Friday, September 24, 1999
Good thing they weren't paid
By JIM LITKE
AP Sports Writer
BROOKLINE, Mass. (AP) - Maybe it's a good thing they didn't
get paid.
Because imagine how many meals the so-called "Brookline
Four" - David Duval, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Mark
O'Meara - and their dependents would have missed if their livelihood
actually depended on the results they produced in Friday's opening
round of Ryder Cup matches.
Beginning with the morning foursomes:
Duval and Mickelson lost 3 and 2 to Colin Montgomerie and Paul
Lawrie.
Woods and Tom Lehman lost 2 and 1 to Sergio Garcia and Jesper
Parnevik.
And continuing with the afternoon fourballs:
Mickelson and Jim Furyk lost 1-up to Parnevik and Garcia.
Duval and Woods lost 1-up to Lee Westwood and Darren Clarke.
Keeping in mind that U.S. captain Ben Crenshaw kept O'Meara
lashed to the bench all day, that's zero points in four matches
from the players who stood up at a team meeting last month and
said they wanted a piece of the roughly $20 million profit the
PGA of America will make on this singular event.
If only they wanted a piece of the Europeans that badly on
Friday.
The four also happen to be the world's No. 1 (Woods), No. 2
(Duval), No. 11 (O'Meara) and No. 13 (Mickelson) ranked players.
Small wonder the Europeans zoomed out to a 6-2 lead, and now might
find overconfidence their toughest opponent.
Trying to deflate any and all such notions, European captain
Mark James said, "I'm sure Ben has a few trump cards up his
sleeve."
If so, it's hard to imagine what they might be.
The Europeans drilled the Americans in both the alternate-shot
and best-ball format. They beat the two best U.S. players - Woods
and Duval - playing their own balls. They found a new leader,
Scot Colin Montgomerie, to take the place of departed veterans
Seve Ballesteros and Nick Faldo. They got four of their seven
rookies - Spaniards Garcia and Miguel Angel Jimenez, Scot Paul
Lawrie and Ireland's Padraig Harrington - their baptism by fire
without getting burned.
Maybe that's why when James was asked to name best decision
he made all day, he simply deadpanned, "I had the hamburger
for lunch - instead of the chicken sandwich."
And you can be certain that even though James wouldn't admit
as much, he's now looking forward to washing it down come Sunday
with champagne sipped from that gold chalice donated 70 years
ago by English seed merchant Sam Ryder.
Crenshaw, meanwhile, looked like he could use something stiffer
than champagne by the end of the day. And he was probably reeling
as early as the conclusion of the morning foursomes - at least
judging by his handwriting on the pairings sheet for the afternoon
fourball matches.
On the left-hand side of the roster sheet, James had neatly
printed the full name of each of his eight players. On the right-hand
side were the American names in thick, wavering block letters,
looking as though they'd been scrawled with a crayon by an unsteady
hand.
"It's chaotic, confusing, excruciating," Crenshaw
said about his job (though he could have said the same about his
penmanship).
No doubt it's all those things - and more. Crenshaw appeared
so shell-shocked afterward that when he took his seat in the interview
room, he asked out loud whether the score was actually 6-2. The
scary thing is that his job only gets harder from here on out.
To be fair, there was nothing to suggest that the pay-for-play
issue diverted anybody's attention from the task at hand. O'Meara
was frustrated sitting out - "I'd be lying if I said I wasn't
disappointed" - and the other members of the "Brookline
Four" hardly covered themselves with glory, but not for a
lack of effort.
Woods caught heat last month for saying he considered the Ryder
Cup "an exhibition" because there was no winner's check
at the end. And Duval, likewise, was roasted for comparing the
matches to a "large corporate outing."
But anybody who saw Woods come racing out of the crowd to see
his flop shot disappear into the hole on No. 10, or Duval fighting
time and again to coax something better from his deteriorating
game could be certain they were holding nothing back.
But the likelihood is that Crenshaw will go back to have dinner
with his team Friday night and find that its psyche, fragmented
even before the matches began, is now fragile as well.
"The best thing that I can possibly do is instill a belief
in themselves," Crenshaw said. "I'm doing everything
I can to do that and everybody else on the team is doing it as
well.
"But," he said, finally, "it's still a matter
of seeing those results."
---
Jim Litke is the national sports columnist for The Associated
Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org
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