If you know anything from following Ramble On, you know that we don’t do tape delay. We’re 100 percent live and fire out quick opinions, so when we heard that the Ryder Cup was going to be broadcast later in the day here in the United States we knew what we had to do.
That’s right. Your boy BK stayed up through the night watching my favorite golf event. All of the four-ball and alternate-shot matches will be broken down in detail here for your reading pleasure. Enjoy it while it lasts, folks. This is as good as it gets.
A few general notes before we start breaking down the individual matches themselves:
— Okay, I didn’t actually stay up all night. I went to bed when play was suspended at 4:45 a.m. and set my alarm for every hour after that to make sure I didn’t miss anything. The fact that they started again at noon here on the East Coast was just about perfect.
— Europe’s fans are incredible. They make the mayhem that was 1999 at The Country Club in Brookline look like Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. The early start, the biting wind, the freezing cold and the sideways rain showers couldn’t do anything to stop the galleries from showing up by the thousands and making a difference.
— Play was suspended after about two hours, and that was the only thing that could stop Mike Tirico, Curtis Strange and Paul Azinger from complaining about the weather. Yes, the course was borderline unplayable. The rain and wind were absolutely brutal. Quick newsflash though, fellas – the Euros didn’t seem to have much trouble with the conditions.
— Azinger mentioned a problem with the American rain suits. Is that even possible? Woods and Mickelson make $1 billion through their sponsors – they couldn’t have hit a golf shop in the airport and picked up some DryJoys gear? Corey Pavin couldn’t hook his guys up? He seriously didn’t know that it rains 473 days a year in Europe? That’s just pathetic.
— Jim Furyk wins $11.35 million in the season’s final meaningful event of the year, The Tour Championship, and gets benched for the morning session? We know that four-ball doesn’t necessarily suit Furyk’s conservative style, but we expected to see him five times this weekend after his ballsy sand save on the 72nd hole at East Lake. Consider this our first time that we scrutinize one of Pavin’s decisions. Oops, sorry – make that the second time. Apparently Pavin doesn’t do all that well in the retail aisle either.
Now, on to the matter at hand:
— Phil Mickelson/Dustin Johnson vs. Lee Westwood/Martin KaymerDidn’t Mickelson learn his lesson about equipment changes from Oakland Hills in 2004? His decision to debut two special gloves to guard against the rain and wind in Wales certainly didn’t help his game on Friday morning. He was dreadful from the second shot of the opening hole, spraying the ball all over the place and failing to produce his trademark touch around the greens.
A disaster at No. 6 typified the wretched performance thrown out there by Mickelson and Johnson. Mickelson rinsed his second shot from the center of the fairway at the 6th and Johnson whiffed a 4-footer for par that would have halved the hole, a miss that looked very much like his choke job on the 18th green at Whistling Straits.
— Stewart Cink/Matt Kuchar vs. Rory McIlroy/Graeme McDowell
Kuchar couldn’t find the late-season form that made him one of our players to watch coming into this Ryder Cup, but Cink picked up the slack by rolling in a pair of long birdie putts at No. 3 and No. 5 and dunking two more birdie putts at No. 7 and No. 10 that kept the Americans in striking distance. He was the best player on either team by a landslide during the opening session. McDowell, the U.S. Open winner this year, flashed all the aspects of his solid game to carry a shaky McIlroy around the front side.
— Steve Stricker/Tiger Woods vs. Ian Poulter/Ross Fisher
Well, that didn’t take long. Woods started chopping around in the steroids-fueled rough right from his opening tee shot. Combine the long, thick grass with the torrential rain that was falling and playing the ball from anything but the short stuff was impossible. As we’ve seen since Tiger decided to flush his entire life and detonate his marriage to the ravishing Elin Nordegren, hitting fairways and greens is something he doesn’t know much about anymore.
As for Stricker, it was all his fault that play was suspended. He actually hit the fourth fairway, couldn’t find relief from casual water and insisted that he couldn’t continue. We just think he was shocked that he wasn’t meeting more members of the gallery – he played more shots from outside the ropes than he did from inside them in the early going.
With that said, Poulter and Fisher were worse. Fisher played great in all of the majors this season but was a no-show on Friday, leaving Poulter to fend for himself in the difficult conditions. It’s pretty much a miracle that the match was all square when play was suspended again due to darkness after the 10th hole.
— Bubba Watson/Jeff Overton vs. Luke Donald/Padraig Harrington
Two of the American rookies showed the veterans how to get things done from the opening hole, as Overton rolled in a miracle birdie putt from a collection area over the green to set the tone for the match. Watson followed with a birdie at No. 2, becoming the only player in the morning matches to reach the green in regulation. Donald and Harrington eventually gained some traction and limited the damage through eight holes.
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