Warren Blog: Even though we're down, I feel good

Despite being a little disappointed to come out on the short end of the score Friday, United States Captain Roger Warren writes in his PGA Cup blog, he still believes his team is right where they need to be to regain the Llandudno Trophy.

By Roger Warren, United States Team Captain

After the first day of competition, I feel good. As I told the team in a meeting right after the afternoon session, "We may not be where we'd like to be, but we are where we need to be."

Without question, we'd like to have more points. Being behind 4 1/2 to 3 1/2 certainly isn't going to make any of us happy, but I know the make up of our team and we'll be fine. We played well, they (Great Britain & Ireland team) played well, it was a good day of great golf. We knew that it would not be easy, and it won't. Our two teams are matched very well and you are seeing that in the very close competition. But I fully expect that we will get better and better each day and we'll all see that tomorrow and Sunday.

As I said yesterday, the format that we play here, it's an adjustment for our squad more than the GB&I team. Not only is playing format an adjustment, but the mental approach for the players as they play in these situations has to change as well. With that in mind, I think we did a very good job playing within the foursomes and four-balls, I don't think that you'll hear any of the players saying that they had any issues with the strategies that need to be employed for success in these formats.

The foursomes from this afternoon especially, this is a format that just lends itself to drama, close and exciting matches. You could see that in that two of the four matches went to the 18th green, the other went to the 17th. What Mike Small and Alan Schulte did this afternoon when they won 5&4, that's just really strong and somewhat unexpected in this type of format. But they are really playing well.

Speaking of strong, I don't think too much surprised me today but one thing that certainly did was Craig Goodfellow from the Great Britain and Ireland team. The length that he hits the ball -- wow, he hits the driver an enormous length. That's a great advantage on a big course like this and he earned his team 1.5 points today. Other than that, today was as competitive and exciting as I fully expected.

There were a number of times today when our team could have become very frustrated or disillusioned. We had a couple of bad bounces, putts that just wouldn't drop or were just the victims of some incredible shots and putts from the GB&I squad. But let me tell you, this team is tough. They kept fighting, kept grinding, I couldn't be more proud.

If you look at our roster, we have a number of PGA Professional National Champion winners, guys who have played in numerous TOUR events, played in the PGA Championship and made the cut; we are a strong, battle-tested, extremely talented team. We are certainly still very confident heading into tomorrow.

The toughest part of being Captain is to strategically look at the pairings and figure out who to pair together, where they will play, and of course, two players have to sit out each session during the team sessions. I am so thankful that personalities and egos are not an issue on this team. This team has said from the beginning that they each, down to a man, understand their roles and responsibilities as a group. They all have the same goal that I do, to be in a position to win come Sunday.

And as I look at the team, it might be possible to second-guess after a match and see if that was a good pairing, but when you look at the roster, how can you make a mistake? They are all such good players and they all work so well together, I don't believe the end result will be about a pairing, it will be about who makes the shots when they need to.

So as I make tomorrow's pairings, I will do my best to put each team in a position to win -- but again, I don't think there is a such thing as a wrong pairing for our squad. I just hope that I'm able to put together the best of the many great possible match-ups.

So I'm just really pleased with the day. It was a good day for the American squad. No, not great, but good enough. And it's only going to get better.