Ryder Cup Golf Tournament

The Ryder Cup weather forecast isn't good, with heavy rain and high winds expected to continue through this afternoon, when the opening ceremonies are supposed to take place. When play opens Friday, the forecast calls for wind and showers and temperatures in the mid 60s, with more wind and possible thunderstorms Saturday and clouds with, yes, possible showers Sunday. Of course, the Emerald Isle is so green because rain is commonplace.

The last thing Tiger Woods needed before the Ryder Cup was a distraction, but he was clearly in a foul mood Wednesday over nude photographs -- wrongly identified to be of his wife, Elin Nordegren -- that were published in an Irish magazine. The magazine also linked her photographs to pornography sites on the Internet.

There may be no more sympathetic figure in the Ryder Cup this week than Darren Clarke, who said he wanted to play even though his wife, Heather, died of cancer last month. Clarke said it was a difficult choice. "I wouldn't have played if I didn't think that I could benefit the team and that was the bottom line," said Clarke, picked by captain Europe captain Ian Woosnam. "I know Heather would have wanted me to play, so I made myself available."

Here in the serene, rolling greenness of a former dairy farm, could something be amiss? Starting Friday, the Ryder Cup will be played nearby, at the Kildare Club, or K Club -- a course designed by Arnold Palmer, one of the legendary figures in American golf and a former U.S. Ryder Cup captain. Talk about a home-field advantage ... for the visiting team.

U.S. team captain Tom Lehman, looking for an edge that could make even a tiny difference in a heated-up, too-close-to-call Ryder Cup, thinks he might have found it. In the kitchen. Victory this week at the K Club may not be on the menu for the U.S. but, if that's the case, it won't be the fault of Dennis Trixler, chosen by Lehman to cook up some kitchen magic as the players' chef.

Scott Verplank is 42, he hasn't won a tournament in five years, he has had bad feet, shoulders and elbows, and if the U.S. upsets Europe in the Ryder Cup, he'll probably be one of the reasons. Verplank is playing on the Ryder Cup team for the second time as a captain's pick, this time because Tom Lehman chose him, even though he was 20th in the points list. Lehman said he had his reasons, and they are clear-cut, even if they are intangible.

When he took part in the 1937 Ryder Cup, Byron Nelson traveled 6 1/2 days by boat to Southport, England, took another four days to recover from the trip when he returned home and lost about $3,500 in salary to take a leave of absence from his job as head pro at Redding (Pa.) Country Club. The U.S. team leaves Sunday night from Washington on a chartered jet. "I'm sure the players can't even realize what it was like back then," Nelson said Wednesday.

No matter what else happens in Ben Crenshaw's career, he's always going to be the Ryder Cup captain of a winning team, even if the anniversary of the U.S. victory at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass., is hitting seven years. It was Crenshaw who famously dug his finger into a table in an emotional interview on that Saturday night, with the U.S. trailing, 10-6, and said he had a good feeling about what would happen in the Sunday singles matches. He was right. The biggest last-day comeback in U.

He waited until Monday morning to make his choices, but U.S. captain Tom Lehman selected Stewart Cink and Scott Verplank with his two captain's picks to fill out his 12-player Ryder Cup team. The selection of Cink, who tied for 24th in the PGA Championship, wasn't much of an upset because he ranked 12th on the points list, but Verplank missed the cut at Medinah Country Club and was 20th on the points list. Lehman ranked 19th.

Is this any way to make up a Ryder Cup team? Three players who would be Ryder Cup rookies -- Vaughan Taylor, Zach Johnson and Brett Wetterich -- all missed the cut at the PGA Championship but still held on to spots on the U.S. team. That's because nobody made a charge to replace them. All three were vulnerable, because Taylor was seventh in the points standings, Johnson ninth and Wetterich 10th.