America At Large: When Monday's conversation turned to the differences between European and American styles of play, basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski reminded Tom Lehman that the Europeans tend to be "more physical," and you had visions of Monty hip-checking Tiger into a greenside bunker.

If he had not become a professional golfer, Lehman says, he would have been a basketball coach. Early on in the year of his Ryder Cup captaincy, he sought the counsel of one hoops mentor, John Wooden, the legendary nonagenarian who mentored UCLA in its heyday, and a week before he and his team would depart for Ireland, Lehman sat down for a tete-a-tete with Krzyzewski.

"He had a million ideas on things we could do as a team to achieve our ultimate dream, which is to win," recalled Lehman. "A lot of it has to do with creating the environment and the atmosphere to allow our players to play their best."

In his 27 years at Duke University, Coach K has overseen a programme that stands as a model of consistency, but Lehman wasn't there for advice about coaching college kids. Krzyzewski had just returned from Japan and a stint as the coach of the US National team, an oil-and-water mixture of young, budding, would-be stars and veteran NBA multimillionaires whose demographic make-up suggests that of another 12-man squad, the one (Tiger, Phil, and Four Guys You Never Heard of) Lehman will bring to The K Club next week.

Lehman was obliged to be in Pinehurst for a corporate event on Monday, and decided to 'piggyback' the appearance with a visit to Coach K's offices in Durham. Although Krzyzewski doesn't even play golf, the two spent an hour and a half chatting.

While Krzyzewski is acknowledged to be the top basketball coach in the land, it is probably worth noting that his team returned from Japan having finished third in the FIBA World Championships. Nobody needed to remind Lehman that there is no bronze medal in a two-team event.

The dialogue, reported Lehman, dealt with "the Ryder Cup and the form of our team and the make-up of our team and all that kind of stuff.

"It was a good conversation," said the American Ryder Cup skipper. "He gave me a lot of really good ideas. I told him some of the ideas that I had for our team leading up to the Ryder Cup. We spend a lot of time together obviously, but the week of the Ryder Cup you can get a lot of things solidified early in the week, and he helped me almost to effect some of the ideas that I had, and he gave me some new ones.

"More than anything," recalled Lehman, "I think what he said was you don't want to come away without having shot all your bullets. You don't want to hold anything back. I think if there's one common theme, that would be it."

Did Krzyzewski provide Lehman with specific advice about how to handle his Ryder Cup rookies? "Absolutely," replied Lehman.

And that would be? "I'm not telling you." There are some things, Lehman hastened to explain, "that I think are meant for me and our team.

"And," he admitted, "there are some things that I wouldn't want the other team to hear me say."

Although he wasn't about to divulge the secret strategy developed on the hardwood court that he will bring to The K Club, Lehman said Krzyzewski had given him "what I consider to be invaluable advice that only he would know.

"He's been through it for 27 years in a row at Duke," noted Lehman. "There are ways to make those younger guys comfortable and play their best, and it's a matter of following through with it."

Although he was for the most part short on specifics in recalling details of Monday's meeting, Lehman did recount a parable from earlier in Coach K's international career, when he served as an assistant coach with the original American Dream Team that won the gold medal at the 1992 Barcelona Games.

Michael Jordan, Krzyzewski recalled, had compared the competing teams to totem poles. "Everybody's got a totem pole, with the stars at the top and the bottom guys at the bottom," Lehman recalled Jordan telling Krzyzewski. The trick, His Airness reminded the then-assistant, is to turn the totem pole sideways."

Nobody needed to remind Lehman that his team has its own Michael Jordan. His name is Tiger Woods, and the hope is that he has come a long way since his Ryder Cup debut in 1997, when he described the event about to be played at Valderrama as "an exhibition" and proceeded to win just one of the five matches in which he played.

Totem pole or no totem pole, shrugged Lehman, "your stars have to be your stars. Your best players have to play their best, and you have to give them the opportunity to play their best."

Other than that, Coach K's contribution to Lehman's K Club game plan was even more abstract: Follow your instincts, Krzyzewski told him. If your gut tells you something is right, it probably is.

Krzyzewski is hardly a superstitious sort, and his office is almost bereft of tokens and memorabilia, but he did produce one inspirational memento, which he gave to Lehman with the words "Here's my good luck wish for you." What was it? We probably won't find out unless, and until, the US team returns with the Ryder Cup.