Not surprisingly and Phil Mickelson has been stood down from the Saturday morning Fourballs.

The American looked tired, and according to SKY’s Butch Harmon seemed to be ‘out of gas’ during this afternoon’s Foursome match and with he and Keegan Bradley losing to the Europeans Victor Dubuisson and Graeme McDowell.

European Team captain Paul McGinley has kept four winning combinations together while rival USA Team captain has stuck with just one and that is the Friday Foursome all-Texan rookie duo of Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed.

Watson commented on his pairings and the first day’s play saying:  ” It started off looking pretty good, and  then we didn’t perform in the afternoon, and it’s very disappointing.

“The players themselves are disappointed. I know the question is going to be asked about Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed,
whether I should have played them in the afternoon, and I thought at the time it was the best decision not to play them.

No prize for guessing who this pair are supporting at Gleneagles. (Photo – Eoin ‘Ever on the lookout’ Clarke/www.golffile.ie)

“There were a variety of reasons, but I won’t go into those. It was a decision that my vice captains and I made. That was a decision that we
felt very strongly for. I can tell you one comical thing, though.

“When I told Patrick that he wasn’t going to play in the afternoon, it was comical at the time, not so comical now maybe but it was comical at the time.

“I said, “How does that make you feel?” He said, “Well, I’m all right with it.” He said, “Well, really, Captain, I’m not all right with it.” I said, “That’s the way I want you to be.” You can’t play everybody.  You’re going to be second guessed, and obviously you’re going to second guess me on that decision right there.

“Webb Simpson and Bubba, they had a  bad day. They really did. We all have bad days. And I told them, I said, that’s just one match. That’s one match out of the five, and of course we are going to be playing Bubba tomorrow in the first match, and we’re going to go with that. He’s going to play with Matt Kuchar in the first match, and so we’ll get them off to start again and see if he can play a little bit better. He’s ready to go.

“As for Phil and Keegan, they struggled this afternoon. They missed a lot of putts.  Had a lot of short putts today and they kind of blew themselves out of it with not staying in it with the putts they had to make. That’s the game. There are ebbs and flows. We had an early ebb, we had a better flow in the morning and it all kind of ebbed in the afternoon.”

Here is the make up of the teams for tomorrow mornings session.