Philip Reid, in his book The Cup: How the Ryder Cup Was Won explains how the gods and the best players in Europe combined to win the 2006 staging of the biggest tournament in golf
Destiny, Destiny . . . Co Kildare, Sunday, September 24th, 2006
Memories! Tears! Beers! Cheers! Aces! Birdies! Bogeys, of the golfing kind! Bogeys, of a different, champagne-induced kind (out of Ian Woosnam's nose)! Yuck! In the dark of early morning on that Sunday, they had started to make the final pilgrimage. It rained, but the contingency plan to drag the 36th Ryder Cup into another extra day, a Monday, wasn't needed and those dedicated followers of golf, all 45,000 of them, who moved into position early for the final enactment did so with a sense of purpose and a belief that something special lay in store. What memories would be forever stored in their heads by day's end?
For those fans draped in ponchos or smothered in wet gear, those fans who ignored the rain as they trooped into the the K Club that Sunday morning, it was pretty much official: Ian Woosnam was a mastermind, not the "pathetic" captain that the spurned Thomas Bjorn had mistakenly predicted just a fortnight before the greatest golf show on earth. He would not need a back door to escape the country.
For the previous two days, of foursomes and fourballs, Woosie's European team - who, for the first time in Ryder Cup history had carried the responsibility of favourites into golf's greatest team tournament - had outplayed the United States, and the time for deliverance had arrived.
Europe carried a 10-6 lead into the final day of 12 singles and, just as he had done at Oakland Hills in 2004, Colin Montgomerie had been tasked with leading from the front. In the second singles, Sergio Garcia's named had been pencilled in.
"Monty's a very quick player. He likes to get out there. Sergio is pretty quick. We wanted to let them get out there, to play their own game," explained Woosnam. He hadn't fooled anyone. Montgomerie and Garcia were his leaders. He wanted them to lead. If the Americans were to stage a fightback, it would be the hard way.
Woosnam had sought to keep any hint of complacency out of the team room on the Saturday night. Yet, as each and every player assessed the singles pairings over dinner on that penultimate night of a little wining and lots of dining, nobody managed to escape the thought that, maybe, their captain had attempted to manipulate the order so that one man in particular could deliver.
Darren Clarke, who had shown incredible resolve in playing and competing so soon after his wife's death, had been positioned in the seventh singles against Zach Johnson. If Woosie's game plan worked out, Clarke's match, if he won, would be there or thereabouts when victory was determined.
If!
As the clock ticked towards five minutes past 11am, Montgomerie completed the last actions of his pre-round practice. He had ten minutes to kill. The Scot, a mainstay of Team Europe, had always thrived in the white-hot environment of the Ryder Cup, the white-knuckle ride of world golf, and he finished his routine with a couple of short putts on the practice green before he headed towards the first tee.
As he made his way across the avenue, those spectators who lined the way raised the volume levels and the noise transferred itself to those in the packed grandstand that curled around the tee box.
Montgomerie thought he had seen and heard everything in the seven previous Ryder Cups he had played in. He was wrong. The shouts on that first tee started out simply as "Monty, Monty" but, suddenly, changed track. Instead, the crowds - mainly Irish, but with a healthy smattering of English and Scottish and Welsh and Spanish and Swedish - serenaded him to the air of La Donna è Mobile from Rigoletto. As one, they sang:
Col-in-Mont-gom-e-rie . . .
Col-in-Mont-gom-e-rie . . .
Col-in-Mont-gom-e-rie . . .
Col-in-Mont-gom-e-rie, a tune, sung ad nauseam, that had accompanied the Italian soccer player Paolo Di Canio on his travels around various football grounds.
As Monty strode from the tee box having hit the first drive in his singles match against David Toms, and the first shot in Europe's final-day quest for a place in the history books, he suddenly stopped, turned to salute the crowd by raising his hand, and gave them a shake of the head as only he could. It signalled his appreciation for such a heartfelt send-off. The big man was genuinely touched.
The crowds were to be a huge part of that final day. Those packed around the first tee applauded the American players into the arena and serenaded the Europeans. Garcia and, later, José Maria Olazábal were given the traditional "Olé, Olé, Olé" treatment. Luke Donald got his own personal salutation, a guttural yet addictive chorus of "L-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-k-e". Luke, aka Skywalker, loved it. Paul McGinley and Padraig Harrington in turn stood on the tee to renditions of Molly Malone. Others made do with their surnames being shouted out as if from terraces at a soccer ground.
