Birds of a feather - Martz, Strange just blew it

America's Team grabs a big win in St. Louis. America's Golf Team takes a big one smack on the chin in England.

This is no knock on Greg Ellis, Quincy Carter, Billy Cundiff and the boys. This is no slight on Paul McGinley, Colin Montgomerie and Co.

But look behind every great triumph and you find a loser whose arrogant and unreasonable strategy doomed his fate.

Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg? What was Lee thinking?

More to the point, Tiger Woods batting an irrelevant 12th on Sunday? What was Curtis Strange thinking?

And that final third-and-3? What was the properly chastised Mike Martz thinking?

Let's start with the Rams coach, who hasn't been accused of running up the score in nine months now. In fact, Martz's teams have lost five straight games -- nine if you want to factor in a preseason that clearly left the Rams unprepared for battle.

Martz left Marshall Faulk, the game's finest player, idle for far too long in last season's Super Bowl. The Rams coach mostly watched in disbelief as the Patriots refused to be overwhelmed by the brilliance of Martz's passing attack.

It happened again Sunday in a loss from which the Rams will not escape this season.

Third-and-3 at the Dallas 25, 1:40 to play. The Rams have survived the loss of Kurt Warner and are a midrange field goal from taking a three-point lead.

Sometimes the obvious call is OK. And the obvious play was to run Faulk to make sure the Cowboys had to use their last timeout, to make sure there was no loss that pushed kicker Jeff Wilkins into the risky business range.

Naturally, the all-too-clever Martz went the other way. Naturally, he called a pass play, even though an incompletion would have stopped the clock and allowed Dallas to save that timeout.

Instead, Greg Ellis sacked Jamie Martin for a five-yard loss. And on a day where the ball simply wasn't carrying on kicks, Wilkins came up a little off on a 48-yarder, hitting low on the right crossbar.

If Faulk gains the first down, there's a 90 percent chance the Rams use the rest of the clock to set up a short winning field goal. If he doesn't get the first down, Wilkins probably connects from 43 yards, drastically changing the pressure on Carter.

Martz has the rest of a wasted season to ponder his strategy.

Unfortunately, Strange has a lifetime to do the same. You captain a Ryder Cup team once, then you move on, and now Curtis' Strange strategy will be debated for years.

European captain Sam Torrance couldn't have asked for a finer gift than for Strange to stick the world's top two ranked players, Phil Mickelson and Woods, in the final two slots Sunday.

Strange even admitted he figured Torrance would "front load" his lineup, placing some of the best Europe had to offer at the top of the lineup card to capture the momentum.

And playing on the road -- yes, that's a real factor in the Ryder Cup _ and allowing the Europeans to grab early leads and inspire the crowd and the players was an outrageous gamble Strange didn't have to make.

"Sam Torrance took a hell of a gamble the way he front-loaded his team," Strange said Sunday night. "It turns out to be a smart move now." No. It was a smart move Saturday. Ben Crenshaw did precisely the same thing in 1999 at Brookline, Mass., loading up the early matches with his top players and stealing the momentum Europe had built during the team matches the first two days.

But worse than his lineup gaffe, Strange was just flat out wrong -- as so many American golf observers are -- when he suggested months ago that the U.S. team should "kick butt" on his watch because the U.S. had such superiority on paper.

No, they don't. They only have a major edge on U.S. soil, in tournaments set up to suit U.S. players. Move it to Europe, slow down the greens and add the team element that so inspires the Europeans while the Americans mostly fake camaraderie, and it's a different story.

As a result, Woods' match was inconsequential. Europe won before he and Jesper Parnevik had settled anything.

And as for Strange's assertion that Torrance gambled by leaving the cupboard bare in the second half of the draw? In the last six matches, Scott Verplank beat Europe's Lee Westwood for Team USA's only victory.

Advantage Europe.

Disadvantage, one more arrogant coach.

Tim Cowlishaw is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News.