BLOOMFIELD TWP, Mich. – The importance one of the eight matches played in yesterday’s Ryder Cup second round cannot be overstated.
It came from Paul Casey and David Howell, two European Ryder Cup rookies, and it completely turned not only yesterday’s momentum in favor of Europe, but it’ll go down as the pivotal match of the entire week when this thing is emblazoned in the record books after today’s formality singles are played and Europe retains the Cup.
Casey and Howell, each playing in his first Ryder Cup match after sitting out Friday’s matches on captain Bernhard Langer’s orders, came back from a 1-down deficit to defeat Jim Furyk and Chad Campbell 1-up in what turned out to be the final four-ball match on the course from the morning matches.
The U.S. had been kicking European butt early in the four-ball competition and the Oakland Hills galleries were feeling it with huge roars everywhere.
A loss in that match and the Europeans would have seen their opening-day 6½ to 1½ lead shaved to 7-5 entering the afternoon foursomes.
“That last match was probably bigger than the whole day [on Friday],” Colin Montgomerie said. “To win the last two holes in four-ball doesn’t happen very often at all. To do that was huge for the Europeans, massive.
“It’s amazing, we came into the team room as if we had won the morning session because of that match,” Montgomerie went on. “It’s amazing how it does transcend into other games. It was a huge, huge victory for two rookies.”
It was a major downer for Furyk and Campbell, who missed an eight-foot par putt on the final hole to open the door for Casey’s three-foot par putt for the win.
“Obviously, there’s a lot of pressure, but I felt good over it,” Campbell said of his putt. “We had the right read. I just didn’t hit it there. It was just a bad putt.”
The win by the rookies marked the first time since 1979 that a rookie pairing won a Ryder Cup match.
“Many of you probably thought I was sacrificing a point when I sent them out, but I really deep down felt they would be the surprise of the morning,” Langer said.
“What those two English lads did this morning was swing thigns back into our favor; they changed the whole momentum of the morning for us,” Paul McGinley said. “We looked like we might lost 4-0 I the morning at one stage and to come out of that with 1½ points was massive.”