"That reception on the first tee was unbelievable, I think it made us all shake," said Donald.
There was added gusto, an increase in the noise decibel level if that were possible, to the acclaim that greeted Clarke. To a man and woman, everyone in the stands rose to award him a standing ovation, and his opponent, Johnson, warned what to expect, later remarked, "I expected it to be loud, but it was like a football stadium crowd of 80,000 massed around one tee box. It was pretty remarkable. I felt like I was the away team, playing for the world championship, or something, in another sport."
The singles order for that final day's play had been decided the previous night, when the respective captains had placed their men in order from one to 12. Tom Lehman had opted to place heavy hitters at the top end and towards the bottom, with his four rookies bunched together in the middle. The US captain decided on an order of David Toms, Stewart Cink, Jim Furyk, Tiger Woods, Chad Campbell, JJ Henry, Zach Johnson, Vaughn Taylor, Brett Wetterich, Phil Mickelson, Chris DiMarco, and finally Scott Verplank.
Woosnam's order brought a sequence of Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia, Paul Casey, Robert Karlsson, Luke Donald, Paul McGinley, Darren Clarke, Henrik Stenson, David Howell, José Maria Olazábal, Lee Westwood, and finally Padraig Harrington.
If the Americans were to have any chance of quietening the crowds, they needed to put some red figures on the giant scoreboards as they had done in the 1999 Ryder Cup match at Brookline. And Cink, a captain's pick, achieved that in the second singles against Garcia. The Spaniard had been Europe's dynamo, both in the team room and on the course, all week; but he ran into a train when he went up against Cink. Garcia's 100 per cent record was reduced to an 80 per cent return. Any American player would have given his bottom dollar for the same!
Cink started birdie-birdie-par-birdie-birdie - the best golf played by anyone on that final day of singles - and by the time they walked off the seventh green, the American, incredibly, had moved five holes up on Europe's highest-ranked player. Garcia tried to fight his way back into the match. He won the short eighth, after Cink found the river off the tee, and further reduced the deficit - to three holes - when he made a 10-foot birdie to claim the 11th.
Garcia felt that the momentum had suddenly been transferred to him, but he was wrong. Cink holed a 60-foot birdie putt on the 12th and, crestfallen, Garcia's effort from 15 feet failed to find the hole. Cink had moved four up again, and would not lose another hole. Fittingly, the match ended in the style that it had started: Garcia chipped in for birdie on the 15th from just off the fringe of the green, only to be followed in by Cink, who holed from 20 feet.
It was put to Garcia that Cink had a hot putter. "No, I don't think he had a hot putter. I think his putter melted! It must have melted. I've never seen anything like it . . . when I got to five (down), I thought, well, should I make this short and go help my partners? Or should I at least try to get a bit farther down the road?
"So, I saw Woosie on (number) eight and he gave me a fist pump and a bit of a charge . . . and then Stewart holes a 60-footer on me on 12, a 40-footer on the next and I have to make a 20-footer to halve and, then, on 15, I chip in and he rolls in a 20-footer. So, thank you very much, see you in two years."
His match finished early, all Garcia could do was to retreat back to act as cheerleader for his team-mates. He was to prove darn good in that role, too. So too was his girlfriend, Morgan Norman, daughter of the Great White Shark.
Tiger Woods also did his captain's bidding. The world's number one was pitted against the 6ft 5in Swede Robert Karlsson in the fourth singles match and, although Karlsson threw down the gauntlet by birdying the opening hole, Woods, back in control of his own destiny and playing his own ball, took charge and even managed to overcome a rather bizarre incident on the seventh hole that left him without a nine-iron for the remainder of his round.
Woods had moved one-up as he stood by the water's edge on the seventh green - a hole known as "Michael's Favourite", so named by the K Club's co-owner Dr Smurfit - when a strange thing happened. Rather nonchalantly, Woods handed the nine-iron that he had used for his approach shot to his caddie, Steve Williams.
It was not to be a moment that Williams would cherish. The bagman slipped as he took hold of the club and, putting his hand out to stop from falling, let the iron and the towel he was holding drop into the lake. While the towel floated long enough for Williams to retrieve it, the club had no such buoyancy. It sank to the bottom of the lake.
