Mark Garrod
By 1991 Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal had already built a reputation as a brilliant Ryder Cup partnership. Eight games together had brought six wins, one half and only one defeat.
Now they showed themselves to be up for a fight too – and not prepared to put up with any nonsense.
The match at Kiawah Island in South Carolina was dubbed the “War on the Shore” and for intensity the event hit a new height. Or, as many felt, a new low.
With the Gulf War still on everybody’s minds Americans Corey Pavin and Steve Pate took to wearing camouflage “Desert Storm” caps rather than normal golf ones and new European captain Bernard Gallacher was not amused either by the antics of a local radio station.
“They got hold of some of our phone numbers and the disc jockey seemed to think it was funny to call our players in the middle of the night,” he said. “It was called ‘Wake the Enemy’ – and it went on all week, even during the tournament.”
Not that it bothered Nick Faldo.
“The idiot called me at about 6am. ‘I’m already up,’ I said and hung up the phone.”
There was also the gala dinner. “All they showed were Americans hitting shots,” said Gallacher. “Ken Schofield [the European Tour’s executive director at the time] was all for walking out, but we stayed to the end.”
Ballesteros and Olazabal were first into action and found themselves facing Chip Beck and also Paul Azinger, the very man Ballesteros had clashed with on the final day of the last match. That game at The Belfry had nothing on what was about to unfold, however. A simmering feud boiled over and it prompted Azinger to call Ballesteros “the king of gamesmanship” and Ballesteros to say later that the American team were “11 nice guys and Paul Azinger”.
By the turn the United States pair were three up, but their opponents then complained that back at the seventh Azinger and Beck had changed the type of ball they were using – not allowed in Ryder Cup foursomes.
Azinger and Beck did not deny it, but wanted it understood that it was just a mistake and not an attempt to cheat. While no retrospective action was taken, it raised the temperature several degrees.
“They succeeded in breaking our momentum,” Azinger admitted.
“That’s no excuse, of course, but Chip and I were so shaken by all this commotion that we three-putted the next green and our game went downhill from there.
“Seve continued to pull little stunts. He seemed to come down with a severe case of sporadic throat clearing – usually just as a player was approaching his ball.”
Ballesteros enjoyed few moments in his career more than the 25-foot putt that settled the game on the 17th, he and Olazabal winning five of the last eight holes.
As fate would have it, they took on Azinger and Beck again after lunch and, with Olazabal in superb form, beat them again, but the Americans ended the day a point ahead.
That became a three-point lead when, for the second morning in a row, Ballesteros and Olazabal were Europe’s only foursomes winners thanks to a 3&2 success over Ray Floyd and Fred Couples.
“They are keeping us in the Ryder Cup,” said Gallacher, but the second fourballs series was a different story.
Ian Woosnam and Paul Broadhurst, finally given a debut after sitting out the first three sessions, won and so did Bernhard Langer and Colin Montgomerie and then Mark James and Steve Richardson.
It was left to Ballesteros and Olazabal to try to make it a clean sweep, but they had to settle for a half against Couples and Payne Stewart.
That left the match at 8-8, the Spanish duo having taken their own record to nine wins, two halves and still only one loss since they came together in 1987.
So to the singles, which began with American captain Dave Stockton announcing that Pate’s injury in a car crash going to the gala dinner would prevent him playing.
Pate had been rested until the second afternoon fourballs and then had been treated on the course as he and Pavin lost to Langer and Montgomerie.
Under the rules of the event Gallacher had to nominate one player – by definition the one he deemed to be his weakest – to take a half-point with Pate.
Rookie David Gilford was in tears on being told it was him, but whatever some Europeans felt about the situation – Pate was originally drawn to face the mighty Ballesteros – they had to get on with it.
Ballesteros instead played and beat the out-of-form Wayne Levi, but the drama was happening elsewhere by then. Faldo and David Feherty won the first two games and Montgomerie achieved an unlikely half when Mark Calcavecchia totally fell to pieces over the closing stretch after standing five up at the turn and still four ahead with four to go.
Things began to swing America’s way, however, with Olazabal losing to Azinger on the last and in the end it all came down to whether Langer could beat Hale Irwin and thus enable holders Europe to tie the match and retain the trophy.
All square playing the last, the tension was almost unbearable and the pressure on the two players enormous.
When Irwin bogeyed Langer faced a six-foot putt on which the whole contest rested, but missed it.
“There is no way I would ever wish what happened on the last hole to anyone,” Irwin said.
The Ballesteros-Olazabal combination was more formidable than ever, but America had the cup back.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/P7uOtAdi_wE/post.aspx
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