mistake on the course set-up. I should have listened a little bit more to my intuition.
“For whatever reason, that wasn’t the right way to set the course up.
“We thought this was the best way to set the golf course up to win. You look at past Ryder Cups, and that’s kind of how it goes.
“Sometimes, you’ve got to make a decision on what to do, and you know, if I could go back, I probably would have changed that.
“But the Europeans played just incredible golf. Doesn’t matter how you set the course up when you play that well.”
