momentum with woosie's men
Monty - crucial putt on the 18th.
By Harry Emanuel
Ian Woosnam described it as: "a marvellous day...a fantastic day" for the European Team. Indeed with every European player involved in at least one match and contributing to the team score, spirits are rightly very high in the European camp. For all the various contributions none was more important than Colin Montgomerie's putt on the 18th to secure a half point and give Europe a 5-3 lead rather than just a one shot point lead. Monty's putt has given the European Team a huge lift but vitally it had a crushing effect on the American Team. It must have been like hitting a wall at high speed as it has taken all their momentum away. They are now firmly on the back foot. Crucially the European team restricted the American bankers Woods/Furyk and Mickelson/DiMarco to only one and a half points from a possible four. This ruins the US strategy of leading from the front and stops them gaining any momentum. Once again Sergio Garcia came to the fore taking maximum points from his two games and one of those was against Woods and Furyk in the afternoon foursomes. Modest enough to credit his playing partner he said: "I just love the Ryder Cup and couldn't live with out it." This best sums up the whole European attitude to Ryder Cup and goes a long way to explain why Europe constantly out play their American counterparts. Yet it's not just the passion that makes the Europeans perform so well as a team but the fact they are friends - many of them best friends. You can see them enjoying each others company on the course. They play for each other because of a true bond, one that can never be falsely engineered. You have to credit Tom Lehman for creating an American team with a good fighting spirit but nevertheless Tiger Woods still seems to be more of negative than positive influence on the team. When Lehman tried to organise a team meeting after the first round he admitted: "Tiger and Jim were in no mood to hang around. They came down here and came back to the Clubhouse." You wouldn't do that to your friends! Trying to fit Tiger into the team is Lehman's biggest problem. The rest of his team are in awe of him and despite humiliating him with some public singing, attempts to make him one of the guys just doesn't work because he has never and will never be one the guys. Until an American Captain can find a way to integrate Tiger effectively into the team they will never dominate the Ryder Cup. If any of the European team played as badly as Tiger did in the fourballs they would be dropped! The matches have been tight today with seven out of the eight going to the eighteenth hole but the reality is very different. Europe dominated the morning session and were only down for three holes out of the 54 played in the bottom three matches. In the foursomes they were only down for 7 holes of 72 played and led for 32 holes. The American team for fought hard to keep themselves with in touching distance of the Europeans but if anything the Europeans are far better than the score suggests. The European Team has such strength in depth that Woosnam was able to leave three players ranked in the world top fourteen on the bench for the morning fourballs. But Woosnam is right. Golf is a fickle game and things can turn around very quickly. So hole by hole and match by match they will aim to get to the 14.5 points required for victory. So far they are doing an excellent job. The wet and windy conditions will continue on Saturday. It may well suit the European team but in fact it has a certain levelling quality. In my opinion they are just so much better than the Americans, if the weather was better the score would be better.
