Pressure takes heavy toll on American old guard in the final reckoning
•
Shellshocked: the United States trio of Furyk, Mickelson and Webb Simpson are stunned after losing their overnight leadMIKE BLAKE/REUTERS
Owen Slot Chief Sports Reporter, Chicago Last updated at 12:35AM, October 1 2012
Epic sport. Titanic tests of nerve. The Ryder Cup, breathless, unbelievable tension. Here at Medinah, we had probably the loudest 1st-tee gallery ever and then one of the greatest silencing jobs in the history of this extraordinary event. The Ryder Cup never disappoints. Yesterday morning, in this leafy Chicago suburb, we were contemplating that unknown rarity, a flat finish. But instead we witnessed the greatest of all denouements. It took a Belgian to find the words. “It takes you deep down in the guts,” Nicolas Colsaerts said as he suffered on the sidelines, waiting for the final games to go down the 18th. Indeed, deep down in the guts was how the American team felt it. We saw here the horrible effects of pressure, a gripping tension of a level that golfers only ever experience at the Ryder Cup. They cannot practise for this, they cannot prepare for how it feels when you see the opposition in blue coming back far from behind and slowly closing on you. How does it feel to have the Europeans nipping at your heels? Look at the Americans on the 17th yesterday; they know. Of the nine matches that went through 17, four Americans bogeyed it. They let three matches slip from their hands here. And yet no one was in any doubt at the start of the day that the
team with the better form were the ones lining up for Davis Love III, the US captain. On the 1st tee yesterday, there was a celebratory feel in the air. The American team were four points ahead and their supporters revelled in it; they sung as though they had come to witness not an implosion but a procession. Bubba Watson raised his hands like a conductor on the tee and the hordes in red responded. And then the most electric contest crackled into life and the European plan started to work. It started with The Luke Donald Plan: send in the trusty blondie to quieten Bubba, the quirky new American hero. And Donald did it. Those behind him, the top-loaded Europeans, started to deliver on their end of the plan, too. It was hardly a stroke of genius, it was the only way: win the early games and then see if you can get the Americans in the bottom half of the draw to crack. And yes, this was a cracking. When the Europeans started to drag the scores closer, the Americans — the team who had the form — went and lost it. Phil Mickelson stood on the 17th tee one up and lost his match to Justin Rose. Jim Furyk stood there one up and lost his match to Sergio García. Steve Stricker stood there all square with Martin Kaymer and lost his match. These are three of the old guard, the experienced men who Love would have backed in the heat of battle. But there can be no preparation for a battle like this.Mickelson hardly tossed his game away, rather it was snatched away by Rose. Two birdies in the last two holes by the Englishman — but what does that tell you about Ryder Cup pressure? Some players could barely hold their putters on that 17th; conversely, it was the strange, killing ache of the situation that dragged from Rose a winning putt right across the sun-dappled green and then the same again one hole later. How it must hurt. When Mickelson went down to Rose, the match was still comparatively young and, still, no one really thought that Europe were going to come back, not the whole way. When Furyk came through the 17th 45 minutes later, the comeback from the dead was a genuine possibility. And so Furyk lost 17 to a bogey and marched up the 18th to his fate. Here was the tension grinding, playing again with his ability to hit a putt. He hit his first putt long and gave himself an agonising length to save half a point. And when that putt missed, he stood transfixed, like a statue, bent over his putter, unable to cope with the intensity of the moment. Only when García came to embrace him did the statue come back to life. The Ryder Cup and tension. They go hand in hand and as a match like this stretches farther and farther to a tight close, the tension cranks up, too. And so we are left with Stricker on 17th, standing over a six-footer, feeling it at its height. This was probably the miss that lost the Ryder Cup and the American stared after it as if it would haunt him for ever. That is how this extraordinary event works. It sends sensations of fear and tension and glory down the hands of the man holding the putter. It gets you deep down in the guts. It takes a victory from under the noses of the seemingly unstoppable Americans. In sport, it is an epic like no other.