Don't know if anyone else is interested in this :shrug:

Fourballs this morning - we're currently up in two and all square in the others.

From the beeb:

"0958: The quality of the golf has largely been very high, but not so at the moment in the first group. Tiger Woods plays another horror shot and then Padraig Harrington and Jim Furyk join the "water club" at the 7th. Only Colin Montgomerie will have the pleasure of seeing his ball in good shape when he strolls up to the green."

Yay for Mrs Doubtfire :thumbsup: :lol:

Got the commentary on right now, I'm nervous already :thumbsup:

Frelling Beeb haven't updated the scores for over an hour <_<

Edit: <<goes to official Ryder Cup site>>

Up in 2, down in 1, all square in 1 :thumbsup:

Match 1

P. Harrington / C. Montgomerie v T. Woods / J. Furyk - USA 3 Up Thru 12

Match 2
P. Casey / R. Karlsson v S. Cink / J. Henry - Europe 2 Up Thru 11

Match 3
S. Garcia / J. Olazábal v D. Toms / B. Wetterich - Europe 2 Up Thru 9

Match 4
D. Clarke / L. Westwood v P. Mickelson / C. DiMarco - All Square thru 9

''Thru'' Who taught you to spell like that? :no:

And he picks me up on MY spelling....... :rolleyes: :lol:

Copy and paste - blame The Ryder Cup website :lol:

Pretty damn impressive display by the Europeans, and the USA once again prove that they find it difficult to play as a team. I thought all but a couple of our lot were superb (thought Harrington had a bit of a shocker). Casey, Clarke and Westwood really stood out for me. Garcia would have been the man of the tournament had Cink not played him off the course in the singles.

In the end it wasn't that exciting as it was so one-sided, but it's always fun to see the Yanks getting thwacked :thumbsup: :ph43r: :lol:

The closing ceremony was totally overblown - just give them the fecking cup and be done with it, FFS :rolleyes:

It would be easy to read too much into the score and just assume that the American team were incredibly poor. To be fair, they were well below their best, but that's only half the story, some of the golf played by the Europeans was just phenomenal, especially yesterday. There was one point around lunchtime where the commentators had to remind viewers that they were actually seeing live footage an not highlights, coming on the back of a 10/15 minute period where the Europeans were knocking in 20/30 yard putts for fun.

I agree with Steve, the one-sidedness did take a little off the excitement, but only a bit. There was some great golf to enjoy, and the whole manner in which both teams played and conducted themselves both on and off the greens was a credit to them all.

Looking at the result in a wider context, that's now three in a row, five out of the last six, and barring the dubious American win in '99 that would have been six in a row. Is it time to start looking at format perhaps? The format was changed from GB Vs USA because the competition was becoming too uncompetitive, and the team selection was widenened to the rest of Europe. Do we perhaps now need to start doing the same on the other side? Perhaps including both the North and South American continents?

Another option might be to have a third 'rest of the world' team. Either the format could be re-jigged to include all three, or the competition could rotate on a 'winner-stays-on' basis.

I don't see anything so drastic happening just yet, but surely another couple of European victories, especially if they're as convincing as the last couple, and they'll need to do something.....

Isn't there already an admittedly lower profile event where the US takes on the rest of the world as well? I say, if they want to call themselves World champions of all their own sports then let them take us all on in a sport that is genuinely played by the rest of the world and live with the results :lol: :whistling: :naughty: ;)

I thought one of the commentators made an interesting point in that they don't gel as a team because they've all accepted that they're second best to Tiger on their Tour. I'm not sure I agree with that, but I'd certainly say that the number of egos on show seems to get in the way of the kind of team spirit our guys have where, imo, Monty is the only one of that nature :ponder:

As for 2008 - Nick Faldo as captain, we're bound to lose :lol:

Casey and Howell in particular, during that stretch, although it's wrong to pick out just two when they all played so well :thumbsup:

And it's not to say that the US didn't play well, either. I thought Cink was amazing yesterday, all of the rookies did a great job, especially Zak Johnson, and others like Toms and DiMarco were consistently good.

I was getting slightly annoyed that they hardly showed Howell and Westwood yesterday, the latter especially as he played the front 9 in 31, oslt, when he'd been ill all night :o

Yeah, The Presidents Cup is played by the US and The Rest of the World in the inbetween Ryder Cup years. It's relatively new, only going for about ten or so years I think. Certainly doesn't have the glamour or hold the interest as the Ryder Cup does. Despite American dominance when it first started the scoring's gotten a lot closer in recent years, perhaps indicating that bringing them into a revamped Ryder Cup format might be more plausible now than it might have been a few years ago.

On the whole 'world champions' point, I always find it amusing that Americans (baseball afficienados, not just Americans in general) insist that the term World Series stems from an abbreviation of World Championship Series rather than the popular myth that it came from early sponsorship by the New York World newspaper.

Either way, it's a pretty lame excuse for labelling a national competition as being 'international' and 'world' standard.

If only we'd copyrighted football, we could make them call American Football something more appropriate, ie. "handball"! And, we could insist that at World Cups, only British teams could enter! :rolleyes:

That's the one :thumbsup:

I've never watched it, though - the only golf I ever watch is The Ryder Cup, The Masters and The Open :)

I used to watch The Masters every year, but it's lost it's appeal in recent years due to the ineptitude of any Europeans in trying to win it! :rolleyes: A far cry from the glory days when Faldo was winning two in a row, or Olazabel was dominating.

I think one or two of those players will win it soon. Casey, Garcia and Donald, most likely :thumbsup:

I think you're spot on Steve. It's a matter of time with the quality, and strength of depth that there is in the European tour at the moment.

The US Open is also really interesting, I love the way the USPGA sets up those courses. But I know what you guys mean the PGA Championship is a complete non-event for me.

The problem with the Open is that often the courses are just too short to be decent tests. :shrug:

Not trying to imply that they're lesser events, I just never get around to watching them :)

I take it you mean the US Open? With The Open I think the combination of being on links courses and the inevitable weather conditions that go with that usually make it the stiffest test of the lot :ponder:

No I meant the real Open, links courses are just not that tough for these pro's unless it blows a gale.

The past two Open's have been walks in the park as the scores have shown. :)

Hmm, in general I agree, the weather does play a huge part but Links courses require a totally different style of play, one which Tiger just happens to be very good at, so the last couple of years are more exceptions than the norm, imo :)

For years, we have been reminded by American sportscasters of the puffery behind the term "World" in baseball's World Series. We are well aware that really good teams exist in Japan, Latin America, Taiwan, Korea -- who are not invited to the "World Series". However, there's just too much inertia to change the name or the invitations.

To those Americans that still clung to the illusion, the first World Baseball Classic of a few months ago has put an end it. The US didn't make it to the semi-finals. Japan won. Cuba second. (Seattle, however, celebrated since one of the Japanese stars is also one of the most popular stars on our professional team.)