Golf: Record-setting rookies rare bright spot for US in foursomes slump

US team captain Tom Watson. Photo / AP

Everyone thought American captain Tom Watson had taken leave of his senses when he paired young rookies Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed on the opening morning of the Ryder Cup, for conventional wisdom has it that you bring new blood through in the company of an older and more experienced player.

When the duo scored a 5 and 4 win over Ian Poulter and Stephen Gallacher everyone then decided that Watson was potty for leaving the two out of the foursomes session as they were clearly the hottest players in his team.

But then, as Aristotle said, there was never a genius without a tincture of madness. And on the second day of competition among the Perthshire hills, there was a gathering suspicion that Watson's decision to rest the 21-year-old Spieth and 24-year-old Reed after their Saturday morning heroics had been a tactical masterstroke.

"It was a wise decision," said Jean Van de Velde, a man whose own tinctures were once the subject of fevered speculation in the world of golf. The Frenchman was speaking as the two young Americans embarked on their afternoon foursomes against Justin Rose and Martin Kaymer, the pair having already seen off Kaymer and Thomas Bjorn in the morning fourballs.

"After playing on the first morning they were going to feel like they had been hit by a bus," Van de Velde said. "It was best for them to come off a high, rest a little and then play twice the next day."

By the time they stood on the first tee alongside Rose and Kaymer, Spieth and Reed had become the first rookie partnership to win two matches in a Ryder Cup since Paul Azinger and Chip Beck in 1989. They had also established a record of their own, as the youngest - in combined age - to form a pairing.

And on an afternoon of American humiliation, it fell to them to claim an impressive half against Kaymer and the in-form Rose - the only crumb of consolation that the US team could take from the foursomes.