GOLF/INSIDE THE ROPES:BOTH RYDER Cup teams got rained on yesterday. It's just that one of them got a lot wetter than the other.

One of my earliest childhood sporting memories was attending, as a small boy, a football game between teams representing the Universities of Kentucky and Florida. The respective quarterbacks were men I would have occasion to know later: Kentucky’s Vito (Babe) Parilli, who turned 81 this year, played professionally for, among other teams, the Patriots and Jets; and while his Florida counterpart, the late Haywood Sullivan, would play professional baseball for the Boston Red Sox, he is better known for his roles as general manager and part-owner of the team from 1978-1993.

The most memorable aspect of the game in question was that it was contested in an absolute downpour that turned the field into a veritable swamp. Well before the first half had ended, the uniforms of both teams were the same shade of mud.

Unable to distinguish numbers, the radio broadcasters were reduced to pure guesswork. The stadium play-by-play announcer gave up trying to identify ball-carriers.

During the half-time intermission steps were taken to address the situation. The Kentucky players stripped off their soggy blue jerseys and came out for the second half wearing their white road uniforms. This option was not available to Florida, but in the interest of fairness the Florida players were issued Kentucky’s practice jerseys.

Spectators at Celtic Manor yesterday, if they were paying attention, were treated to a similar switch.

By the time the morning fourball matches resumed play following a rain-delay of over seven hours, the waterlogged rain gear the American players had worn in the morning had been consigned to the scrap heap.

In their stead, the players and their caddies had been issued ProQuip rainsuits, the result of an emergency run to the Ryder Cup merchandise pavilion, and Lisa Pavin, wife of the American team captain, found herself at the centre of the controversy occasioned by the embarrassing wardrobe malfunction.

A couple of days after Corey Pavin announced his captain’s picks, Mr and Mrs Pavin presided over another New York press event, this one unveiling the apparel the US team would wear for the 38th renewal of the matches in Wales.

It was explained at the time that Lisa Pavin had assumed responsibility for designing and selecting the American wardrobe, which presumably allowed her husband to devote his attention to weightier matters, like who would wear it.

The clothing appears to have been a big hit. Mrs Pavin was roundly praised by fashion mavens for the understated style of her retro-themed, colour-coordinated outfits.

It appears to have occurred to no one at the time that instead of parading it down a showroom runway, one of the models might have better demonstrated the efficacy of the rain gear by, say, standing under the shower for a few minutes.

That the Sun Mountain raingear Mrs Pavin had designed might not stand up to a Welsh downpour had already become apparent to some even on the practice range yesterday morning.

By the time he made his way to the first tee, Tiger Woods had already unencumbered himself of his rainsuit.

The wet-gear, labelled “USA”, leaked so copiously in its brief, early-morning trial that as soon as play was suspended at 9:45 the PGA of America dispatched representatives to the merchandise tent, where they snapped up matching ProQuip suits (beige for the players, firehouse red for the caddies) right off the shelves – at a reported cost of €250 apiece.

ProQuip, based in Edinburgh, had created the European team’s rainsuits. The replacement gear purchased by the Americans bore the Ryder Cup logo, but otherwise had no identifying insignia.

Whether the Americans were wet and playing miserably or were playing miserably because they were all wet is open to interpretation, but by the time the switch was made the US was trailing in three of the four matches.

“We were disappointed in the performance it (the Sun Mountain rain gear), and we fixed it,” was Pavin’s terse explanation. “They were not doing what we wanted them to do (ie, keep the players wearing them from becoming waterlogged). So we went out and bought some new ones.” Embarrassingly for them, from the official European team supplier.

GEORGE KIMBALL