Saturday, September 25, 1999
The only hope for U.S. Ryder Cup team is
perfection
By Bill Lyon
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
BROOKLINE, Mass. - The Ryder Cup remains locked away inside
a musty cabinet, in there with the good china, up on the top shelf,
all but unreachable.
On the day they needed desperately to make a move to reclaim
the Cup, the Americans mostly ran in place, their putters bleeding,
unable once again to make the occasional Olympian shot, the kind
that leaves your opponent knee-walking.
They come to Sunday's final competition behind 10-6. In basketball
or football, that's nothing. But in golf, especially in the Ryder
Cup, that is almost like being lapped. It is an enormous deficit.
If they are to overcome it, they will have to be the man-on-man
players they claim they are.
The Europeans are winning this competition because they know
how to play golf other than by the book, how to make par, or birdie,
from places other than in the fairway or from the short grass.
They know how to improvise a shot off hardpan and tree roots,
how to create birdie from the rooftop, how to manufacture a 3
from the hood of an SUV out in the far lot.
The Euros are weaned on spare, Gothic, wind-scoured courses
that require the sort of shot-making you don't practice on the
range or find on the lush, manicured courses in the States, but
tend to encounter on a regular basis in the crucible of the Ryder
Cup.
You win a Ryder Cup by being able to get up and down, and by
putting. The Yanks are struggling with both.
And the Americans are prisoners of their own pressure, to which
they have succumbed, as was evident again Saturday in their tentative,
frightened putting strokes.
Mostly, the Yanks are being beaten by a most unlikely pairing
of a nerveless, loose-as-ashes 19-year-old Spaniard who kangaroo-hops
all over the real estate, and a Swede named Jesper (as in Jesper,
that's my baby) who tilts the bill of his cap up and sells advertising
space on it, and whose idea of snack food is volcanic ash.
Jesper Parnivek and Sergio Garcia. Me and My Shadow.
Every time Parnivek kneels to line up a putt, Garcia is with
him. When Parnivek chips in from some improbable place, Garcia
hoists him and carries him round and round, and then Parnivek
allows the kid the pleasure of retrieving the ball from the cup.
The kid then plants a big wet one on the dimpled ball.
Sergio Garcia is making Tiger Woods look old.
The Yanks are being beaten by a Swede, which you could understand
if this were the biathlon. But golf? Name five great male Swedish
golfers.
Parnivek plays at the pace of a sedated turtle. He will not
be hurried. Garcia has picked up on that. On Saturday, trying
to choose between 2 iron and 3 iron on the 14th hole, Garcia heard
the crowd shouting its impatience, so his reaction was to sit
down in the fairway.
Parnivek is the perfect foil for the kid.
And, oh yes, we mustn't forget Mrs. Doubtfire. Colin Montgomerie,
the chunky Scot with the rabbit ears and the killer putter. The
No. 1 player in Europe six years running. You need a 15-footer
rammed in the heart, The Full Monty is your man.
It remains a mystery how he can hear every whispered taunt
or muffled slur from four blocks away, and yet when it comes time
to stand over an absolutely-must-have putt, he can suddenly go
deaf and hear only the ball rattling the bottom of the cup.
Sergio and the Swede have played four matches in two days,
won three and tied the other. Montgomerie has scowled at the galleries,
looked accusingly at those who have unkind words to speak of him,
and has won twice, tied another, lost only once, and generally
held the Euro team together.
If Monty were playing in Philadelphia, he'd be in a strait
jacket inside a week.
"Just one more putt, somewhere," moaned Davis Love
III, after the Americans could manage no better than a split on
Saturday.
Actually, several putts were needed. And Love, to his credit,
made a batch of big ones. So did Phil Mickelson, in partial atonement
for his collapse on the greens in the first round. And Hal Sutton
was probably the steadiest player the Yanks have had.
But the big guns have been pop guns.
Tiger Woods, best player in the world, is 1-3 in four matches.
David Duval, best player in the world just before Woods, is
0-2-1.
Duval, remember, referred to the Ryder Cup, in which he had
never before taken part, as "an exhibition."
He is playing as if it is an exhibition.
The Americans insist that the formats of the first two days
- better ball and alternate shots - are gimmicky and hold little
appeal or interest for them. The results suggest that they had
jolly well better become interested in such formats and perhaps
occasionally actually work at them.
The Americans like the singles matches. The American custom
from as far back as the OK Corral, one-on-one.
The problem is, the Americans are going to have to be practically
perfect on Sunday. There are a dozen singles matches, and they
have to win at last two-thirds of them and - never has a fraction
been more important - gain at least one tie from among the other
four.
It can be done. But it's not likely.
(c) 1999, The Philadelphia Inquirer.
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