by Lynne Truss
It is unfair, though, to expect the golfers to get the balance right. The correct balance has, arguably, never been struck in the history of the fixture. Everyone who cheerfully wants the Ryder Cup to be a substitute for warfare still reserves the right to say, wagging a finger, ‘Now, high spirits are all very well; but don’t forget golf is a civilised game for civilised people.’ I think this may explain why Tiger Woods - who diplomatically claims to adore the Ryder Cup - clearly suffers like a martyr on a gridiron every time he’s forced to play it. I think his nature rebels. Golf, for him, is about winning by being the best. If he’d wanted to play team sports for a living, for heaven’s sake, would he have chosen golf ? It is often said that the current top American players are less good at bonding as a team than the more lowly-ranked Europeans, and this is sometimes blamed for their recent lack of success in the Ryder Cup. Are they maybe a bit spoiled? Are they too rich? Are they too entouraged ? Well, it may simply be they are too good. It is completely understandable that a successful golfer should have difficulties taking one for the team, or enjoying a group hug. Golf is not a contact sport. It is, in fact, an anti-contact sport. As we have seen in the previous chapter, it is an ostensibly sociable game that in reality attracts people who are secretly (or not so secretly) misanthropic bastards.
Lovers of the Ryder Cup tradition are quick to remember moments of sportsmanship - as, for example, when golfers on the winning side have conceded missable putts, to take the pressure off of an opponent. In 1969, at Royal Birkdale, Jack Nicklaus famously picked up Tony Jacklin’s marker, three feet from the hole on the 18th, and said, ‘I don’t think you would have missed that putt, but in the circumstances I would never give you the opportunity.’ The result of Nicklaus’s historic gesture was a 16-16 draw - although this wasn’t quite as noble as it sounds, since the rules state that the defending team retains the Cup in the event of a dead heat. But how terrific of him, and what a great way to put it - ‘I would never give you the opportunity’. This lovely story makes me think of the shiver-up-the-spine moment at the end of the movie Batman Begins, when Lieutenant Gordon says to Batman, ‘I never said thank you,’ and Batman replies, ‘And you’ll never have to’ - before spreading his cape and diving off a parapet to swoop into the night.
However, such superhero moments are rare in the history of this competition, and in recent times there has been a lot of head-shaking about the Ryder Cup getting too bellicose, especially after the meetings in America in 1991 and 1999. Taking place against a background of global conflict, the 1991 Ryder Cup was played at Kiawah Island in South Carolina, where the us team got so infected with Desert Storm patriotic fervour that the press dubbed the event ‘The War on the Shore’. In 1991, the us hadn’t won the Cup for eight years, and were pretty sore about it - but still, how they managed to confuse golf against Europe with bombing Iraq was never adequately explained. There was an unprecedented unpleasantness about Kiawah Island, which the Americans finally won by 141/2 to 131/2, the whole result turning on a single missed putt by Bernhard Langer, the horror of which has arguably marked the poor chap for life. Corey Pavin and other us players wore Desert Storm caps. Galleries whooped, bellowed and screamed. The Europeans were subjected to insults, offensive prank calls, spectators chucking decoy balls onto the course, and even a daft campaign (started by a local radio station) to deprive them of sleep by yelling outside their hotel in the small hours. After the victory, us player Paul Azinger said: ‘American pride is back. We went over there and thumped the Iraqis. Now we’ve taken the Cup back. I’m proud to be an American.’
I wasn’t there in 1991, but I have a vivid memory of the Sunday afternoon eight years later, at Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1999. It was a famous day, for one reason and another. The Americans had finished the Saturday four points down, which meant that, to win the Cup, they needed at least 81/2 points from the 12 available in the singles matches - which, frankly, looked like a tall order. No winning team had ever started the Sunday with more than a two-point deficit before. We Europeans were culpably light-hearted about how well things had gone for us in the preceding two days; we had celebrated tactlessly (there was even, I’m ashamed to say, cheering in the press restaurant); we were fools not to register the intensity of the anger and wounded pride now pulsing through our opponents. La la la, we trilled. Hey ho, lighten up you guys, it’s just a game, but aren’t we good at it, la la la la la, New England in the Fall, what could be nicer, la la la la la? Imagine a blithe little lamb with a ribbon round its neck skipping about in front of a wounded and starving lioness, and you get the idea. I always remember our collective euphoria in watching the 19-year-old Sergio Garcia paired with Jesper Parnevik on those first two days: in the four matches they had played together, first they had beaten Tom Lehman and Tiger Woods, then they had beaten Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk, then they had beaten Payne Stewart and Justin Leonard, and then they had halved against David Duval and Davis Love iii. Bloody hell. Could this really be happening? They larked about together, Sergio and Jesper. They hugged and high-fived. They jumped into each other’s arms. Can you imagine how obnoxious this behaviour must have been to their opponents? At what temperature, I wonder, does human blood literally start to boil?