What could Tiger do but laugh? Williams didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
"That was interesting," recalled Woods. "I handed my ball to Stevie to have it cleaned and he was going to rinse the nine-iron in the water. He sure did that all right. He slipped on the rock and it was either him or the nine-iron, so he chose (to let go) the nine iron." A wet-suited frogman eventually retrieved the club from the bottom of the lake, but Woods had reached the 15th hole - and pretty much finished the job - by the time it was put back in his bag.
Woods, again watched by his friend Michael Jordan, managed just fine without his missing club and finished out the match for a 3 and 2 win that gave him three points from a possible five. It constituted his best-ever return in a Ryder Cup and he emerged as the leading US point scorer in the match. But it hadn't been enough, and the domino effect that Lehman had looked for from the top order of players failed to materialise.
In fact, only three Americans - Cink, Woods and Verplank in the bottom singles - managed to win, while JJ Henry was awarded a generous halved match by Paul McGinley when an attention-seeking streaker interrupted their match on the 18th green.
For the most part, the scoreboards were awash with blue numbers that indicated Europe's supremacy. It had been a familiar tale from the first morning's fourballs on Friday morning, and a trend that had continued throughout the match.
The first European point that Sunday was put up by Montgomerie. After his great send-off from the first tee, Monty had gotten down to business quickly, winning the third and fourth holes with birdies to go two up on Toms. He was never in danger, yet still had to play the 18th - for the fourth time in four matches - before he got up and down from a greenside bunker for a birdie that halved the hole and secured the win.
"Ian thought it was good I went out first. I'm probably the quickest player on the team and it was important that I got off to a good start and got some blue on the board early, which I did," said the Scot.
Paul Casey had been pitted against Jim Furyk, but it was a time in his life when he could do no wrong. A day earlier, he had closed out his foursomes match with a hole-in-one on the 14th and, when he arrived on the same tee in his singles with Furyk, he was three up and in complete control.
Lightning rarely strikes twice, but when Casey struck his tee shot on the short hole, he allowed himself a long, lingering look at the ball's flight. He determined before it even touched the putting surface that it would not be a repeat ace.
Casey had birdied four of the first six holes to turn four up on Furyk, and he eventually finished the one-sided duel with a handshake on the 17th green. Furyk, never a man to quit, had fought back on the homeward run when he won the 11th in birdie and the 16th in eagle. But time had not been on his side. Casey shook hands with Furyk at 3.16pm. Europe had moved into a 12-8 lead. And Casey made his way back the way he had come, to catch up with the developments behind him.
The golf buggy that took Casey back down the 17th hole that curled its way around a bend in the Liffey edged ever closer to the noisiest gathering of all, the huge crowds that had gathered in the grandstands and by the banks of the river on the 16th hole. Thousands of other spectators stood on the walkways fronting the massive corporate hospitality units that lined the fairway. It was an incredible scene.
SOME 600 helicopter drops a day had taken place during the Ryder Cup; dynamic evidence, if it were needed, of the roaring Celtic Tiger economy that had benefited Ireland in a decade of huge growth, and which was highlighted further by the fact that the match had finally reached an island with one-third of the world's links courses and a rich history in the tournament. Tommy O'Keeffe and his son, Jonathan, were among the crowds down by the 16th hole as Europe edged closer and closer to victory. But O'Keeffe, like the vast majority of those urging on Europe's win, had arrived at the venue by a more orthodox route.
He owned a barber shop and unisex hairdressers in Edenmore, in the suburbs on the north side of Dublin, and had been one of over 100,000 people who entered the worldwide random lottery for tickets on the European Tour's website. The odds were against him getting a ticket, but he had registered his credit card details looking for two tickets for the singles on the Sunday and kept his fingers crossed. That had been in May, 2005. Five months later, in October, he got an email back congratulating him on his success in the lottery. Two tickets, as requested.
Two weeks before the match, DHL delivered his prized tickets. With the tickets were strict instructions that they weren't to be sold on. There was no chance of that. This was a dream fulfilled. An avid golfer, and a member of Skerries Golf Club for 27 years, O'Keeffe couldn't believe his luck as he found himself in the thick of the action that Sunday. He assiduously found time for golf, organising outings with friends and ensuring that golf didn't simply revolve around playing his home club. He loved getting up close and personal, watching the professionals at the Irish Open and the European Open, the two European Tour stops in Ireland each year.
He'd been fortunate enough to play the Palmer Course a number of times. The last time he had played, O'Keeffe had lost two new ProVs in the Liffey in foolishly attempting to reach the 16th in two. Once upon a time, he and his friends had even sneaked on to the back tees, those championship markers used in the European Open, and it gave him a new respect for the game that the professionals played.
