[starttext]
G-Mac the knife: Graeme McDowell celebrates with Ian Poulter after sealing Europe's dramatic victory
The roar of the victors, the chaos, the mud, the triumphant march home, the raising of the standard, it had the primordial atmosphere of a page from Henry V or, given Montgomerie's country of origin, the report from the Thane of Ross that heralds the return of brave Macbeth.
Point against point rebellious,
arm 'gainst arm: and, to conclude
The victory fell on us.
And the victory fell on Montgomerie and Europe in a unique and special way that will live long in the minds of those who were there.
As Hunter Mahan nobly extended his palm to Graeme McDowell, Europe's last man standing, the 17th green at Celtic Manor became a seething mass of human celebration.
Not just the usual participants, the team, their partners, the captain and his staff, assorted hangers-on, but those who claimed a deserved proprietary right to this victory by virtue of their patience, perseverance, persistence and the fact that they were all covered in filth and determined, absolutely bloody determined boyo, not to go home without patting the curls on Rory McIlroy's head at least once.
The crowd, bless them, invaded the arena as if this was a giant-killing in the FA Cup third round. And, suddenly, four days of sodden misery in a Welsh valley near Newport all made perfect sense.
Centre of attention: The huge crowd watches McDowell as the conclusion to his singles match nears...Quite clearly, the Americans had never witnessed anything like it. Not in golf anyway. Apparently, the end of the college football season sees plenty of pitch celebrations, but the reaction to winning the Waste Management Phoenix Open does not tend to be a mass jolly-up on the last green.
Certainly, the golfer many would regard as the finest of the modern era did not look particularly used to having blokes walk up to him with a pint of beer in one hand, offering a muddy paw and the commiseration, 'Well played, Tiger, lad.'
What would have happened had Mahan sunk his putt to take the final game down the 18th is anybody's guess. The spectator pathways had been reduced to a tranche of no-man's land circa 1917, with people slipping, sliding, and clinging to rope cordons for dear life.
At the back of the 16th, Corey Pavin, the American captain, nearly flipped a golf buggy by taking a bend too fast and veering on to a grass verge that had been reduced to a mud chute.
The police had long given up on conventional crowd control and some younger members of the American team looked wide-eyed with anxiety as the crowd inched nearer with obvious intent.
They need not have worried. It was chaotic, it was lunatic, it was utterly unique to this Ryder Cup, and to Wales, but the crowd that engulfed the players in scenes that would no doubt have left much of Europe ecstatic and the greenkeeper of Celtic Manor distraught were entirely without malice. They just wanted to share the moment with Montgomerie and his men.
... and then the celebrations start as McDowell celebrates his 3&1 winThere is so much in sport that is stage-managed and commercially driven that this scene was truly moving in its simple spontaneity. Blighted by the weather, few have seen the best of Wales these last few days. Yet in that instant of unbridled passion and joy, we all did.
A pity there was no truly local hero in the team to celebrate but, in the absence of a Welshman to define the occasion, they adopted this multi-national band as if they were all honorary citizens of The Valleys. As they will for ever be after this.
All Ryder Cup wins are team efforts, but this one still felt singular. As Montgomerie rightly stated, the trophy was not won on Monday, but on Sunday when Europe collected 5½ points out of six and every member of the 12-man team was a scorer. Europe recorded a total of 14½ points and half a point less would have seen the prize return to America.
Getting the party started: Rory McIlroy on the clubhouse balconyFrancesco Molinari was Europe's lowest points scorer but even he collected half a point and, as that was the difference, he has as much claim to the victory as any team-mate.
And so, the spiritual journey at last over, a shorter but very real one began, and here was the part that nobody, not even Mr Ryder Cup, Montgomerie, could have envisaged.
The trip back to base, from the 17th to the 18th hole, undertaken, not as some distant idol, alien and untouchable, but in the midst of the people, stride by stride with those that had followed his team on their tumultuous journey.
The entire assembly was inside the ropes now. Players, officials, patrons, all were one, as if everybody had stood over the winning putt like McDowell, or shed a shoe to play a saving shot from the water like Luke Donald, or breakfasted in the team room each morning beneath a large print of the sadly stricken Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal, the players who more than anyone turned what began as a Britain's property into a continental affair.
It was a slog through the mud to the greener pastures of the 18th fairway, but at least it was a euphoric slog. Montgomerie walked, flanked by police and security men, with the look of one who was struggling to take in the occasion.
The place was lousy with well-wishers and Montgomerie again fought a see-saw battle between expressions of dignified modesty and goofy delight. 'Thank you, thank you, thank you,' he repeated as every person passing shouted their appreciation. Spying a buggy in the distance, he bounded up the hill towards sanity.
So did McIlroy. There is something about a sporty young chap with curly hair that just makes people want to ruffle it. And ruffle it. And ruffle it again. Poor lad, had he not got out of that scrum he would have arrived at the 18th with less hair than Jim Furyk.
Others just delighted in the shared humanity. Lee Westwood, who already had the air of a man whose four weeks of teetotal living were at an end, was happy to march out in the company of his foursomes partner Donald, and Padraig Harrington. Everybody seemed a little overwhelmed.
'Have you ever seen anything like this, Lee?' I asked, as people with vivid red rugby shirts sponsored by Brains beer engaged excitedly with the greatest golfers in the world. 'No,' said Westwood, 'Have you?' And, truthfully, I haven't.
Lovely bubbly: Ian Poulter is drenched in champagne on the balcony of the clubhouseI told John Daly's wife that her old man had won The Open in 1995 because I had a better vantage point to see Costantino Rocca's collapse in their play-off duel, and those final holes at major championships can get pretty crazy once the marshals give the course over to the passing parade but, seriously, nothing like this. Westwood agreed. 'Unbelievable,' he concluded. 'Incredible.'
There will still be those who argue that the Ryder Cup does not matter in any pure sense. That the Americans do not care for it, and European golfers cling to it only as baseless consolation for their failure to land a major. Do not believe a word.
It was not just the mute tears of Mahan, hours after the competition had finished, that were testament to the meaning of team golf, but the words of McDowell, winner of the US Open.
The moment Monty dreamed of: Europe celebrate with the Ryder CupAsked by Westwood whether he felt nervous standing over his putt, McDowell informed him that he could barely hold the ******* club. For the pre-watershed audience he defined it further, minus the profanity.
'This felt in a different stratosphere to winning the US Open,' McDowell said. 'I have never felt so nervous in my life. I was going around the course hoping that I would not be needed, but I couldn't help looking at those leaderboards and the back nine were easily the most difficult of my life. By the time I got to the 16th, I knew a half-point wouldn't be good enough and then the pressure really started.
'They say if you can't handle the celebration, don't score the goal; but what happened on the 17th green was pretty nuts.'
Shakespeare would have put it differently. He would have dressed Montgomerie's moment of glory in the finest robes of pure poetry and wisdom, he would have written of valiant destiny and greatness and no doubt dreams, because he mentioned them 219 times in his writing; but McDowell's perspective was no less true. It was pretty nuts out there. Pretty wild. And pretty unforgettable, too.
source :dailymail
[endtext]
No comments:
Post a Comment