U.S. Ryder Cup captain Davis Love III: First 'team meeting' in 2 weeks
— -- PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. -- The U.S. Ryder Cup team traditionally starts to take shape at the Memorial when the top players are invited to one of the cottages at Muirfield Village to be fitted for uniforms. Davis Love III wants to get an earlier start in his second stint as captain.
Love said his first "team meeting" would be in two weeks at the Honda Classic for at least 20 players, maybe twice that many, depending on who is playing.
"We're going to have a dinner during the week of Honda, and then we'll probably have two or three more," Love said Wednesday. "So I'm going to be a little bit more focused this time on the start, work my way through the points list and make sure that we've got everybody covered, not wait until the Memorial Tournament when we have a clothes fitting to talk to the guys for the first time."
Love said he is paying so much more attention to the points, even eight months before the matches at Hazeltine, that he caught a mistake in the standings recently before they were published.
He said Tom Lehman, one of his vice captains, recalled having his first team dinner at the Bridgestone Invitational, just over six weeks from the 2006 Ryder Cup in Ireland.
"That's too late for us now," he said. "We want to get ahead of the game."
Love also said another vice captain, Tiger Woods, suggested getting together away from the golf course, perhaps a fishing trip to hang out and talk shop.
Said Love, "I think if we all get to know each other a little bit better in March and April and May, rather than waiting until August and September, we're going to be better off."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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