Ryder Cup packed with pressure
By BOB HARIG
St. Petersburg Times
Not a penny rides on the outcome, and unlike other golf events,
there is the security of knowing you can lean on a teammate for
support.
And yet the players say there is nothing like the pressure
of the Ryder Cup, which has grown from a nice little biennial
gathering to three days of intense, emotional competition between
teams from the United States and Europe.
The 32nd Ryder Cup begins Friday at Valderrama Golf Club in
Sotogrande, Spain, the first time the event has been played in
continental Europe. That says a lot for European captain Seve
Ballesteros, a Ryder Cup hero who pushed for the event to be played
in his home country.
All year there has been speculation about who would make the
team, team, how the players would play and which side would win.
And there's been the added spice of controversy concerning the
handling of European team player Miguel Angel Martin, who was
bounced from the squad because of injury.
"When I played for the first time in 1979, you knew the
outcome of the Ryder Cup," said U.S. captain Tom Kite, 47,
who played in seven Ryder Cups. "It was a tremendous honor
making the team, but nobody really cared about the Ryder Cup.
There certainly was not the interest there is now.
"Now it's huge. The interest is incredible. They sell
out the event, it has numerous hours on television. It really
is something to behold. Right now, it's probably our biggest golf
event, and next to the Olympics, one of the biggest sporting events
in the world."
Unless a player is in contention at one of the four major championships,
he might never feel the kind of heat endured during the Ryder
Cup.
Mark Calcavecchia, who won the 1989 British Open in a playoff,
could not handle it in 1991 at Kiawah Island. With four holes
to go in his Sunday singles match against Scotland's Colin Montgomerie,
Calcavecchia had a four-hole lead. That meant a tie on any of
the remaining holes would have ended the match.
He lost all four holes - including a shanked tee shot at the
par-3 17th after Montgomerie had hit his ball in the water. Instead
of winning a point, Calcavecchia settled for a tie, then held
his breath as Germany's Bernhard Langer missed a 6-foot par putt
on the last hole that allowed the Americans to escape with a 14
1/2 to 13 1/2 victory.
"I didn't feel much like a winner," Calcavecchia
said.
That was Montgomerie's first Ryder Cup and, "I was so
nervous I could hardly breathe," he said. "I didn't
know if I could even hit the ball at all. Thankfully Seve pulled
me aside and reminded me that the Americans would be just as nervous
as I was. That helped a little, but not a lot."
Two years ago at Oak Hill, Curtis Strange had a 1-up lead over
England's Nick Faldo through 15 holes. He still led by one heading
to the 17th, but bogeyed and dropped into a tie.
At the 18th, Strange hit his tee shot in the fairway but Faldo
had to lay up. A win at 18 would have given the United States
the Cup, but from 93 yards, Faldo hit his third shot to 3 feet
and made the par putt. Strange missed the green, chipped to 6
feet and missed the par putt. Had he made it, the teams would
have tied.
Such scrutiny never would have occurred in the early days of
the Ryder Cup. Before 1985, the United States had won all but
three of the 25 matches. And many of the victories were by a wide
margin.
As Kite put it: "Thirty years ago, you invited the British,
beat up on them, had a couple of cocktail parties and sent them
home. That's not true now."
The series began in 1927 and has been played every two years
except for a break from 1939 to '45 because of World War II. For
the first five meetings, the Cup went back and forth.
Britain won the Cup just one time over the next 45 years -
in 1957. There was a tie in 1969, but the United States retained
the Cup.
It didn't seem to be much of a competition, but the players
didn't think any less of the event. Making the team was considered
a huge honor (there used to be no captain's picks) and the pressure
was immense.
"You didn't invite your buddy to play, you earned it,"
said Billy Maxwell, who played on the 1963 team captained by Arnold
Palmer. "To the players, it was the same as it is today.
It was a big thrill. When they play The Star-Spangled Banner on
the first tee, that means an awful lot.
"It was a competitive deal, and it was big back then,
too. It's just that they didn't have television to boost things."
As the United States continued to dominate the '70s, there
were calls for the British team to expand. In 1979, for the first
time, the team included players from continental Europe.
Four years later, the Ryder Cup came down to the last match,
with Tom Watson prevailing over Bernard Gallacher 2 and 1 to give
the United States a 14 1/2-to-13 1/2 victory.
The last seven Ryder Cup matches have produced three victories
for each side and a tie.
"I recently got to see the tape of the '95 Ryder Cup and
I had never watched it," said Brad Faxon, who was on the
losing U.S. team. "I never wanted to see any highlights or
replays. But I saw enough good things in there to send chills
up and down my spine and get me excited about going back."
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)
Start or Join A Discussion about This Item
Send the URL (Address) of This Item
to A Friend:
|
