Ryder View: Tom Humphries observes the merriment as Europe's winning team let their hair down with a vengeance to celebrate their victory at the K Club.

The final day of Ryder Cup action is always the best. Not just for the sceptic who is never further away from being press ganged into active duty on the thing than when the last singles ball is dropping and the final snipe of champagne is being quaffed. There's more to the pleasure than that.

Singles play is closer to real golf than anything which goes on in the two days of donkey derby novelty and forced conviviality beforehand. The singles are a lonely business. As lonely as golf is intended to be. Singles day, when the captains send their sappers out alone over the trenches and wait for them to come back as tatterdemalioned legions or a triumphant regiment, has a little genuine drama to it.

Yesterday the routing got done early and the serious drinking began before the N7 could get clogged.

For the lay person, watching the drives, wayward and otherwise, of golf's top professionals is something different and special. But watching them celebrate is stunning and memorable, the sort of thing pay-per-view should look into.

There was plenty to celebrate, not least the simple pleasure to be drawn yesterday from the suffering of others better off than ourselves.

Those who paid through the nostrils to get into the cliff face of corporate hospitality suites overlooking the 18th green on the final day of play saw virtually nothing of significance yesterday as the Europeans finished the business off in relative privacy back down the course.

In the end, the best that corporate money could buy was a seat out of the rain and a look at the telly. And then the sun came out and before it was mid-afternoon the thing was over bar the shouting.

As things turned out, the shouting was the best part of it. Those dry-lined citizens who worry about the influence alcohol companies sponsoring sports events might have should go and take a lie-down now. Such merry scenes of heedless Bacchanalian excess which were enacted on the balcony of the K Club yesterday haven't been seen since the Pogues started worrying about lifestyle issues.

As caddies wandered among the massed and bepringled peasantry dishing out champagne, Darren Clarke downed a pint of Guinness in shorter time than it takes to sink a three-foot putt.

Padraig Harrington, the most sober of citizens, wrapped his laughing gear around the neck of a large bottle. Ian Woosnam did more, consuming champagne and issuing it from his nose and mouth at virtually the same time. At one stage as he spewed over the balcony with a long, translucent dribble dangling from his nose, Woosnam produced Europe's most spectacular bogey of the day and the masses applauded lustily. Spit on me, Woosie, spit on me!

In such moments of quiet dignity is the tradition of Ryder Cup golf enhanced. The Government had hoped that the scenes beamed from the K Club into American living-rooms would help revive the tourist injury. The week said nothing more eloquently than that Ireland is a decent place to be in out of the rain with a soft pint in your hand.

We may put those 440 golf courses back to tillage and get back to the stereotypical drinking and fighting which have served us so well down through the centuries.

The golf paled into tedium beside the celebration. The Europeans routinely outputted, outchipped and outdrove an American team which looked genuinely nonplussed by their own inadequacy. Just about every match which was seen off at the first yielded a European advantage before the players were fully out of sight. Sunday at The K Club never even became interesting. We got to see some sights we don't see every day, however.

For instance it ended emblematically with Chris DiMarco attempting to deny the undeniable.

Having ditched his second to the 18th into the drink, DiMarco defiantly went to the drop zone, from where he couriered his fourth shot straight into the lake. The corporate vultures on the 18th were denied even the last stirring of the American team.

What they did get to see was Paul McGinley's gracious gesture on the last when, with his ball close to the hole and JJ Henry's lying 25 feet away, he conceded the putt to halve the hole and halve the match.

Not often that sport gives us those moments.

And we saw Darren Clarke finishing his week in a maelstrom of feeling. The Ryder Cup has a convivial, matey side to it, a side which blanketed Darren all week. Next week will be cold though and the sight of the big man shedding his image and shedding his tears was one of the more genuinely touching moments of the event.

Afterwards in the big press tent McGinley spoke eloquently on behalf of his colleagues about how much they missed Heather Clarke, and Ian Woosnam dedicated the win to her memory.

Such revelations of closeness and feeling made the Ryder Cup more comprehensible.

Whether the Americans are beginning to comprehend or not is a different matter. How a race with such innate talent for golf can be blown off course when corralled into a team is an ongoing mystery. One that will be unravelled later.

"I need to just tip my hat completely to the European team," said Tom Lehman, "for their courage and the way they played. I don't know that if in the history of the Ryder Cup anybody has played better than those guys did this week."

It all finished with some big drums and some big shots.

The European team and their loyal "wags" - all kitted out in the same ghastly pink - came in with their American counterparts and, lo, there was heralds and trumpets, there was Bertie and hyperbole.

Two full years to the next one. Not often we get to say that either.