Ryder Cup Golf Tournament

It's not a Ryder Cup partnership you would have expected. If this is some kind of buddy act, it sure had the wrong kind of beginning--last year's PGA Championship, when David Toms made a hole in one Saturday, then laid up on the 72nd hole and sank a clutch putt for par to beat Phil Mickelson by one shot. And they didn't appear to be the two parts of a potential team a couple of months earlier at New Orleans, where Toms shot 63-64 on the weekend and beat Mickelson by two shots.

Tiger Woods lost both times he played, the U.S. dropped three of the first four matches on opening day, Sergio Garcia won twice and you figure, what, the Ryder Cup is just some swanky European vacation? Anything to declare? Yes, a blowout. Actually, it was beginning to look that way Friday at the Belfry, but the United States got some help from some unexpected places (uh, a Stewart Cink-Jim Furyk team?

In their better-ball match Friday morning, David Duval and Davis Love III used their drivers a total of four times between them. Blame the Belfry, said Paul Azinger. "It's a home-course advantage and they clearly took advantage of it," Azinger said. "I think the golf course has definitely neutralized the strength of the American team. We have a more powerful team, big hitters like Tiger [Woods] and Phil Mickelson and Davis and David. They've got to pull back the reins.

After spending an extra year on the drawing board, the 34th Ryder Cup matches roll out today, this model outfitted with wall-to-wall security and full stereophonic pressure. "This is where the fun begins," said Sam Torrance, captain of the European team. Of course, it remains to be seen how much fun anyone is going to have if he's so nervous he can't swing a club. Davis Love III remembers standing over his putt at the 18th hole that would defeat Costantino Rocca, 1-up, in the U.S.

Controversy, thy name is ... Tiger? Tiger Woods--and U.S. captain Curtis Strange--found themselves snared in a mini-controversy, one that seems to have been cooked up by the English media. All Woods did was show up early Thursday and start his practice round at 6:30 a.m. instead of 9, his officially designated time, according to printed Ryder Cup material. It must have been a slow news day.

They've played the Ryder Cup 33 times since 1927 and it wasn't very competitive until the composition of the teams was fundamentally changed. The U.S. was 19-3 against Great Britain until 1979, when the opposing team was expanded to include all of Europe. Since then, the U.S. is 7-4, but it had lost twice in a row until winning the last Ryder Cup in 1999 at the Country Club in Brookline, Mass. Many are familiar with Samuel Ryder, the golf-playing son of a corn merchant from Manchester, England.

It was the Good Monty who turned up at the Belfry ... the polite, engaging, well-spoken minister of golf in Europe and a shining beacon of happiness and good will. Good Monty is a lot different from Bad Monty, who also has shown up on occasion. Bad Monty is surly, curt, sarcastic and thoroughly disagreeable. Bad Monty is the one who threatened to pull out of a couple of tournaments to protest his treatment by the media.

The signs posted at every turn at the Belfry read "2001," but that doesn't mean the time's not right for the Ryder Cup. And perhaps another sign of the times was the number of armed officers patrolling the site, three days before the opening ceremony and four days before the matches actually begin. Postponed a year ago because of security concerns after the Sept.

Have we missed it? The last time we saw the Ryder Cup was in 1999, an eternity in the timeline of golf, which is more accurately measured in other ways, like yards to the green or inches to the hole or minutes to a tee time, certainly not years between shots. Maybe the reason those moments seem so long ago is very simple, our memories of the last Ryder Cup, of Justin Leonard's improbable 45-foot uphill putt on the last day at Brookline Country Club and the wild celebration by the U.S.