Ryder Cup results fall short of hopes, dreams
- by Carlos Monarrez: KRT NewsWire

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. _ History will remember the 2004 United States Ryder Cup team. But it won’t be a fond memory. Europe kicked the best American golfers in the teeth, dragged them helplessly around Oakland Hills Country Club for three days and, in the end, left them battered and bruised as they took their inglorious place in history with their worst defeat ever in the Ryder Cup.

England’s Lee Westwood clinched the cup, Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie clinched the outright victory, and Europe rolled in the final day of singles competition to an 18 ½ to 9 ½ triumph Sunday. The worst previous defeat of an American team was a 16 ½ to 11 ½ loss to Europe in 1985 at the Belfry in Sutton Coldfield, England.

This time around, the United States also posted its largest deficit after the first day and the second day. The U.S. team boasted eight of the top 20 players in the world, compared with only four for Europe. But that didn’t stop the Europeans from taking leads of 6 ½ to 1 ½ after Friday and 11 to 5 after Saturday.

As the European celebration began to burgeon around the 18th green following Westwood’s 1-up victory over Kenny Perry that secured Europe’s second straight Ryder Cup and its fourth in the past five competitions, U.S. captain Hal Sutton saw the conclusion of his two-year tenure fall spectacularly short of expectations.

“I worked on it hard, but this is a tough job,” Sutton said on NBC’s telecast. “The Europeans played great. Frankly, we’ve got a lot of great players in America, but we just got outplayed this week.”

Sutton and the United States struggled to find the right chemistry all week. But Phil Mickelson skipped a practice, much was made of his recent equipment change and his pairing with Tiger Woods for two matches failed to produce the magic Sutton hoped it would.

“We just never got the charisma going that we needed,” Sutton said. “We caught glimpses of it yesterday morning.

“We started out spectacular the first two hours of today. People were wondering, you know, are the Americans going to do it again? And then, all of a sudden, we lost it again.”

Sutton was referring to the Americans’ miraculous comeback in 1999 from a 10 to 6 deficit at Brookline, Mass. The difference was that in `99, the Americans had lost many matches the first two days by narrow margins. This time around, the blowouts came early and often.

Still, things looked promising early on Sunday. Sutton frontloaded his lineup with the best players up first as the U.S. team took leads in the first five matches and led early in two others. The Americans needed 9 ½ points to win the Ryder Cup and, potentially, seven points were headed their way.

“We felt like if we could get it started early and win the first four or five matches, you never know what could happen, because that’s exactly what happened at Brookline,” Woods said. “When I was playing out there on the front, into the front nine, we were up in the first five matches and we were looking really good.”

Then reality set in. The Americans coughed up the lead in three of the first five matches and Europe outscored the U.S. team in singles, 7 ½ to 4 ½.

Woods went 2-3-0, and his record stands at 7-11-2 after four Ryder Cups. But the No. 2 player in the world provided one of the few encouraging signs for the Americans on Sunday as he posted the first point. He had two birdies and an impressive 30-foot eagle putt on the 12th hole that helped clinched a 3-and-2 victory over England’s Paul Casey.

Woods’ win marked the first time a U.S. player recorded two victories in these matches. Rookie Chris DiMarco, who defeated Spain’s Miguel Angel Jimenez, 1-up, was the only other American to reach two victories and was the only U.S. player to post a winning record at 2-1-1.