Afternoon Foursomes: Ian Woosnam can occasionally come across as a back of the envelope man, scratch something down with a pencil in the bar and stick it in the back pocket. For some people that works.

His instinctive choice yesterday to team the Irish pair of Paul McGinley and Padraig Harrington almost delivered what he was looking for, a point, in the afternoon foursomes against American's Chad Campbell and Zach Johnson.

It was Woosnam's reasoned belief that the two Irish players would draw on the energy from the home crowd and hopefully lead by example at the front of the field.

That simple but understandable approach almost succeeded and as Woosnam had predicted the home support, hungry for European success, whooped, clapped and cheered the two around the entire 18 holes.

It was always going to be something of an emotional ride for McGinley. He had fought hard to make it to the team after some difficult months on the tour and had not taken part in the morning's play.

Out of that Woosnam offers him the chance to play in his first Ryder Cup match in Ireland with his friend Harrington, something that after this weekend neither will ever experience again. They were not about to let the experience slip by.

"There's two ways of dealing with adrenaline," said McGinley afterwards. "You can go with the emotion and ride it or you can try to keep yourself very calm. It's one of two ways. Neither way is right, neither way is wrong. It's whatever you chose and I think we fed off the crowd today. What a thrill it was to play in front of home crowds and to have them as passionate as they were today."

The Dubliner's grin from the moment he stepped through the howling gallery had a hungry look and had the American team not finished strongly down the closing stretch with birdie, birdie, birdie, Harrington and McGinley would have been certain to have secured the point.

On reflection, they will look back and see an untidy finish, see that the halved match was an opportunity lost.

That Europe were two up with three holes to play after Harrington sank a par putt from eight feet on the 15th hole will irritate.

Until that point there had never been more than one hole between the two teams, although from the sixth hole the match was either all square or Europe ahead.

In truth, with two par five holes in the closing stretch, the energy and determination of McGinley combined with Harrington's experience looked certain to pull them through. A birdie on one of the closing holes would have settled it.

For Harrington, it was the end of a long, long day. He first went through the emotion of playing the opening fourball as light was breaking over The K Club at 8am.

That opening game with Colin Montgomerie against Tiger Woods and Jim Furyk was also put on the clock for slow play and trailed on for over five hours. As he was picked to play with McGinley in the first team of the afternoon, the Dubliner had only 10 minutes to load up with a bowl of fruit and piece of shepherd's pie.

In total Harrington was on the golf course and competing from the first morning tee-off until the match closed at 6.10 pm, over 10 hours later.

"I'm really tired," he said afterwards. "My legs are tired, yeah, very tired. I'm not too bad mentally but physically, my legs are tired. It's very heavy on the legs and I suppose it's the Ryder Cup so you're pacing around all day."

Whether tiredness was a factor or not, there were a few badly executed shots in those closing holes, most of them from the European team and in the end it told.

Harrington's drive on the 18th was unfortunate to just catch the lip of a bunker and leave McGinley with the ball inches below his feet for the most awkward of stances.

Although he did a wonderful job of punching it up the fairway to lay up 80 yards from the green, Harrington's approach went over the back. The USA, who were on the front edge in two had two putts to halve the match from 50 feet. Campbell knocked the first to four feet and the rookie Johnson holed out.

"Okay, it's two par fives but they were still hitting woods as hard as they could hit them for their second shot," said McGinley.

"Two up, three to play, you're disappointed but it's top-class golf against top-class players and that's what happens.

"Credit to the American boys, they finished birdie, birdie, birdie. But I feel we played well. Our figures were good and we would have won a lot of the games out there."