Paul Azinger has demonstrated he will be a hands-on, proactive captain for the United States’ Ryder Cup team.

Whether he’s perceived, in the final analysis, as a successful captain will depend on a single fact: Did the United States win?

That’s all there is to judge by, really. Nothing else will matter, and Azinger knows it, just as Tom Lehman and Hal Sutton knew it before him.

Azinger is making changes. He announced earlier this week that he has reversed the batting order. At Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., in September, it will be foursomes (alternate shot) on Friday and Saturday morning followed by best-ball in the afternoon.

Azinger is doing it because alternate shot has been an American strength and he wants his side to get off to a fast start. Recent history tells us the Americans have gotten off poorly in the morning best ball matches over the past decade and the comeback attempts have been an enormous struggle.

Previously, Azinger had changed the team selection process, adding two wild cards for a total of four. The points system also has been altered to reflect those golfers in the best form the year of the Ryder Cup, not a year or two years before.

Phil Mickelson said the other day Azinger will be a great captain. There’s no reason to doubt Mickelson’s sentiments but, really, there’s only one measure of greatness when it comes to Ryder Cup captains. The final outcome.

Let’s rewind to 2006 at the K-Club in Ireland and the things that were being said before the matches.

Lehman was hailed as the best captain the U.S. has ever had. He was lauded for getting his entire team to go to Ireland for a team practice session. He was praised highly and mightily for building a greater sense of camaraderie and togetherness than ever before had been exhibited by an American team.

Lehman was terrific with the media, forthright and sincere. His players’ manner reflected his own.

All was well in the American camp.

And then there was Lehman’s opposite number, wee Ian Woosnam, the Welshman who was Europe’s captain.

Woosie was depicted as, well, a little woosie on a lot of matters. In Europe, he was being called the worst captain ever and the media over there was braced for the worst possible outcome.

Two years before Bernhard Langer had impressed everybody as the most organized, most introspective and most successful European captain ever. The proof was in the outcome. He had beaten the Americans on their home soil at Oakland Hills Country Club by a whopping 18.5-9.5 margin, the most lopsided ever.

And now Europe had Woosnam, who didn’t have a clue. Anybody who suggests otherwise, that somehow Woosnam was being embraced as the Ryder Cup approached, is revising history. It wasn’t so.

And what happened?

The worst captain Europe has ever had thrashed the best captain the United States has ever had, the margin of defeat tying the record for the worst ever suffered by the Americans.

The point of all this is, very little a captain does matters once the Ryder Cup begins on Friday morning.

Then it’s all up to the golfers. Nobody knows that better than Azinger.

“No great secrets,” he said earlier this week when he spoke to reporters at the FBR Open. “The secret is you get the hottest players to show up and hope they play great.”