All week the Europeans had infuriated their hosts by appearing to take the contest lightly, their captain Mark James setting the tone by being hilariously flippant in his public statements - in contrast to the deep, full-fathom-five solemnity of the us captain, Ben Crenshaw, who said things were ‘very, very meaningful’, and that Sergio Garcia had a ‘very, very wide arsenal’ (scary moment there, actually). James’s press conferences were completely disarming. He said the thing he feared most about the Americans was their dress sense. It was like watching a person repeatedly cheeking a humourless us immigration officer, and getting away with it. ‘What was your best decision today as captain?’ James would be asked, and he’d say, ‘I had the hamburger for lunch instead of the turkey sandwich, and I really enjoyed it.’ Asked why he parked his captain’s buggy at a particular place on the course, he said he usually chose a spot where he could catch a bit of sun. ‘Tell us about Miguel Angel Jimenez,’ a reporter pleaded. ‘Well, I don’t know a huge amount about him,’ said James. ‘He’s got a Ferrari.’
Boy, were we asking for it. And boy, did we get it. On the Saturday night, according to legend, Ben Crenshaw invited George W. Bush, then governor of Texas, to fire up his men by reading to them a stirring appeal-for-help letter written at the Alamo. The next morning the us team arrived on the course pumped up to a frenzy of battle resolve, and incidentally wearing the ugliest shirts you’ve ever seen. It was shock and awe time again, basically - and before the happy little European lamb could say ‘Baa?’, it was torn to pieces, reduced to nothing more than an interesting spatter pattern, a stump of woolly hoof, and a poignant strip of ripped and bloody ribbon caught up on a bit of shrub. In the first six singles matches, the us players absolutely slaughtered us, and the crowd got the taste for blood. One by one, the Europeans were simply blown away. In the end, only four of our boys were able to make a game of it on that Sunday - Padraig Harrington, José-Maria Olazabal, Colin Montgomerie and Paul Lawrie - but no one has ever accused the Europeans of choking. On the contrary, those who scored points against the Americans are regarded as heroes. The crowd was so appallingly abusive to Colin Montgomerie that his dad left the course in disgust. Mark James’s wife was spat at. All day the crowds just shouted at the Europeans to go home.
Personally, I was exposed to only about an hour of this. Given the deadline difficulties of filing copy from America to London (the first deadline is around 1.30 p.m., and the last is around six), it was necessary to spend most of the Sunday working in the air-conditioned press tent, watching the singles matches unfold on TV screens, and updating pieces for each edition. However, at last spotting a gap between deadlines, I walked out to the nearest point of the course in time to see Colin Montgomerie and Payne Stewart come by, and it was one of the most
shocking discontinuities I’ve ever experienced. Passing from the TV version of the event to the reality was like walking out of the Reading Room of the British Museum and into the trenches of the First World War. It was unnaturally dark out there, for a start. The atmosphere was almost unbreathably thick; people were yelling abuse; there was an air of violence. As someone who had spent three years mingling with football crowds, I was no stranger to this sort of thing. But I had never felt it on a golf course before, and I hope I never will again.
This was all prior to the events on the 17th hole - events which every person considering what to do about the Ryder Cup in 2001 must have had in mind, even if they didn’t say so. Having already secured eight of the required eight and a half points, a number of excited American players were gathered at the 17th green to cheer Justin Leonard in his match against José-Maria Olazabal. Olazabal had been four up earlier in the match, but Leonard had putted beautifully, making birdies, and had eroded Olazabal’s lead until they were all square after 16. If Leonard won the 17th, he would ensure a half-point for his team, and therefore victory. If he halved it, he still stood the chance of winning (or losing) the match on the 18th. Arriving at the green, Olazabal had a twenty-foot putt for birdie; Leonard was putting from around forty-five feet, also for birdie. With one of those shots that ring around the world, Leonard made that brilliant putt, with the result that his team-mates, whooping and shrieking, charged onto the green in triumph. They knew Leonard hadn’t won the hole yet, but they went berserk anyway, and the pictures of that mad moment became instantly iconic: the American players and caddies surging, leaping onto the green in the foreground; an impassive Olazabal in the distance, head bowed, presumably battling to contain his feelings (as I suspect he always is). This was the moment when all that guff about golf being a gentlemanly sport simply went up in smoke.
