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Illness has “spread” through the United States Ryder Cup team and contributed to their 6½-1½ deficit to Europe on day one, says captain Zach Johnson.
Europe claimed a clean sweep of Friday morning’s foursomes session for the first time ever to lead 4-0.
And the fourballs concluded with the US failing to win a single match in a day – another unwelcome first.
“We’re fighting things internally,” said Johnson. “It’s kind of passed around a little bit, caddies, players.”
As defending champions, the US require 14 points to retain the Ryder Cup, with Europe needing 14½ to regain the trophy.
But Johnson added: “I’m grateful we have a team doctor.
“The bottom line is there’s been some unforeseen things that we’ve had to navigate around, which is really unfortunate, in the sense of health. It’s not an excuse, because we have depth.
“We have got some congestion and some signs of things that are unfortunate. It’s one of those where sometimes the energy is probably a little low, but the ability and desire to go out and play is still there.
“That’s what we are weighing up. Every one of them still wants to play every match, which is encouraging.”
Johnson was reluctant to go into any more details, or chat about any of the ill players or caddies, other than to concede it had affected some of the decisions he made around pairings.
“I would say that we’d love to have everything drawn out way ahead of time, but there’s certain things you cannot control and we are trying to control the controllables in our team room, and I’ll leave it at that,” he added.
