europeans are good enough to retain cup
Lehman has a mighty task.
By Mark Garrod, PA Sport Golf Correspondent
Europe were so good and the Americans so bad in the last Ryder Cup that virtually everything in the build-up to this year's match at the K Club has been shaped by it. Ian Woosnam's task as captain has been by far the simpler one - so simple, in fact, that he did not feel the need to sit down and have a detailed, or even short, discussion with the man in charge of the record nine-point win in Detroit. All he wants from his players, of course, is to keep the Good Ship Europe sailing merrily along. He has nine of the same 12 players under him, while among the changes is the return of twice Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal, one half of the most devastating partnership in cup history. The message as he sets them on the way on Friday need only be: "More of the same please." Tom Lehman, on the other hand, has been put at the helm of a vessel that was creaking at The Belfry in 2002 and leaking holes all over the place at Oakland Hills. From the day he was appointed a month later Lehman has been thinking of ways to try to stop it sinking altogether. He was the one who did consult with Bernhard Langer and, to the surprise of Woosnam, Langer was perfectly willing to talk. But the German was just one of seemingly hundreds, possibly even thousands, of people Lehman has consulted to try to prevented an unprecedented third United States defeat in a row. The 47-year-old former Open champion even went to visit close relations of potential players to gather views on how they react to different situations and what might be the best way to handle them. And he asked Hal Sutton for a debrief on what went wrong last time. "We talked a long, long time," Lehman said. "At the end of the day he doesn't have great feelings about his experience. I can't speak for him, but I think it hurts him." Sutton took a lot of the criticism for the 18 1/2-9 1/2 humiliation, most of it for his decision to put Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson together not just once, but twice on the opening day and saw them beaten first by Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington, then by Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood. It set a tone for the match and the Americans on a downward spiral that seemed out of control by the time Montgomerie rolled in the putt which clinched victory and Harrington completed the rout. Until his Wednesday faux pas, when fans waiting on the first tee were ignored by his side starting their practice further down the hole, Lehman had looked the consummate performer in public and, by all accounts, in the team room too. But he can only go so far with his words and his action. He can be successful only if his players rise to the occasion as the Europeans have so often in recent years and the United States have most definitely not. Team spirit has been at the heart of what Lehman has tried to achieved in the countdown and has been delighted by the response so far. But so far has not involved putting any points on the board. Asked if he had decided on a final message for the first tee of the first session tomorrow - fourballs - Lehman said: "Yeah, I think there's a team message and each guy will carry it. Last year Lehman came over the Atlantic for a scouting mission and to play in the European Open on the course. He missed his tee-off time by a few seconds in the third round and was given a two-stroke penalty. His experience the following day was not one he will be passing on to his players either. Lehman collapsed to a closing 84, a score he thought was his worst since his high school days. The round included triple bogeys on the short third and long 16th and a double bogey at the 424-yard 17th - the hole where later the same day Thomas Bjorn took 11. That is not the only adventure Lehman has had in his captaincy. In April, going to pick up his family from the airport at Augusta before the Masters, his car was shot at. The bullet hole was found in the driver's side rear door. Woosnam has had a quiet time in comparison - until two weeks ago when Bjorn, in the wake of not being given a wild card, blasted his captaincy as "pathetic". Lack of communication was at the root of that and Bjorn said that "he's put a lot of guys through misery by not talking to them." The Dane was fined £10,000 and apologised, while Woosnam tried to focus his mind on doing as good a job as he could for the team - and for the Irish public, who have waited so long for the Ryder Cup to appear on their soil. It is pretty sodden soil after all the rain and there might still be a lot more on the way. But while he and others worry about the weather and the effect it might have, American supporters have more reason to be concerned about the whether. Whether Woods and Mickelson can play like the world's top two players they are. Whether the four little-known rookies can conquer their nerves. Whether Europe will play as well as they have lately. Expect it to be close. And expect the United States, underdogs for once, to be "up for the cup." But expect Europe's strength in depth to be decisive in the end, even if they have to come from behind in the singles to prove it.
