Eyes on prize
Ryder Cup participants already thinking about next week
By KEN FIDLIN -- Toronto Sun
This may be Canada's most important week of golf, but for a half-dozen players in the field at Glen Abbey it is the calm before the storm.
The Ryder Cup will be played next week at Oakland Hills, just outside Detroit, and an argument can be made that not since the Christians versus the lions has there been a sporting event that melts the intestines of grown men, supposedly born to the game.
Six members of the American side are teeing it up today at Glen Abbey, but nobody could blame them for the occasional heart palpitation as their minds wander ahead to next week's pressure-cooker.
"We've all heard stories about how guys are shaking so much they can't tee the ball up," said Stewart Cink, one of captain Hal Sutton's two special selections for the squad. This will be his second Ryder Cup experience, having played in 2002.
"The one thing I realized then is that, thankfully, your habits are so ingrained as a pro that, no matter how nervous you are, you still swing the club the same way. I was nervous, but the machine kept working. I'm hoping it will be the same this time."
For most of their golfing lives, even the very best professionals have to answer to no one but themselves. If a guy misses a two-foot putt to lose a tournament on Sunday afternoon, it costs him a few hundred thousand dollars and a few sleepless nights, but at least no one else suffers.
In a team event, every one of the 12 team members is carrying the weight of his 11 teammates, not to mention the hopes and dreams of millions of countrymen, on his shoulders. It is a whole different mind-set and even some of the game's greats can come unglued.
"On the first tee in 2002, I was gulping like mad," Ryder Cup veteran Colin Montgomerie said not long ago. "It was Sunday, the start of the singles, the match was tied and I was out first. The electricity was unbelievable. It was building up all around me. It was massive. I'd love to re-create it but I never will. It was a one-off."
Cink, Phil Mickelson, Fred Funk, Kenny Perry, Chris DiMarco and Chad Campbell all decided to come to Oakville this week, rather than take a rest.
"I like playing the week before a major and I consider the Ryder Cup in the class of a major as far as preparation goes," Cink said. It's one thing for a Tiger Woods or a Mickelson, secure in their reputations as elite players, to inhale that pressure and feed off it. But for some of the mere mortals in the competition, it can be terrifying.
"There is a lot of pressure on the lower half of the team because no one wants to be the weakest link. You have 11 other players and a captain to support and you don't want to let them, or the country, down. So there's a lot of pressure for everybody, but maybe more on the guys lower down because they haven't been there as much."
As good as the Americans appear on paper, fact is, they always look great on paper when compared with the European squad. Yet the Euros have beaten the Yanks six of the past nine Ryder Cups and three of the past four.
"It's a very stressful time for us," Mickelson said. "We want to win this and we struggled in the last four, winning only once, and that one (1999) was a gift, or at least unexpected."
It has been suggested that the Europeans succeed because they are more accustomed to playing team games but there is another theory that is a modified version of the David and Goliath legend. They just like to beat Americans.
GUT FEELING
"I have a gut feeling," Mickelson, said "that this year is going to be different, that the U.S. is going to come out really playing well on our home soil."
None of the European team members came to Glen Abbey. Captain Bernhard Langer's brother runs the German Masters and the captain made sure there were plenty of Ryder Cuppers in the field there. They'll arrive in Michigan en masse next Monday when the whole world will snap to attention.
"It's an event that transcends just one sport and brings the whole world in," Cink said. "There are people who don't ever watch golf who will probably watch the Ryder Cup."
And why is that?
For the same reason that traffic slows for people to gawk at a car-wreck. And if this lives up to the Ryder Cup legacy, then we're in for another demolition derby.