"Just the power that they put into the swing, it's unreal. If I was to hit a ball like Tiger Woods, I'd have to go straight down to the chiropractors. They all hit it so far. I mean, 186 yards for an eight iron? There's no doubt, they are a different animal," said O'Keeffe.
That morning, the two O'Keeffes, father and son, had left their home in Swords and drove to the public park-and-ride facility at Weston Aerodrome in Leixlip. From there, they got the shuttle bus to the course. The procedure had worked seamlessly. They were at the first tee at 10.15am, an hour before Monty's singles match. They found a place halfway down the fairway in the vicinity of where the tee shots would land and, later, they moved around, spending much of the first couple of hours following Tiger, getting to within four or five feet of the great one, and marvelling at what they saw.
On the 12th hole, a Par 3 to a green with water on the left, the two golf fans had a perfect spot, positioned between the green and the tee. They could see players driving off the 11th tee, and the tee shots and putts (or chips) on the short hole. It was a great location. At one point, his son nudged O'Keeffe. Jonathan discreetly pointed at a big, tall, blonde man who stood not too far away from them.
"Do you know who that is?"
"No," replied Tommy, "but he looks familiar."
"That's Boris Becker."
"No way."
"Yes way."
Bold as brass, but unsure if his leg was being pulled, O'Keeffe ventured up to the man who looked like the tennis legend.
"Are you Boris Becker?" he asked.
"I am," said the German. "Who are you?"
"I'm Tommy. Delighted to meet you."
Tommy the Barber had mixed with the great and the good at The K Club, but the scenes over the finishing few holes, especially at the 16th, were ones that would be stored in his head forever more. What's more, he watched and he learned. A couple of weeks later he would play in a seniors open competition at The Island Golf Club. He won, and was cut two shots off his handicap. From 14 down to 12. He attributed it to the inspirational effect of watching the world's greatest players that Sunday.
David Howell never got as far as the 16th - which had become the principal gathering point - in his singles with Brett Wetterich that Sunday. Wetterich had impressed in the US team's reconnaissance trip to The K Club prior to the match and had also impressed in the practice days, but, as he discovered, there was a massive difference between practice and actually playing in a competition like the Ryder Cup.
In his only outing before the singles, Wetterich (and fourballs partner Toms) had been caught in the spell cast by the "Spanish Armada" on Friday. It had been a morning when nothing went right for Wetterich, not even on the rare occasion that he attempted to high-five Toms, but, rather cruelly, Wetterich again found himself in the middle of something extraordinary that Sunday.
Howell and Wetterich had been involved in a close match up to the time that they walked on to the 11th tee. The Englishman was one up on the American at that stage but then produced a run of birdie-birdie-birdie-birdie to win the following four holes and claim the match by 5 and 4. Howell and Wetterich hugged in a warm and genuine embrace on the 14th green. It was 3.40pm, and Howell's victory had moved Europe into a 13-8 lead.
Europe only needed one more point to retain the trophy as defending champions, and another half-point after that for outright victory and an historic third successive win. It was a matter of when, not if. A tidal wave of inevitability had swept over the singles and the blue numbers on the scoreboards showed that there would be only one winner.
Luke Donald guaranteed the retention of the trophy for Europe when he beat Chad Campbell 2 and 1. Europe 14, USA 8. It was a match that emphasised the wicked vagaries of golf. Donald and Campbell recorded nine straight pars apiece to turn all-square, only for Donald to get hot and Campbell to not. The critical holes were the 11th, 12th and 13th. Donald went birdie-par-birdie. Campbell went bogey-double bogey double-bogey.
It was revenge of sorts for Donald. Two years previously, in Oakland Hills, Campbell had beaten him quite comfortably.
"It wasn't really about revenge," insisted Donald though. "To be honest, our main aim was to win the singles. We had won every other session, the fourballs, the foursomes, both days. We wanted to go out there and just pretend that we weren't trying to get to just 14 and a half (points), we were going to get as many as we could."
The clock had nudged its way to 3.45pm when Donald finished off Campbell. One minute later - at 3.46pm - Sweden's Henrik Stenson, the "special one" as Paul Broadhurst had called him early in the season, sealed the deal. Europe 15, USA 8.
