phil benched

Hal Sutton's seen enough: Phil won't be playing on Saturday morning fourball. Tiger's new partner is his good buddy Chris Riley -- someone I suggested on Wednesday. I won't say I told you so, but it seemed like a good idea to pair Tiger with someone he can relax with.

Of course, now it's easy to second guess Hal Sutton's pairing of Tiger and Phil together. But, you know, the Euros often pair their best players together -- like Monty and Paddy. Curtis Strange put Tiger and David Duval together in 1999, when they were No. 1 and 2 in the world. Even though they are buddies and have played well together, they got beat by Clarke and Westwood. I wouldn't have paired Tiger and Phil together, but, quite frankly, I don't think it would have mattered who Tiger played with against Monty and Paddy--those guys birdied 6 of the first 8 holes and were totally on fire. Monty's Ryder Cup record is incredible, while most of the Americans (including Tiger's) is pretty unimpressive. None of the American big guns was exactly lighting the course up. They just got outplayed by the Euros.