The frightful loss of the US team at the Ryder Cup was being blamed on a perfect storm of atrocious team chemistry, poor leadership, a lack of experience and stellar European play, US newspapers concluded on Monday.
Bowled over once again by the European match-play giants, the Americans were left wondering where to go from here after losing three straight Ryder Cups and five of the last six.
"The Americans should have been issued a blindfold at the gate Friday and a last cigarette before the lopsided singles matches began Sunday at The K Club," wrote Thomas Boswell of the Washington Post.
There were more questions than answers on Monday as more than one US newspaper noted that it can't get much worse.
"Maybe the only fluke of the last decade was the American's win in 1999, when Ben Crenshaw implored his squad to remember the Alamo. You can only do that kind of thing once every whatever," Mike Kern of the Philadelphia Enquirer said.
"The reality is, Europe has just been better," it said.
"It is OK. You can say it out loud. You think that's going to change? The United States traditionally had the edge in depth. Not anymore. And it is not close," the Enquirer said.
"Anyway you slice it something's missing. Fixing it will not be easy. It will be interesting to see who succeeds [Tom] Lehman, because most folks figured he had a clue," it said.
The Chicago Tribune said: "Nobody was about to quarrel with Johnny Miller's pre-tournament assessment that this was the worst US Ryder Cup team ever. It was a complete team meltdown."
The Tribune provided its own solutions to America's woes.
"The US probably needs its standout young players like Lucas Glover, J.B. Holmes and Ryan Moore to get better fast. And it has to hope [Tiger] Woods and [Phil] Mickelson somehow find the same enthusiasm for this event that [Sergio] Garcia and [Colin] Montgomerie have," it said.
"Perhaps the US should show up on Thursday of Ryder Cup week, throw some balls on the greens and start putting. Whatever the explanation, it can't get any worse for the Americans," the Tribune said.
One of the bolder headlines came via the ESPN.com Web site which screamed: "Euros Trash US Ryder Cup team."
"Many reasons for Europe's gradual rise to domination have been cited, including a higher standard of excellence on the European Tour, the rich tradition of overseas match play and the notion that the US golfers bred on highly individualistic stroke-play competition are not wired for such team competition," USA Today said.
"On the PGA Tour, many stars are miniature self-corporations competing for the same market share and they aren't particularly chummy. The Europeans travel together, eat together, drink together and, yes, they play marvelous golf together. They are unified, motivated, prideful," it said.
There were plenty of clues things weren't going well for the US, including Woods' caddie, Steve Williams, losing Woods' nine-iron on the seventh hole when he stumbled while cleaning the blade and dropped the club into the murky depths of the River Liffey.
"A diver returned the club to Woods on the back nine but maybe Williams was onto something," wrote golf writer Thomas Bonk of the Los Angeles Times.
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