Stenson's 4 and 3 win over Vaughn Taylor was the moment that Europe were guaranteed victory in the 2006 Ryder Cup and, with virtually every spectator all over the course hearing the news simultaneously on the transistor radios, a simultaneous roar of approval, and not just from those around the 15th green, greeted Stenson's deed.
Stenson raised his putter to the skies in triumph. He wanted this moment to go on and on, and he wanted to soak up the acclaim of the crowd. Then, someone told him what he'd done. It was only then that Stenson realised that his putt would go down in history as the one that had won the Ryder Cup in 2006 for Europe. His first reaction, however, was to jump into a cart - issuing high-fives to spectators along the way - as he sought to catch up on Darren Clarke's match ahead.
AT 3.55PM, CLARKE won his match with Zach Johnson on the 16th green. Europe 16, USA 8. Woosie had so nearly got it right. If Stenson's putt had won the cup, Clarke's finish provided the raw emotion. It gave Europe deliverance. The Irishman had ridden a roller-coaster of sentiment, yet somehow had kept his resolve to impart one superb shot after another in the three matches that he played. Each match, each outing, had resulted in a win. Victory achieved, he let it all go.
Six weeks to the day after his wife, Heather, had died, Clarke's singles victory prompted an outpouring of emotions. Tears welled in his eyes as his faithful caddie, Billy Foster, gave him a shoulder to cry on and Woosnam was the first to raise Clarke's hands aloft. "Destiny, destiny," whispered Woosnam into Clarke's ears.
US captain Tom Lehman wasn't far behind. "You hurt us real bad. But you know what? We're so glad you were on this team and we're behind you 100 per cent," Lehman told him.
Clarke and Johnson had played their approach shots to the 16th green, the man from Dungannon three up at that point, when the ropes that had kept the spectators off the fairway and away from the riverbank came down. The spectators flooded on to the fairway, anticipating and expecting, and crossed towards the river bank to be closer to the action. Clarke delivered. With misty eyes, he looked across the river to where the crowds stood to acclaim him and the roars that came back across that stretch of waterway told him that his people knew and understood and cared.
His singles win crossed team boundaries; Woods, DiMarco, Mickelson, Cink, all came on to the green, because it seemed the right thing to do, and all of them hugged him. Then his own embraced him; Garcia, Casey, Donald, Stenson. One by one, they came to him and held him.
Clarke determined that his golf had been just "okay", but he was a lone critic. To everyone else, he had performed miraculously well. Not just in his singles, but in the two fourballs wins as well. Before his round, Woosnam had warned him not to look at scoreboards. Clarke hadn't resisted the temptation.
"Sorry, Woosie, but I was looking at the board a little bit. I found it very difficult to not get ahead of myself and keep my emotions in check whenever it was obvious it could come down to my putt. I lost myself a few times out there, but I managed to keep on going and do what I had to do."
What had the week meant?
"I've got too many memories to list. This week has done a lot for me. It's shown me that a lot of people cared about me and a lot of people cared about Heather. It was very, very touching," said Clarke.
From that first tee shot on the first hole, Clarke had separated his emotions from his golf. He concentrated on every shot and his first birdie of that glorious day was a winning one, on the fourth. It put Clarke one up on Johnson. The American birdied the fifth to go all square, but that was as good as it got for Johnson. When he bogeyed the sixth, it put Clarke ahead again and, by the time they walked off the seventh green, the big Ulsterman had moved two clear. When he birdied the 10th, it put him three holes ahead.
The best had still to come. On the 12th hole, a Par 3, Clarke missed the green with his approach shot. He was four feet off the putting surface and some 40 yards from the hole. He took the putter from Foster, took aim, fired . . . and watched as the ball, like a missile, stayed true to its line and fell into the hole for an outrageous birdie. The crowds had gone wild for less. Clarke's birdie sent them into ecstasy.
Johnson, game as ever, reduced the deficit by winning the 13th in par. But it wasn't enough. Destiny had decided that Clarke could not lose. Johnson's handshake on the 16th brought the match to an end, and signalled the start of a well of emotion.
"I think, as a player, we all know what he can do and how good he really is," said Johnson. "But he's an even better person . . . it was a lot of emotion, obviously more for him than me. And, I don't know, I could have had my A-plus game and I'm not so sure I could have beat him. The gods were on his side. He's a great guy."
• Available from next Thursday, The Cup: How the 2006 Ryder Cup Was Won by Philip Reid is published by Maverick House, priced 14.99.
