Monday, September 27, 1999
Ryder moment ranks among sport's biggest
By Steve Adamek
The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)
BROOKLINE, Mass. — The roars began washing over the final
day of the Ryder Cup like the arrival of a summer thunderstorm.
First in sporadic, but large drops, then in a steady rain, and
finally torrents accompanied by loud thunderclaps, they bathed
The Country Club in a red, white, and blue downpour of shouts,
howls, and chants of “U-S-A, U-S-A.”
`You could hear the roars and you knew we were coming back,”
David Duval said.
Coming back from so far away, match by match, hole by hole,
shot by shot. Coming back to produce an unprecedented victory.
Maybe the United States winning the Ryder Cup for the first
time since 1993 from four points behind — two times as large
as the biggest previous comeback in an event that didn't really
matter not that long ago — doesn't register with some on
an NFL Sunday or the next-to-last weekend of a pennant race.
Still, the extraordinary scope of this accomplishment can be
measured against a short list.
It is Jack Nicklaus winning the Masters in 1986, the crowd
bathing Augusta National in a similar downpour of roars.
It is Villanova beating Georgetown, America's 1980 Olympic
hockey team beating the Soviets, the 1969 Mets. It is Doug Flutie's
Hail Mary to Gerald Phelan, Kirk Gibson homering off Dennis Eckersley
and hobbling around the bases. It is “The Giants win the
pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!”
— a comeback, considering the international scope of this
event, truly heard 'round the world.
“This was history being made today,” Hal Sutton said.
This was history played out on 18 stages, golf's unique theater,
the roars from one stage washing over the other 17.
It did not transpire without the obligatory sniping, though,
at European foil Colin Montgomerie and every one of his teammates
with the intent of distracting and annoying them.
It also was punctuated by a highly impolite American celebration
on the 17th green after Justin Leonard flushed the 45-foot birdie
putt that ultimately — but not at that very moment —
won the Cup. That enraged the Europeans, whose Jose Maria Olazabal
still had a 25-foot putt of his own to keep his team's faint hopes
alive.
“I'm not going to apologize for being excited,” said
Tom Lehman and he shouldn't. Does anyone think the Europeans wouldn't
have reacted the same way had Olazabal made the same kind of putt
in the same circumstances on European soil? Would a European crowd
have reacted differently at home had its team staged the same
kind of comeback?
No, this was a hometown crowd like any other, with a standard
complement of idiots, but a crowd that produced a cacophonous
soundtrack to an extraordinary performance.
Consider the numbers: Davis Love III overrunning Jean Van de
Velde in a mere 13 holes; David Duval, displaying emotions few
have ever seen from him, storming past Jesper Parnevik in just
14 holes; Jim Furyk — he of the driving range swing —
waxing Sergio Garcia in 15.
“It was like a force was pulling us together,” American
captain Ben Crenshaw said. “It was building.”
It built to a crescendo match-by-match, blowout after blowout,
with six straight American victories out of the box.
“A surreal day,” said Lehman, who went out in the
first match and planted the first seeds in the clouds that produced
the audio downpour by finishing off Lee Westwood on the 16th hole.
Surreal and ultimately spectacular, considering what it took
to complete the comeback. Think of Olazabal — the two-time
Masters champion and a member of two winning teams, as well as
a third that kept the Cup with a tie — leading Leonard by
four holes with seven to play, then Leonard snatching that lead
away in the space of four holes and draining a putt that people
will be watching millennia from now.
All the moment lacked was Leonard tearing off his shirt and
dancing around the green in a sports bra.
This, though, was bigger than Brandi Chastain and her American
team winning soccer's women's World Cup.
Far bigger than Tiger Woods winning the 1997 Masters by 12
strokes.
Bigger than Michael Jordan introducing himself to the world
with an NCAA championship-winning shot and exiting with another
jumper to win the NBA title.
Bigger in Boston than Carlton Fisk waving at that 1975 World
Series home run, maybe even bigger than Ted Williams homering
in his last at-bat.
Maybe Crenshaw, in his overemotional way, overstated it when
he called the comeback, “a moving experience. Moving.”
Yet, its echoes will linger until they stop playing the event,
stop playing golf, stop holding competitions in which national
anthems are played. This was history, accompanied by a red, white,
and blue soundtrack.
(c) 1999, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.).
Visit The Record Online at http://www.bergen.com/
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.
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