Well, they won. The Europeans won the Ryder Cup with Argyll and Bute golfer Bob MacIntyre from Glencruiten in Oban in the line-up. Fabulous, nail-biting Sunday spectacular which had everyone and his/her caddy glued to the TV for most of the holiday weekend. Well done Bob (that’s him wearing the Saltire in the bottom right hand corner of the picture above). Congratulations.
It was the mother of all fightbacks by the United States, one that turned Sunday in to a gut-wrenchingly nervous ordeal for Europe, but cometh the moment, cometh the Offaly man.
Lowry, pictured right, halving his match with Russell Henley was, writes David Gorman in his player ratings, “the greatest Irish draw since Italia 90”, but Rory McIlroy ran out of steam in his match against Scottie Scheffler.
Once again, he got dog’s abuse from the crowd, later describing the behaviour of the home crowd as unacceptable, not least when they showered his wife with beer as well as invective.
Keith Duggan has covered just about every major sporting event known to man, but never did he witness anything like the “jaw-dropping” ugliness that McIlroy and Lowry in particular were subjected to.
Denis Walsh, meanwhile, couldn’t but smile when Luke Donald had a dig at the Americans for getting appearance fees for playing in the competition, as if “money was beneath” his European team. “Sitting behind him were two players who had sold their souls to the Saudis”, Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton.
“In golf,” he writes, “there is no moral high ground”.
Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry bear the brunt of nasty comments from Ryder Cup prawn sandwich brigade
By Saturday afternoon the folk at Bethpage felt obliged to flash a ‘Spectator Etiquette’ message on the screens around the place, warning that “overly intoxicated attendees will be removed from the premises”.
You’d half a notion, though, that the person whose level of wit peaked at shouting “potatoes” and “cabbage” at Shane Lowry are just as tiresome when sober, if, perhaps, a little less loud. Sometimes booze isn’t the issue, it’s the owner of the gullet it’s poured down.
The hosts could, of course, have opted to stop selling intoxicating liquid to the U!S!A! throngs, but when the cheapest beer at the venue was $15, for a teeny tin, that would have been a lotta loot to surrender.
Shane Lowry shuts down USA fightback to secure thrilling Ryder Cup win for Europe
Understandably, the red mist descended over the players, our Shane and Rory bearing the brunt of it all, although Robert MacIntyre, the Scot from Oban, handled it quite beautifully.
When the crowd was taunting him and Viktor Hovland, loudly enumerating how many seconds it was taking them to putt, he just rolled his eyes and said: “I’m surprised they can count.” In the banter stakes, that was 1-0 to Yurop.
Robert MacIntyre, from Oban, during Saturday’s foursomes. Besides, if they’d had a can of beer for every second Patrick Cantlay took to take his putts, they’d be pumping their tummies out ’til November. “Ewen, you could probably tell us your biography by the time he hits this one,” said Nick Faldo. Ewen, as in the Murray man, reckoned Rory could have downed “a three course meal” during the process.
The Ryder Cup is mighty. There was a spell during Saturday’s four-balls when the standard was so other-worldly, the little roundy thing on every green – in technical jargon, the hole – was being peppered by incoming missiles. And all you could do, really, was purr at the effortless excellence of it all.
But, since Methuselah was a boy, the problem with the Ryder Cup, as we know, is the guff that engulfs it. “It’s incredibly heated out here, this is precisely why the Ryder Cup is the biggest team event in the world,” said Andrew Coltart at one stage. It’s probably not even in the top five of world team events. Maybe even the top 10. What’s it they say? Stop already, Andrew.
And so hell-bent is Paul McGinley on portraying the competition as the greatest sporting show on earth, he comes perilously close to likening the role of the captains to that of, say, the Duke of Wellington in wartime. He’s the guff master.
He must have had ear plugs in too on Saturday. “Do you think the fact that they are charging $750 a day to get in here has stopped the real rowdy guys from coming in, instead we’ve got the prawn sandwich brigade in?” he asked Hunter Mahan, who was alongside him in the Sky commentary box.
And with that: “F*** YOU RORY!”