38th RYDER CUP
Risk, Reward, & Retching
The serene scene in Wales will come alive starting Oct. 1 when Europe gets the home field at Celtic Manor for the Ryder Cup matches. Take a tour of Celtic Manor with hole-by-hole photos and video flyovers.
In the all-to-often cliché-ridden language of professional golf, there are apparently three levels of pressure: tournament pressure, major-championship pressure and, above all others, Ryder Cup pressure. The biennial matches between the United States and Europe offer nothing in the way of prize money; the players compete for national pride.
There is evidence aplenty that patriotism is more than enough to affect even the sturdiest competitors. Mark Calcavecchia, the 1989 British Open champion, was reduced to a blubbering wreck wandering aimlessly on a beach after losing the last four holes to halve his singles match against Colin Montgomerie at Kiawah Island in 1991. Fred Couples, the 1992 Masters winner, missed the 18th green at The Belfry by as much as 40 yards with only a 9-iron in his hands in 1989. And no one who watched Irishman Philip Walton literally stagger onto the last green at Oak Hill in 1995 thought he was in any state to continue even one more hole.
So match play does funny things to golfers, even special golfers. To the professional practitioner, match-play golf has forever been labeled "a different game." Decoded, that thinly disguised euphemism makes clear two things: A pampered preference for the week-to-week discipline of adding up shots in stroke play, and an inherent distaste for a form of competition designed to produce winners and losers rather than a large number of highly paid nonwinners. Unable to hide behind the invariably lucrative "success" that is the tie for eighth, the pro golfer is forced to admit that second place in match play makes him "a loser."
The best matches need the right environment. A mix of holes is required, everything from tough to easy, with those that bring a large number of scores into play the most enthralling. This year, Celtic Manor's Twenty Ten Course, though no one's idea of the perfect venue, offers in places -- and especially toward the end -- the strategic choices that make match play golf's most exciting format. (That goes for amateurs as well as pros.)
"The whole course is very well-suited to match play," says Rhys Davies, the only Welshman with a reasonable expectation of making the European team, which will try to reclaim the Cup after the United States' 16½-11½ victory two years ago at Valhalla halted three consecutive losses and put the Americans' all-time advantage at 25-10-2. "When we played there earlier this year [the European tour's Celtic Manor Wales Open, won with a 64-63 finish by Graeme McDowell, who would become the U.S. Open champion two weeks later], they had a few pins tucked behind bunkers, so we had to play away from them a bit to be sensible. But in match play you can be a lot more aggressive. It's very much a birdie/bogey-style course -- which is what you want in match play. Right from the start that's true. You can get off to a flier or be 2 down before you know it."
Still, it is over the closing holes that Ryder Cup points are really going to be won and lost.
"The last five holes provide a good mix," says course architect Ross McMurray. "There are three definite gambling opportunities and two holes where -- assuming the prevailing wind -- par is hardly ever going to be a bad score. It's all about balance, though. During the design process I was aware that we had to provide drama and chances for the players to go for it. But it has to be challenging, too. I didn't want to build a course where someone is likely to finish with four birdies and an eagle. It has to be tougher than that."
Though the last five holes will provide the ideal platform for games to swing back and forth, a couple of the earlier holes will also give the player so inclined plenty of temptation. As Davies intimated, as early as the 433-yard fifth hole, choices are there to be made.
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