Tiger Woods isn’t at Whistling Straits, however a number of US gamers say he helped encourage them to an enormous lead within the first day of the Ryder Cup.
Woods despatched a bunch textual content via captain Steve Stricker to American gamers, saying he was behind them of their battle to regain the cup.
“The gist of basically what he said was I’m cheering you guys on, I’m right there with you and go fight and make us proud,” Tony Finau stated.
“We were able to do that and if TW’s watching, thanks for that text, brother, I think it helps us a lot.”
Several gamers talked in regards to the textual content from Woods, who’s recovering from critical accidents in a February automobile accident. The US went 6-2 on the opening day for its greatest first day margin since 1975.
“Tiger’s not with us in person but I know he’s watching and talking to Stricker a lot,” Harris English stated.
“We know he’s got our backs, so that’s really cool and we kind of used that energy today.”
Xander Schauffele stated the gamers had been excited to listen to that Woods was cheering laborious for them from his residence in Florida.
“We knew he was fist pumping from the couch,” Schauffele stated.
“Whether he was on crutches or not he’s as fired up as any back at home. So it’s nice to have his support.”
Stricker stated he bought the textual content on Thursday and despatched it out to the crew on Friday. He stated Woods wished gamers good luck and shared a number of private observations.
“He’s a friend of a lot of these guys and these guys look up to him and I lean on him a lot throughout this whole process,” Stricker stated.
“So it was great to hear from him and provide some words of encouragement to these guys.”
Woods was an assistant captain in 2016, when the US final gained the cup. He returned as a participant in 2018, however didn’t win a degree in his matches. In eight Ryder Cups, Woods earned 14.5 factors however had an general shedding report and solely performed on one profitable crew the 1999 crew that gained in an enormous ultimate day comeback at Brookline.