"[2008 winning captain Paul Azinger] got everybody invested in who they were going to play with, who the picks were going to be, who was going to be in their pod, who -- when they would play, and they had a great leader for each pod. In my case, we had Ray Floyd, and we hung out together and we were all invested in each other's play. We were invested in picking Hunter [Mahan] that week; Anthony Kim and myself and Justin [Leonard] were in a pod, and we were involved on having Hunter be our guy to fill our pod. So we were invested in the process.
"And the other thing that Paul did really well was he had a great game plan for us, how we were going to go about doing this. How we were going to go about playing together; golf ball, format, what we were going to do, if so-and-so is playing well, if so-and-so is not playing well, we had a real game plan."
Reports from the press conference consistently describe the mood in the room as tense and awkward.
"Absolutely we had a winning philosophy, but the bottom line is they kicked our butts," Watson shot back.
"I had a different philosophy as far as being a captain of this team," he said. "It takes 12 players to win. It's not pods. It's 12 players. And I felt -- yes, I did talk to the players, but my vice captains [Andy North, Steve Stricker and Floyd] were very instrumental in making decisions as to whom to pair with. I had a different philosophy than Paul. I decided not to go that way."