SAN MARTIN -- American captain Davis Love III is coping with his devastating Ryder Cup loss to the Europeans two weeks ago by playing as much golf as possible.

"You go home and talk to your friends about it, and it's different,"

Love said Wednesday. "You come out here and talk with you competitive friends, guys who understand the game, and you can talk about it more."

Love, 48, played last week in Las Vegas, just days after Europe stormed back from a four-point, final-day deficit to retain the Ryder Cup 14.5-13.5. Love will tee it up again Thursday for the first round of the Frys.com Open at CordeValle Golf Club.

"It was strange the first couple days in Vegas," Love said. "Guys didn't know what to say because it was all so fast.

"But if you're not a player, you really don't really understand.

Somebody said, 'If you're not in the arena, you can't really comment on it.' We fought really hard, and guys just didn't play the way we wanted to on Sunday."

The loss, which matched the largest blown lead in Ryder Cup history, still irks Tiger Woods, who has texted Love from Turkey this week.

"Tiger was up all night that Sunday and couldn't sleep," Love said. "He took the rookies aside Sunday night and told them he was sorry he didn't play better. And he played very well. But he feels responsible. But guys like (Steve) Stricker and (Jim) Furyk were all down in the dumps about it. People

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don't realize how much we really care about it and how hard we try."

Woods went 0-3-1, Stricker was 0-4 and Furyk finished 1-2 in Ryder Cup matches.

"Simply put, we care about it more than anybody else does," Love said. "It's harder on us than it is on the fans, and I don't think people realize it. All the criticism that the guys don't come together and they don't play as a team and they don't care as much as everyone else, that's the only disappointing thing."

  • To win last year's Frys.com, Bryce Molder had to birdie the 72nd hole, and then go 4 under in six sudden-death holes to outlast Briny Baird. Looking back, the feat's just as impressive to Molder as it sounds.

    While practicing at CordeValle for this week's tournament, it dawned on Molder just how daunting it was to drive the par-4 17th hole over water and then hit the tricky 18th fairway. And he had to do that three times in a row during the playoff.

    "You get up there, and when you have some momentum and confidence, you just step up and hit it," Molder said. "But now, I get up there and think, 'Oh, this is a pretty small target.' "

    Since collecting his first PGA Tour win last year, Molder, 33, has two top 10 finishes and earned $1,060,115 in 2012.

    "Sometimes we feel like we can do exactly what we want on the golf course and we think we are better than we are," he said. "Sometimes we think we're terrible at times, and that's not the case, either.

    "It's never that far off."

  • Baird, who missed two birdie putts inside of 10 feet before falling to Molder in the playoff, is out for the season after opting to have surgery on both shoulders. Baird, winless on tour, hasn't played since May. He made six cuts in 13 events to earn $154,111 in 2012.

  • John Daly hasn't finished inside the top 125 on the money list since 2005, but he could snap that slide with a strong performance this week. He's 137th on the money list at $488,505 in 13 events. Last week at the Justin Timberlake Shriners Open Hospitals for Children Open, Daly shot a second-round 63, but he followed up by shooting 86-77 over the weekend.