The American won the Tour Championship last week but was disconsolate after winning no points in the defeat by Europe

As the boozy cries of “Olé! Olé!” reverberated around Le Golf National on Sunday night a sullen Tiger Woods offered a brutal assessment of his own performance in America’s 17 ½-10½ defeat. “I’m one of the contributing factors to why we lost the Ryder Cup, and it’s not a lot of fun,” he said. “It’s disappointing because I went 0-4, and that’s four points to the European team.”

It is now 25 years since the US have won in Europe, yet for the briefest moments during the afternoon they allowed themselves to entertain the impossible despite starting the day 10-6 behind. Jim Furyk’s side were ahead in four of the opening six singles and tied in two others, and Tiger was on the prowl. It turned out to be the cruellest of illusions. The final score of 17½-10½ was the third widest margin by a European team.

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Woods partly blamed himself for checking the US’s momentum. He had fought his way back from two down to all square after 13 holes but then was unable to deliver in the clutch. “The tee shot on 14 was big,” he said after losing 2&1 against Jon Rahm. “I didn’t put it in play. I then made back-to-back bogeys and consequently the matched slipped into his favour.”

Woods is the greatest player who ever lived but the Ryder Cup remains his kryptonite. His competition CV now stands at won 13, lost 21, with three ties. Only last week it appeared that he was back near his best having won the Tour Championship. Yet all week he has looked stiff and tired, perhaps the legacy of playing seven weeks in the past nine.

“It’s frustrating because I just didn’t perform at the level that I had been playing,” he said. “I got behind early in the matches and never got back. We were all coming here on a high and excited about playing this week but we didn’t execute like we had planned and wanted to.”

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Furyk was a popular captain but questions will be asked about some of his decisions, especially given that three of his four captain’s picks – Woods, Phil Mickelson and Bryson DeChambeau – did not win a point between them.

Eyebrows were certainly raised about the decision to pick Mickelson and DeChambeau for the afternoon foursomes on the first day – especially given that Mickelson is ranked 192nd out of 193 players in driving accuracy on the PGA Tour.

The US had been 3-1 up, yet Mickelson and DeChambeau were thumped by Sergio García and Alex Norén as the US endured the worst session defeat in their Ryder Cup history.

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It was also surprising that Webb Simpson, who made six birdies in beating Rose 3&2 in the singles, did not play more – especially given his excellent form around TPC at Sawgrass, the US course that most resembles Le Golf National.

However, the US players may want to look at themselves, too. Everyone knew Le Golf National put a premium on accuracy and local knowledge. But six of the US team were competing on it for the first time this week – with only America’s best player, Justin Thomas, bothering to make the trip over to the French Open this summer.

Not that Furyk saw it that way. “I had a lot of folks who came for a practice round about 10 days after,” he said. “We were well prepared.”

Furyk accepted that he would take most of the blame for the defeat but the US captain insisted he would not change much even in hindsight. “I realise the brunt of it is going to be on my plate but I have every confidence in those 12 guys,” he said. “I would take them right back into another Ryder Cup if I could. It was an honour to serve as their captain.”

Furyk also denied that fatigue was a factor, despite most of his players playing in the FedEx Cup beforehand. “That would be making an excuse,” he said.

“The course set-up was very good on a golf course they [Europe] know very well. But at the end of the day their captain did a better job than I did and I tip my cap off to him.”

Le Golf National is full of watery graves, and it was Mickelson who finally sunk the US team’s chances when he clouted the ball into the drink on the 16th. Four years ago at Gleneagles, he had ripped into the US captain Tom Watson, but he refused to put the knife into Furyk.

“This is an awesome team and our captain is one of the best people in golf,” he said. “The European side played some exquisite golf and they flat out beat us.”

Meanwhile Brooks Koepka was more blunt about what went wrong. “The Europeans kept making those 10-12 footers for par all week,” he said. “We ran into a buzzsaw.”