Spaniard justifies Ryder Cup call-up by proving he is a true leader with a day of input on and off the courseOf the hundreds of decisions Thomas Bjørn has had to make since he took on the captaincy two years ago, picking Sergio García was one of the riskiest. Not that Bjørn ever saw it that way. He has been on the same team as García in six Ryder Cups, as a teammate and a vice-captain. Now he was in charge, he knew he wanted him in his team, even if he had to use one of his wildcard picks to do it. The problem was, hardly anyone else seemed to agree with him.García had been playing some poor stuff...
The American’s Ryder Cup losing streak extended to seven, while Tommy Fleetwood became the first ever European to win his first four Ryder Cup matchesNot since the Marshall Plan have the Americans been so generous to Europe. And Tiger Woods has been among the most munificent in this 42nd Ryder Cup.On Friday, he and Patrick Reed gifted a point to Francesco Molinari and Tommy Fleetwood in the opening fourball, 3&1, before he skipped the afternoon foursomes to rest his back. On Saturday, he and Reed gift-wrapped the quiet Italian and his long-haired Southport mate the morning fourball, 4&3. And, as the American team sought to apply a tourniquet to the haemorrhage, the same European combination – Moliwood, as they have...
The Ryder Cup’s customary 1st-tee tension was ramped up further by a packed grandstand and the pressure took its tollAs Thorbjørn Olesen prepared for the opening shot of his Ryder Cup career he began to give off the sort of distress signals that any Sunday morning hacker would recognise. First came the massive gulps of air, as he tried to arrest the adrenaline raging through his body. Then, after a nervous lick of the lips – the tongue acting like a windscreen wiper on the vermilion border – and several rushed practice swings he placed his ball as calmly as he could on the tee – only to clank it into the water.But Olesen, a player good enough to amass...
Earl Woods’s ‘psychological training’ gave his son the reservoirs of resilience needed to recover from a decade of ugly ordealsThey say Earl Woods was a poet laureate of profanity, that he knew so many curse words that he could cuss for 30 minutes straight and not repeat himself once. Earl told Golf Digest that this was “a family thing”, a habit he inherited from his father and passed on to his son. Tiger was 11 when Earl started to swear at him during training. “Fuck off Tiger,” he would say during his backswing, “motherfucker” he’d utter, “you little piece of shit”. Tiger said later he “didn’t mind and even encouraged” his father’s swearing, that “eventually, I started laughing at it”.His...
Controversy over a drop from a water hazard last week showed golf must be more systematic about dealing with cheating and cannot merely rely on a lofty moral code among playersIt is a given that the PGA Tour is celebrating the unexpected prominence of Tiger Woods. On Sunday perhaps this sentiment was more prevalent than ever. Woods finished fourth at the Quicken Loans National before firing the kind of broadside towards the United States Golf Association – on the course set-up at the US Open – which would always claim column inches.Meanwhile a far more significant story was playing out. It is a curious aspect of life that cheating in golf is routinely viewed with more disdain than doing likewise...