CHASKA, Minn. -- After two days of emotionally charged matches, two days of mind-numbingly brilliant entertainment, two days of laser-beam approaches and clutch putts and even a few missed gimmes (sorry, Lee Westwood), two days of Patrick Reed thunderclaps and Rory McIlroy silencers, two days of enough "Baba Booeys" to last 10 lifetimes and two days of the United States team hanging on to a lead against Europe, the Ryder Cup will all come down to Sunday's singles matches.
How do we know? Here's a clue: because it always comes down to Sunday's singles matches.
Forget everything we've heard for the past two years about task forces. Forget all the conjecture over pairings and pods and sort-of-but-not-quite pods and personality profiling. The portion of the Ryder Cup that included high-fiving and fist-bumping and some cringe-worthy shimmy-shake thing (we're looking at you, Phil Mickelson and Matt Kuchar) is over. That was just the appetizer.
Now comes the fun part.
If we've learned anything through recent history, it's that racing to a Saturday evening lead is nice, but it's hardly indicative of the eventual champion.
With the U.S. up 9½ to 6½, that differential is less than 1999, when the U.S. roared back to win at Brookline, and 2012, when Europe did the same at Medinah. Those are the big ones, the most historic ones, but others have proved equally unpredictable entering the final session.
In 1995, the U.S. led by two; Europe wound up winning. In 1997, Europe led by five; it wound up holding on to win by a single point. In 2010, Europe led by three; it again held on to win by one point.
Moral of the story? Anything can happen on a Sunday at the Ryder Cup. This one won't be any different.
Each captain always has various ways to set the lineup. Frontload? Backload? Spread the stars among the batting order? At least right off the top, Team USA's Davis Love III and Team Europe's Darren Clarke each clung to the same idea for the blind draw, which in turn has created one of the most anticipated singles matches in recent memory. Reed and McIlroy have each been their respective team's best player over the first two days, and they'll kick things off in what should be a knock-down, drag-out heavyweight title fight-type of match.
"I've obviously been around a lot of teams that, no secret, they were going to load the boat," Love said after the matches were announced. "So our problem, again, was we say, 'All right, we're going to put the six guys out that are playing really well.' Well, we've got 12 that are playing really well, so we didn't know what to do."
That's very diplomatic of the captain, but he did at least understand that of the 12 playing well, Reed is playing the best. He's also a lightning rod to get the crowd pumped up and start some momentum. But perhaps the greatest reason for him batting leadoff is this: In the strategic game of poker that is setting lineups without knowing the other team's order, he read Clarke's raise of McIlroy and called with his own hottest player.
If nothing else, the rest of the golf world thanks them for making this happen.
From there, Clarke continued to frontload. He followed with perhaps his next-best performer so far in Henrik Stenson, then Thomas Pieters, Justin Rose, Rafa Cabrera-Bello and Sergio Garcia. If you wanted to know the six players who have played the best so far this week, you don't have to look past the first six on the singles list.
Despite his claim that all 12 players are playing well, some of Love's roster is playing better than others. Though he led off with Reed, the U.S. skipper spread out some of his other studs, including Brandt Snedeker, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka in the 8-10 spots, respectively.
What will it all mean? Just as history has proven that the Ryder Cup ain't over until it's over, it also has shown us that there is no secret formula to producing a winning lineup.
Perhaps Clarke's frontloading will lead to some early European momentum that carries into the later matches. Maybe it will backfire, with the Americans taking out the opponents' best players, turning the remainder of the day into a coronation.
The past two days have been a brilliant display of the most passionate golf you'll ever see, but that's all just the opening act for Sunday. Bring on the main event.