Which one of us hasn’t been involved in a late night car park altercation, where a friend drags us away from an irritating provocateur, in a “they’re not worth it” kind of way, tells us to calm down, get a good night’s sleep and prepare to exact revenge on the golf course the following afternoon? We’ve all been there.
“It just shows how emotionally engaged this team is,” said a purring Paul McGinley when asked to analyse what went on between Rory McIlroy and American caddie Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay, with Shane Lowry sandwiched somewhere in between Rory and Bones.
It wouldn’t be entirely accurate to say the Ryder Cup was won in that car park, a five-point lead after the conclusion of Saturday’s play contributing too. But Paul Azinger had a bad feeling when he joined the Sky Sports panel on Sunday morning, reckoning carparkgate would further fire up a European side that was already ablaze.
It had all started, of course, with the manner in which another caddie, Joe LaCava, had celebrated Patrick ‘no hat’ Cantlay’s successful putt the day before in his fourball.
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Many of the murmuring Aviva Stadium crowd left early or headed to the bar. Irish expectations have changed
“Seve [Ballesteros] never celebrated inappropriately,” said Azinger, “now guys’ eyes bug out of their heads like a reptile that just got stepped on.”
The other Paul, McGinley, nodded, and sensed there was no coming back from carparkgate for the Americans, they had all the life of a squashed beetle.
“What hope do you give them,” Nick Dougherty asked him.
“I’m not going to say ‘no chance’,” Paul replied, “but whatever is just less than ‘no chance’.”
That breezy confidence was a slight concern, especially when the board began to resemble the Red Sea, a turnaround that was almost as baffling as Jon Rahm’s accent.
Andrew Coltart might not even have noticed the fightback, though, so busy was he apologising for fruity language.
Collin Morikawa hits a dodgy tee shot: “F**k me.”
Andrew: “Really sorry for that language, no need for it.”
But that sea of red was a worry, and at this point you might have been reassessing Zach Johnson’s captaincy skills, which had looked a bit ropy until now.
When the US of A found themselves 9.5-2.5 down on Saturday, Sky’s Tim Barter asked him what he could do to inspire his team to an “unprecedented comeback”. Zach thought for a moment and then: “Just be present, um, have a confident posture, which is exactly the way my mind-frame is, and um, just be there”.
“Eh,” said Nick Faldo, intimating that he found that advice to be less than inspirational, not least at a time when Zach’s team was being serenaded with cries of “can we play you every week?” out on the course. And the poor Clark lad: “Wyndham, where’s your ball, Wyndham, Wyndham where’s your ball?”
And yet more fodder for a thousand think pieces: “In your head, in your head, Rory, Rory, Roar-e-e-e-e.”
If Dolores was tuning in from on high, she’d have been like: “What?”
Anyway, before the singles got under way, Dougherty had a small pop at No Hat Cantlay by pointing out that Europe “play not for money but for country, for continent, for pride, for honour, for their band of brothers”, before we saw yet another emotive montage that likened Europe’s challenge to that faced, say, by the protagonists in the Battle of Waterloo. When look, it’s just golf.
But when the red started mounting up, it put the Battle of Waterloo in the ha’penny place. “We’re all wibbly wobbly,” as Faldo put it, nerves mounting.
All was well in the end, though, Yoorup coming good, Ewen Murray noting that “the celebrations have already started inside the body of Shane Lowry” when he Riverdanced his way up to the 17th, punching the air so hard in an exultant fashion, it would have ended up black and blue.
Rory was crying, Justin Rose was emoting, Luke Donald was in shreds, and Zach Johnson was possibly taking the Mick out of Patrick. “You have to take your hat off to Team Yoorup,” he said.
The Ryder Cup was thrust in to the Roman air by a Yoo-ro-peen team high on life, while the Americans limped home wondering what all that band of brothers guff was about.
“Hats off for your bank account,” the crowd sang as Cantlay departed the scene, while the celebrations continued inside Shane Lowry’s body. Truly, the Ryder Cup is a hoot.
