THE VICTORIOUS EUROPEAN players spoke through hoarse voices and slurps of beer as they faced the media following their shockingly fraught Ryder Cup victory over the USA.
Europe needed only two points to retain the Cup at the start of Sunday’s singles, but a stunning American comeback meant it fell to Shane Lowry in the eighth match of the day to birdie the closing hole and find the final half-point Europe needed to retain the Cup. Tyrrell Hatton and Robert MacIntyre subsequently tied their matches to secure a 15-13 Europe win.
“You don’t want to take any complacency out there to that arena against those players”, said Shane Lowry with a mixture of elation and exhaustion.
“The U.S. Team are 12 amazing players, and we knew it was going to be very hard.
But I didn’t envision myself going up the 18th needing a birdie to retain the Ryder Cup. It was the worst two hours of my life. It was horrible. It was. But I said to my caddie walking down 18, ‘I’ve got an opportunity to do the greatest thing I’ve ever done’,
and I did it. And I’m very proud of myself.”
Rory McIlroy meanwhile admitted that the deluge of crowd abuse disturbed him during his final match, in which he was beaten 1-UP by Scottie Scheffler.
“I felt like I was running on empty today. I gave so much of myself the first two days and I tried as hard as I could out there against Scottie. Scottie and I both didn’t have our best. It was a bit of a pillow fight if I’m honest. I dug in as much as I could.”
Having taken the diplomatic answer to crowd abuse throughout the week, the end allowed McIlroy to speak more freely about his plight.
“I don’t think we should ever accept that in golf”, said McIlroy.
“I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week.
“We will be making sure to say to our fans in Ireland in 2027 that what happened here this week is not acceptable, and for me, come and support your home team.
“I think if I was an American, I would be annoyed that I didn’t hear a lot of shouts for Scottie today, but I heard a lot of shouts against me. It’s like, support your players. That’s the thing.”
The scale of the abuse was such that around 40 police officers, some with dogs, were scrambled to walk the fairways of McIlroy’s match against Scheffler. Asked if he had ever experienced this before, McIlroy joked, “I wish they had let the dogs off the leashes.”
McIlroy’s wife Erica was between the ropes for his matches and was also the target of vile abuse, and was yesterday hit by a can of beer thrown by a fan.
“It should be off-limits, but obviously it wasn’t this week.
“Erica is fine. She’s a very, very strong woman. She handled everything this week with class and poise and dignity like she always has. I love her and we’re going to have a good time celebrating tonight.”
At this point Justin Rose and then Lowry jumped in.
“I actually had no idea that Erica had a beer thrown at her yesterday, so fair play to Erica”, said Rose. She didn’t bring that to the team room. We didn’t make that a big deal. That’s news to me. That says a lot about the strength of Erica and everybody on this team.”
“I was out there for two days with Erica McIlroy, and the amount of abuse that she received was astonishing”, added Lowry. “The way she was out there supporting her husband and supporting her team was unbelievable, and kudos to her for that.”
The victory marks a remarkable double for captain Luke Donald, who first steered Europe to victory in Rome two years ago and now to a first away win since 2012.
“I’ve had to kind of put my own game a little bit to the side, and every day I’m trying to think about things that could help us, come up with different things that might just give us a little edge”, said Donald.
“We came into this in New York, and we knew New York was not going to be easy. It was rough. It was brutal at times out there. It really was. It was nasty sometimes.
“But I think when you prep these guys enough and you communicate enough with these guys and you give them a plan and an idea and a theme and a motivation, they don’t really need motivating, but you know, the theme causes the cohesion of the team.
“I was very fortunate to have 11 of the same guys from Rome.”
Donald detailed some of the small touches he made for this players, which included changing the mattresses in the team hotel and buying better-smelling shampoo. At the mention of the latter, Tyrrell Hatton took off his cap and rubbed his bald head.
“We won’t need to change the bed linen at Adare Manor, I can tell you that”, grinned Lowry. When Donald was asked if he wishes to remain in situ for the next edition of the competition in Ireland, he replied, “My answer is I’m going to enjoy tonight.”
His players meanwhile led a chorus of “two more years.”
Defeated US captain Keegan Bradley meanwhile called for a change to the rule which saw Viktor Hovland’s match with Harris English halved in advance after the Norwegian withdrew with a neck injury. The competition rules state that each captain must write the name of one player and place it in a sealed envelope in the event an opposition player cannot play. Bradley’s penned name was English.
The U.S. have used it before”, replied Donald. “I think it happened in 1991 with Steve Pate. That was a tight Ryder Cup, too, 14½-13½. It happened in 1993; Sam Torrance couldn’t play with an injured toe. The U.S. won that one.
“We have contracts for a reason, a captains’ agreement for a reason, for situations that occur.
“I want to centre it back to Viktor. I would have had absolute faith in him to deliver a point today. He couldn’t play. He was gutted.:”
Bradley otherwise spoke with magnanimity, hailing Donald as the greatest European captain ever while admitting he made mistakes with the course set-up.
“We tried to set the course up to help our team. Obviously it wasn’t the right decision. I think anytime you’re the leader of a team or the captain or the coach, or whatever, we talked about this last night, you’re going to get the accolades and you need to take the blame for when things don’t go well.
“I definitely made a mistake on the course setup. I should have listened a little bit more to my intuition. For whatever reason, that wasn’t the right way to set the course up.
“The greens were as soft as I’ve ever seen greens without it raining. Especially here, it can get pretty firm, and they never firmed up.”