Now, the Americans had had a fantastic day. Despite the considerable hindrance of the hideous shirts, they had played magnificently. They had staged the biggest fight-back in the history of the competition. But the fact that they ran out onto the green at the 17th before Olazabal had had a chance to putt was, in golf terms, a heinous sin, and unforgivable. Had Olazabal halved the hole, and gone on to win the 18th (and as it happens, Olazabal did win the 18th), he would have prevented - or at least delayed - the us win. Given that the eventual score was 141/2 to 131/2 (and Europe needed only 14 points to retain the Cup), Olazabal’s putt was just as crucial as Leonard’s had been.
But he not only had to wait for the celebrations to die down; the crowd then yelled abuse at him. Nowadays, as part of the generous campaign to forget Brookline and not point the finger at anyone (because it just makes the us players defensive, and doesn’t achieve anything), Olazabal is often quoted as saying, in a saintly way, that had the boot been on the other foot, who knows whether the Europeans would have behaved similarly. At the time, however, that was not what he said. At the press conference afterwards, he congratulated the Americans but said that ‘What happened today should not have happened. We are playing a match and we should show respect to each other and what happened was not the right thing to do.’
When people refer darkly to the events at Brookline in 1999, this is what they are talking about. When the pgas tore their raiments in agony in September 2001, deciding whether or not to postpone, they knew that the event under consideration was more than just a straightforward golfing competition, it was potentially a bloodbath. Those events on the 17th at Brookline had shown us what happens when you mix golf with war, start meaning it, and leave yourself with no way to get back. On both sides the memory was fresh, and people were still very sore about it. It no longer cut much ice to console oneself with, ‘Yes, but Jack Nicklaus did say that fantastic thing to Tony Jacklin back in 1969.’ It is a harsh thing to say, but postponing the competition by a year and then playing it in the shadow of a terrorist atrocity was, as it turned out, precisely what was required. It lent a bit of perspective. I’ve never heard anyone say this, but perhaps the horrific events of 9/11 were responsible, in an ill-wind kind of way, for saving the Ryder Cup.
My main memory of the 2002 Ryder Cup at the Belfry is of being in the wrong place at the wrong time - so no change there, then, I hear you say. But it’s the chief reality of on-the-spot golf-writing that there is no optimum place from which to view an unfolding golf tournament, except in front of a telly, listening to Peter Alliss sending private warm wishes over the public airwaves to the party with fairy cakes going on today for the 90th birthday of the expro Sandy MacHoots at the Old-Bastard-on-the-Wold Golf Club. (I do wish he’d stop doing that.) If you opt to follow a match for 18 holes - which involves walking several miles, crouching motionless in the long grass when required to, and jotting down umpteen yardages and club selections - you must do it in full knowledge that in terms of getting a useable story you probably might just as well have stayed at home and groomed the cat. The story of the day will arise wherever it chooses to, and is impossible to secondguess. On the Sunday at the Belfry in 2002, I was assigned to the match between Lee Westwood and Scott Verplank, which looked all right on paper, but turned out to be an odd, dreamlike affair, with no story in it for anyone concerned. Basically, Westwood didn’t look like winning, by contrast to most of his team-mates, who were blazing a trail towards an eventual victory of 151/2 points to 121/2. He won a hole here; lost a hole there. Elsewhere on the course - as tantalising distant roars frequently attested - all was going fabulously well for Europe, and I was very glad just to hear about it on Radio 5 as I plodded round regardless. The virtually unknown Philip Price was beating Phil Mickelson. Jesper Parnevik was heading for a half with Tiger Woods. Padraig Harrington was slaughtering Mark Calcavecchia.
