TV View: His right forefinger was fretfully fiddling with the trigger of the gun that was resting on his hip. He looked edgy, uneasy, but these, after all, were nervous times. He had a big decision to make, perhaps one that would change, forever, his life and end the lives of the men standing a mere six inches from him.
Were these men a threat to Homeland Security, or were they just European golf fans? Is there a difference between the two? Should he shoot, or should he smile? Happily, the policeman chose neither option, deciding instead to keep his gun in his holster and carry on looking bewildered and slightly scared as the little green men on the 15th green at Oakland Hills, bedecked in orange wigs, green, white and gold caps, Tricolours and Irish rugby jerseys, exuberantly sang about shellfish.
To his dying day he'll wonder quite what cockles and mussels had to do with Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley beating Tiger Woods and Davis Love in the Ryder Cup, or why the little green men were singing a Spanish-sounding tune by the name of Olé, Olé and a dirge about a patch of land in Athenry.
"Jeez, it's golf, but it sure ain't golf as I know it," as he said to himself. "Alive, alive oh-oh, alive, alive oh-oh," they'd bellowed in the direction of Harrington and McGinley, as Sky's Bruce Critchley, a touch dryly, noted, "It may have not been a very good result for America, but I feel it's a very good result for the bars of Detroit."
A great golfing day, then, for Ireland and its supporting Ryder Cup cast, that little island off its east and south coasts (Europe), as it drank the Yanks dry. Olé, Olé.
Jean van de Velde was elated when he chatted to Steve Rider on the BBC's highlights programme on Saturday night, but uncomfortably so. Yes, BBC Sport spent quite a bundle on its Olympic coverage, but could they not have risen to a studio at Oakland Hills, rather than having Steve and Jean sitting in the dark in a golf buggy in front of the clubhouse?
Sunday. American captain Hal Sutton arrives. Still looking and sounding like the grandpa from The Dukes of Hazzard, or, perhaps, a cross between Fred Flintstone and JR Ewing.
"Halimony", we've learnt, they call him, so many ex-wives has he in his collection. No wonder Hal wears the look of a troubled man. But he's married again, so he's a man who never stops trying. And that was his message to his team: "Divorce yourself from the last two days and git up that there altar and kick butts."
"You need the crowd to get behind you, don't you," said Sky's Dominic Hollier. "Yeeaaah, but we gotta invite 'em to the parteee," said Hal, "and the only way ya gonna do that is if y'all make putts and we ain't done that so far. I told them that last night, I said 'guys, if y'all wanna git the crowd excited you gotta give 'em somethin' to git excited about'."
Bernhard Langer was next to arrive in the car-park. "Excited, Bernhard?" asked Hollier. "I sure as hell am, yee haw," said the European captain. Nah, he didn't. He said: "Yes." And that's as much as Bernhard has emoted all week.
Back in the Sky studio David Livingstone was trying to get Butch Harmon fired up, not realising that there was no need, Butch was just born fired up. "I see a certain sense of shame as an American about how your team has performed this week," said Livingstone.
Butch nodded enthusiastically, had a lash at Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods and Chris Riley, and concluded that the Americans had been "outplayed and outcoached - they're too uptight and they're just not team players."
But were they singles players? Well. Seven o'clock, the scoreboard: red, red, red, red, red, red, red. In other words: Europe were down in seven, up in just the one. As Ewen Murray so eloquently put it: "Uh oh." As Butch had suggested, American golfers prefer solo runs, and none of this back-slapping, bear-hugging, team lark.
It wasn't to last, though. 7.24: Europe down in five, up in three. 7.40: Europe down in five, up in six. 8.14: Europe down in four, up in seven. 8.24: Europe down in four, up in eight. And so on. Ewen's voice reached a higher pitch with every update.
Bernhard lost all self-control and blinked. Hal considered another divorce. For a while the Yanks had made it close, but no cigar. Miguel Angel Jiménez and Darren Clarke had smoked them all.
