6B
Tuesday, September 26,1995
UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
RYDER CUP
Europeans use depth, experience, to recapture Ryder Cup
Golfers wrest victory away from the U.S. for first time since 1989
The Associated Press
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — The strength of the U.S. RYder Cup team was supposed to be depth. The strength of the European team was supposed to be experience.
It turned out Europeans had just enough of both to take the cup back across the Atlantic for the first time since 1989.
And it couldn't have come at a better time. With the core players of the team that earned the cup in 1985 on the downside of their careers, doubts surfaced as to whether the European tour still could produce the talent to compete with the United States.
Those doubts were buried under an avalanche of pressure putts and gutsy 18th hole performances at Oak Hill Country Club.
"Europe needed this," Nick Faldo said after he defeated Curtis Strange in the critical match of the 31st Ryder Cup. "We couldn't have won at a better time."
And they couldn't have won at a more improbable time, trailing 9-7 going into the Sunday singles matches almost always dominated by Americans.
But depth and experience came down on the side of Europe.
Everyone on the European team won at least one match, and its four least experienced players — Philip Walton, Per-Ulrik Johansson and David Gliford — had a combined 8-6 record.
Meanwhile, the heart of the team — Faldo,
Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosam, Colin
Montgomerie, Seve Ballesteros and Sam Torrance all had big victories at important times in the competition.
They earned 3 1/2 critical points on Sunday.
American depth, on the other hand, was only four players deep on the 12-man team.
Corey Pavin, who did everything he could to keep the cup in America, Loren Roberts, Phil Mickelson and Davis Love, were a combined 13-4. The rest of the team was 9-17.
And no one let the American side down more than its two most experienced players. The 43-year-old Ben Crenshaw and 40-year-old Strange were both 0-3, the only players on either team shut out in the Ryder Cup.
Throw in 41-year-old Jay Haas, and they had a combined 1-9 record.
Strange, one of the two captain's choices made by his Wake Forest buddy Lanny Wadkins, boyedey the last three holes, blowing a
The United States needed just another half-point to keep the cup with a 14-14 tie, which raised questions as to what the outcome might have been if Lee Janzen had been on the team.
one-up lead and dropping the match to Faldo.
With five Americans — Peter Jacobsen, Brad Faxon, Couples, Strange and Haas— all going to the 18th green with their matches on the line, the United States was able to get only the half-point from Couples' gutsy halve with Woosnam.
Instead, performances were just good enough to win by people with names unfamiliar to most American golf fans — Howard Clark, David Gilford and Philip Walton.
Some of Wadkins' players — Jacobsen, Faxon and Strange — virtually handed matches to the Europeans by missing key
In the end it was either one of the greatest comebacks in the history of the Ryder Cup or one of the greatest collapses, depending on which side of the Atlantic it's viewed from.
Europeans stood up well to the pressure of plaving on foreign soil.
putts on the final three holes.
It always was entertaining. Nothing in golf produces as much drama, excitement and pressure as the Ryder Cup.
"It's nerve-racking out there," Clark said. "When everything is moving apart from the ball it's dangerous."
"We're not going to gloat over the Americans," said European captain Bernard Langher. "We won it, and we're taking the trophy back."
And it's a safe guess that by 1997, the PGA of America will figure out a way to send a stronger team to Spain to try to bring it back.
Even the best golfers can't escape the pressures of the game
Rv Jim Litke
The Associated Press
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Nerves — the heart-pounding, stomach-churning kind that make the greens on the last day of the Ryder Cup seem like miniature golf in hell — are an equal-opportunity affliction. They paralyze golfers of every nationality.
Want to know what it's like to play three holes with lips so parched you can barely part them to talk? Ask Curtis Strange. He was winless and already burdened with being U.S. captain Lanny Wadkins' wildcard pick as he approached Oak Hill's clubhouse late Sunday afternoon with a one-up lead. Then he finished with three bogeys, letting Nick Faldo make up the deficit and steal the most crucial match of the competition.
ANALYSIS
When it was officially over, someone asked Strange: "Will you beat yourself up over this?"
He responded slowly, still dazed, like a man in shock.
"My legs," he confided afterward, "were
Want to know what it's like to play on legs so unsteady that you're afraid every step will end in collapse? Ask Philip Walton. The European Ryder Cup rookie had to overcome a miracle shot by Jay Haas at the 16th, then his own inability to make a 4-foot putt at the 17th. And then he had to gather himself again on the tee at 18, knowing everything was riding on the outcome of that hole.
not.mv own."
Great players, like the great individual rivalties, come and go. The essence of the Ryder Cup remains. The team that chokes the least still wins most often.
For all the great players on either side Sunday, a scraped-together bogey by Walton, a journeyman Irish pro, decided it all. But only because Haas was staring double-bogeye in the face at the time. That's why players on both sides know the bragging rights attached to the trophy are modest ones: A little pride, no money. Nothing more, nothing less.