As always in these circumstances, I used no journalistic initiative. I stuck with Lee. Where a better journalist assigned to this match would have dashed off to get a better story (and all the rest of them did), I didn’t have the heart. And to be honest, it has now become almost a point of pride for me to pick a naff match on the Sunday of the Ryder Cup. At Valderrama in 1997 I went out with Ian Woosnam, who lost to Fred Couples by one of the most horrific margins ever - 8 and 7. In 2002, I got Westwood. And in 2006, at the K Club in Dublin, in a drenching downpour, I was allotted Sergio Garcia, who immediately started losing so catastrophically to Stewart Cink (five down after seven holes) that John Hopkins - knowing from experience how stolid I can be in such circumstances - came out to intercept me after the front nine, pulling me out of the squelching mud, and officially taking me off this awful non-story. I wouldn’t have minded, but the bloody rain stopped the moment I went indoors. Anyway, at Louisville, Kentucky (2008), the pattern was finally broken. Noticing my jinx effect, perhaps, my bosses begged me to keep away from the players altogether on the Sunday, so I stayed in the tent with all my outdoor paraphernalia piled untidily around my desk, and wrote about the very real mental agony of having to revise my prejudices concerning Ian Poulter (still a bit of a git, but incontrovertibly the most impressive player on the European team).
I missed going out, of course. One of the reasons I love covering golf is that you get to walk round with the players. I mean, you don’t chat with them or anything. You don’t say, ‘I’d aim for that TV tower if I were you,’ or ‘I was surprised you chose the wedge.’ Your presence is something they blank out, which is fair enough. I did once help David Duval look for his ball in some gorse, but I’m pretty sure I was invisible throughout, and I kept my distance anyway on account of that awful gobbing. Generally you stay near to the ropes, and you have to kneel or crouch when the shots are taken, so the spectators can see over your head. It is no stroll, however. Ambling is not an option. While the golfers stride down rolling velvety fairways, we hacks have to scramble over tussocks of long grass and occasionally slip and fall over (to cheers from the crowd). The marshals who control the crossings will often wait for the players to pass and then, just as we approach (yelling ‘Wait for us!’), they open the ropes, so we have t
o fight our way through crowds of spectators, streaming from one side of the fairway to the other. We are often a fairly merry band, however. We have a laugh. ‘Ten foot putt?’ we say, peering towards the green. ‘Twelve,’ says someone. ‘Fifteen,’ says another. I am usually listening to the radio commentary, so I tend to pass on what the commentator has said (‘He says eight’), so we can all agree a number. My own method of calculating distance on the green is to imagine laying a number of six-foot golfers end to end, but I wouldn’t dare mention this to the guys, obviously, because of the scope for innuendo.
Notepad and pen are all that the guys carry, by the way, and I can’t imagine how they do it. I am permanently in awe at their sheer chutzpah in the face of four or five hours in the unpredictable outdoors. They just strap on an armband with ‘press’ on it, click a Biro, and out they go. By contrast, every time I go out on the golf course, I not only change into a completely different outfit (golf shoes with soft cleats, waterproof jacket, jumbo waterproof trousers), but I pack into a knapsack enough wardrobe options and essential survival items for a weekend on Dartmoor. While the chaps merely pay attention to the golf and jot down the occasional note (some of them pretend they can even follow the flight of the ball, but I don’t believe them), I am forever re-arranging my possessions: passing from hand to hand any combination of gloves, hat, glasses, binoculars, sun cream, radio, switched-off mobile phone, purse, wallet, allergy tablets, yardage guide, spare batteries, jumper, novel, spare glasses, back-up radio, tin of mints, tissues, sunglasses, sanitary towels, contact lenses (in case I lose all the glasses), bottle of water, glucose tablets, banana, firstaid kit, set of splints, fold-away stretcher, portable resuscitation unit and emergency distress flares. No wonder I never know what’s going on. No wonder I can never find my bloody notepad and my bloody pen. What is interesting is how the chaps are tactful enough never to comment on all this stuff I’m freighting about, but at the same time they won’t have anything to do with it, either. If a chap sneezes and I say, ‘Ooh, I’ve got a big box of tissues in here somewhere,’ I’ve noticed the offer is always declined quite sharply. If a chap is in visible need of a sustaining banana, I have equally learned not to say anything about having a spare apple and an individual fruit pie if they’re interested. It appears to be a male-pride thing, and I am bound to respect it, even without understanding it. Some men just don’t like to be offered things, do they? And they would rather die than ask. Mind you, I think my fellow golf writers are mainly worried I’ll one day magically produce a fully-erect hat-stand out of that bag of mine, like Mary Poppins. I’m actually quite worried about that myself.