Saturday afternoon foursomes: Philip Reid on a four-iron shot that reverberated around Straffan and will echo in Ryder Cup lore.

As Paul Casey bent down to push a tee peg into the ground for a seventh time on Saturday afternoon, little did he realise it would be the penultimate action of his day's work. His ultimate action, some 40 seconds later, was to gloriously swing his four-iron at the ball and then watch as it flew just short of 210 yards toward the flag on the 14th green and roll the last few feet into the tin cup for a hole-in-one.

Close-out! The roar that greeted Casey's hole-in-one - the fifth in Ryder Cup history and first since Howard Clark's in 1995 - was loud and long and incredulous. Fists thumped the air, and the throats of young and old shouted until they could do so no longer. And, finally, the drone of the helicopters, which had been blocked out by the vocal homage to Casey's deed, returned to provide their own whirring acknowledgement of what had unfolded on this Saturday of foursomes.

Before he had taken his shot, Casey and his partner David Howell had walked onto the 14th tee with a dormie-five lead on Stewart Cink and Zach Johnson. Casey's ace ensured a never-to-be-forgotten finish.

Who truly knows what roars greeted Gene Sarazen's albatross on the 15th at Augusta in the 1935 Masters, a shot "heard around the world"? The reaction couldn't have greater than what greeted Casey's mastery, a sweet four-iron that plunged like a sword into American hearts.

As the other three sessions of play had been, the second series of foursomes belonged to Europe. Casey's hole-in-one will provide one of the enduring memories of not just this but any Ryder Cup moment, the player throwing his club away in sheer joy and his caddie, Craig Connelly, dutifully walking alone to retrieve the ball. But his act of drama was backed-up by a performance from his team-mates that resulted in a 2½- 1 ½ win and increased Europe's overall lead to 10-6.

"I've had many holes in one, but never in a tournament round of golf, let alone in a big situation like this . . . to close out a match," he said, shaking his head and all but pinching himself in case he should awake from a dream. "You know, it's just probably something that will go down in history."

Prior to hitting his wonder shot, Casey had been approached by Ian Woosnam, who, as he was entitled to do, informed him that many players before him had been hitting three-iron. Casey decided to ignore the skipper's advice. After all, Woosie himself had jokingly referred to the fact that the only previous piece of advice he had given was to Robert Karlsson on the seventh in Friday morning's opening fourballs - which resulted in the Swede overhitting the green and ending up on the TV gantry.

So, Casey went with a four-iron, and the result became a part of golfing history. Expect a plaque in honour of Casey's feat to be erected by the 14th tee of the hole known as Church Fields.

"It was an absolute flush of a four-iron for Paul," said Howell. "It was beautiful, never anywhere other than close. For the ball to drop in was surreal."

Casey and Howell were maintaining a 100-per-cent record together, but this foursomes capped all that had gone before. "We gel well, we're comfortable in each other's company. To finish the way we did, Paul holing the most beautiful hole-in-one you'll ever see, was just a thing of beauty," enthused Howell. "He deserves all the glory."

Word went around that someone had acquired Casey's four-iron after he threw it away as the crowd's reaction at greenside told him that the ball had fallen into the hole, something he had to confirm by turning around to watch the action replay on the giant TV screen behind the 14th tee. Casey knocked that rumour on the head, affirming the club was, indeed, safely in his bag in the locker-room and not about to be put up on Ebay.

On an afternoon when roars resonated around the course, the crescendo of noise that greeted Casey's hole-in-one was loudest of all. But there were other roars more suited to Croke Park than rural Kildare. Like when Luke Donald rolled in his birdie putt on the 16th which effectively closed out his foursomes win with Sergio Garcia over Stewart Cink and JJ Henry.

"That was probably the loudest roar I ever heard on a golf course," said Donald. That is, until Casey created the template for all future aces.