TOLDEO, OHIO | Old adages aside, it doesn’t happen often. Under most circumstances, opposites do not attract. They excite. The tension of interacting with a complete opposite can provide a temporary thrill, like protons and neutrons accelerating around a nucleus. But that acceleration is unstable and, if taken to an extreme, it becomes Fat Man and Little Boy kind of combustible. Oh, sure, you might find the person who is your opposite to be fascinating and exhilarating for a day or two, maybe even a week or a month. But thrill’s inevitable destination is exhaustion. And unchecked exhaustion always leads to short-tempered contempt.
Nobody on the U.S. Solheim Cup team dislikes her teammates. They get along well, as would anyone in this elite sisterhood. During the official team photos on Wednesday, they joked and laughed and kidded as you would expect. And on Thursday, as they prepared for the gala at Fifth Third Field, home of the Toledo Mud Hens, they talked about makeup and shoes and all the things you would expect from a group of women in the middle of an extraordinary week.
But the first shots haven’t been struck yet. Once the matches get underway and a pair falls a couple of holes down in a foursomes match, or when one partner begins to struggle off the tee in the four-ball competition, that’s when opposite personalities walk away from each other. But it’s also when that person who is most like you – that partner who empathizes with you because they think like you, feel like you and behave like you – puts her arm around you and says the right thing at the right time. People of like personalities encourage and motivate because they understand.
That’s what the pod system, embraced and implemented in full by U.S. captain Pat Hurst, is all about.
“When I first thought about breaking a 12-man team down into smaller groups, I thought it might be based on golf,” Paul Azinger told me. Azinger created the pod system prior to the 2008 Ryder Cup after the United States had lost seven out of 10 Ryder Cups. But for a historic singles comeback at Brookline in 1999, the U.S. would have and probably should have lost seven in a row with the 2004 and 2006 matches being lopsided and humiliating for the Americans. “I knew that we had to do something,” Azinger said. “After studying what the Navy did in creating the SEAL teams, I realized that the smaller the group, the easier it was to bond.
“At first, I thought I’d have four three-man teams and base it on golf – one bomber, one laser iron player and one person who could putt the eyes out of it. But then I realized that four was the perfect number, not just in golf but in life. It’s a double-date, a bridge game, a foursome in golf, a four-seater car. It’s a natural human number. Go to any party and you’ll see people congregating in groups. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that four is the most common number. And in a format like the Ryder Cup, it works for the matches because it gave you more combinations.”
The most important aspect of the pod system didn’t come until later, when Azinger floated the idea past his good friend Ron Braund, a Ph.D. and clinical psychologist who worked with numerous billion-dollar companies on team building. “You have to build the pods based on personalities,” Braund told him.
“Ron was right,” Azinger said. “When the going gets tough, when the pressure gets so thick you don’t think you can breathe, you have to have a partner who will run to you, not away from you. … Like personalities will do that.”
On this year’s U.S. Solheim Cup team, the personalities of some of the pods couldn’t be clearer. The Korda sisters are a perfect match, indistinguishable in their mannerisms and traits, with Ally Ewing and Megan Khang fitting right in. They are the perfect blend of slow-burn intensity and run-to-your-side empathy, the kind of people who will talk through a problem with a friend and listen to every word you have to say.
Then you have quiet assassins – Lexi Thompson, Brittany Altamore, Mina Harigae and Yealimi Noh, players current Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker would love because Stricker was in the same quiet-riot pod on Azinger’s 2008 team.
The last pod on Hurst’s team in Toledo is a bit of a mystery. The “Star” pod, as Angela Stanford calls them, consists of Lizette Salas, Danielle Kang, Austin Ernst and Jennifer Kupcho, a disparate foursome if there ever was one.
“Our only behavior that we have in common is we play some really good golf,” Salas said. “We're called the star pod because we are so on different corners of that star and that's what makes us strong. We can adapt to each other, some better than others, but that's what practice rounds are all about. We try to see what options we can get, and at the end of the day we just want the strongest pairings.”
Kang jumped in and said, “When (Angela) explained the star pod, it's a chart (where) we all did the personality test. There's like the ‘difficulty level’ of people. I'm off by myself on the right corner of that one.”
“It’s just where they all fit on the personality assessment chart,” Stanford said, explaining the Star name further. “The way they fit on the chart looks like a star.”
“The beauty about this, the beauty of being part of a team is that we all have a voice,” Salas said. “It's not cutthroat here. It’s not like ‘you're in this (pod); deal with it.’ It's more of like, this is what we came up with. They're giving us their feedback, they want our feedback, because at the end of the day we all want to be as comfortable and confident as possible.
“The captains and assistants do ask for our input. They value our input. I think they value our voice, which is fantastic. That takes great leadership. You know, there were a few shifts after the first draft of the pods. Now we're 100 percent comfortable with it. And we're going to make the best out of it.”
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