This American side was stronger, deeper, younger, maybe even better-dressed. But Europe's 14 1/2-13 1/2 see-saw win on the road proves once more that neither side has comed the market on nerves.
Five of the 12 singles matches reached the
18th green, and the U.S. side, which has owned the final day's matches the way John Daly owns par-5s, lost four of them and managed only a split in the fifth.
So tense are the matches and so successful has the format proven at keeping them close that the final day of competition practically has become a clinic in how to throw up.
Over three days, 24 of the world's finest golfers played one of the world's most demanding venues under the most intense pressure the sport can muster. They matched nerves, skills and aspirations in alternate-shot, best-ball and singles competitions, and when their turn was over, they parked themselves around the 18th green like paying customers, thanking the heavens that they wouldn't have to stare down the barrel of another shot.
And what separated them finally was Walton nuzzling the ball close enough to the hole from 7 feet away that the Yanks had to concede his next shot — the last pout on the last hole in the next-to-last match of the day.
"I'd like to sit here and think that because you're a winner and because you're a great player, that you're going to hit every shot well." Wadkins said.
Then Wadkins stopped and looked on either side of him at the dozen golfers he had taken on a roller-coaster ride of emotions that proved a little too exhilarating for most.
And because of the way the Ryder Cup is more pressure than most golfers experience in a lifetime of playing only for themselves — it was the Americans on this day who hit more of the losing variety.
"All of us have hit great shots to win tournaments, and all of us have hit shots that lose them. That's just the way golf is."
Miami's poll streak comes to end
The Associated Press
CORAL GABLES, Fla. — A 1-2 record has landed Miami in some very unfamiliar territory — out of the Associated Press college football poll.
The Hurricanes, No. 17 last week, ended a decade-long run in the Top 25 after losing to Virginia Tech 13-7 Saturday. It was Miami's first loss to an unranked opponent since 1984.
Miami has toppled from the poll for the first time since Oct. 14, 1985.
"I don't care if we're rated No. 3 or 53." Miami coach Butch Davis said Sunday. "It doesn't have an effect on anything. Polls mean more at the end of the year, not after the second or third week."
The Hurricanes may have lost more than a spot in the poll. Starting quarterback Ryan Collins suffered a separated right shoulder in the second quarter of Saturday's game and could be out for five weeks.
That means Miami could face No. 1 Florida State with littletested sophomore Ryan Clement as quarterback.
Colorado rose three spots in the poll to No. 4 after beating thenNo. 3 Texas A&M 29-21. But the victory could prove costly for the Buffalooes because quarterback Koy Detmer's injured right knee may bench him for the season
Florida State. No.1, and Nebraska, No. 2, remained that way following easy victories.
ritorida, which didn't play Saturday, moved up one place to No. 3.
Southern Cal remained fifth in the media poll following a 31-10 victory over Arizona. Rounding out the Top 10 were Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Texas A&M and Oklahoma.
Penn State defeated Ruggers 59-34, Ohio State downed Pittsburgh 54-14, Michigan was idle and Oklahoma defeated North Texas 51-10.
Virginia was 11th, followed by Tennessee, Auburn, LSU, Notre Dame, Kansas State, Maryland, Washington, Oregon, Alabama, Texas, Stanford, Arkansas, Texas Tech and Kansas.
No surgery yet for Detmer's knee
Colorado quarterback is hoping to play Nebraska despite injury
The Associated Press
BOULDER, Colo. — It likely will be at least a month before Colorado's Koy Detmer decides whether or not to have surgery on his right knee, the quarterback and his father said.
But that's about all father and son appear to agree on. Koy Detmer said he was leaning toward playing with a knee brace, while Sonny Detmer hinted that he wouldn't mind seeing his son sit out the rest of the season and undergo surgery to repair its torn anterior cruciate ligament.
"The good thing is, he's got another year, and they're going to be a good team again next year because they've got a lot of guys coming back," Sonny Detmer said of the No. 4 Buffaloes. "That's my thinking on it.
Koy Detmer
He's got a chance to be 100 percent recovered next year."
cent recovered next year.
But Koy Detmer, who tore the ligament Saturday in Colorado's 29-21 win over then-No. 3 Texas A&M, he wanted to be a part of what could be a national championship season.
"I'd like to do whatever I can do to finish out the season," he said. He said he would like to play Oct. 21 when Colorado is host to No. 2 Nebraska.
Colorado head coach Rick Neuheisel is staying neutral about the situation.
"If he wants to play and is able to play, we're excited to have him," Neuheisel said. "I'm not interested in playing a guy and risking his future. It's a deal where I want him to have hope ... that there's a chance he can play this year."
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