WILLETT GIVEN AN EASY RYDER
American fans boo him but Danny gets off lightly
THE loudmouth stopped by the side of the practice range. His red, white and blue nylon shirt was engaged in a war of tastelessness with his red, white and blue pants. And both sides were winning.
‘Hey, Willett,’ he shouted. ‘You better pick it up this afternoon. You guys are getting smoked out there.’
He spoke the truth, but from the bleachers came a groan. ‘Oh God,’ sighed a small, but unmistakably local voice. ‘ Maybe his brother’s right about us.’
On the tee, Willett sank into his white woolly hat just a little more, seeking anonymity. Difficult, when behind you is a large blue sign that bears your name.
Now and then a cheer could would roll unchallenged across this large, flat expanse of Minnesota. Willett would look up, concentration momentarily broken as the scoreboard went rufescent.
They were coming. They were coming for him. All the redclad rednecks, the ones who had spent the morning losing a six-pack of Bud along with their inhibitions.
‘USA!’ in the morning would become ‘ You suck!’ in the afternoon. And the handful that gathered obediently around the practice grounds would be swelled to tens of thousands.
Willett had been taken out of the morning foursomes, considered damaged goods after his brother wrote a column for National Club Golfer that spoke, shall we say, incautiously of the galleries at American golf events.
Embarrassed and rattled, Willett stood down. Now, however, he faced the reckoning.
It merely added to his discomfort that America were enjoying their best Ryder Cup start in 41 years. Some two hours later, the first Friday morning whitewash since Europe began competing now over, Willett walked towards Hazeltine’s first tee.
He looked tense, sweat stains under his arms and down his back. He was booed, too — the first European to provoke a genuinely hostile reaction.
Booed when he reached the tee, booed when his name was announced, booed when it was repeated to reveal he would hit first of four. Brave boy.
So was it bad? It wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t Stuart Broad on the opening day of the last Ashes tour, running into bowl his first over with the whole of the Gabba calling him a w*****. It certainly wasn’t Chris Froome, soaked in urine thrown from the roadside as he competed at the Tour de France. It wasn’t even Owen Farrell trying to get one through the posts for England at the Stade de France.
There was respectful quiet as Willett hit, as there was for every European player. And he nailed it, too. Straight down the middle. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he thought. There were a collection of 13 home fans decked out in red, white and blue Viking hats — the local NFL team is the Minnesota Vikings — and shirts with the legend American Marshals.
But their idea of barracking was to chant in unison, ‘Welcome, Danny’, as if irony has ever been a friend to the terraces. It really wasn’t welcome to hell.
Of course, there is always one. ‘Hey, Henrik, suck it!’ roared some goat in the gallery as the Swede clipped one into a greenside bunker at the seventh; but he didn’t shout it at the top of his swing, so stayed in part true to the etiquette of the sport.
Indeed, considering the Ryder Cup is portrayed as this bear pit of beers, jeers and ugly Americans, the mood was less than incendiary. We come from the country that as good as patented football hooliganism. To be affronted by what passes for a raucous atmosphere at the golf has echoes of the comedian Bill Hicks comparing British and American crime.
‘This is Hobbit-town. This is a land of fairies and elves. You do not have crime like we have crime, but I appreciate you trying to be diplomatic. You gotta see English crime. It’s hilarious. You don’t know if you’re reading the front page or the comic section over there.’
Equally, American sports fans do not do hostility as Europe knows it. For all of Peter Willett’s caricature of bovine America — and Hicks was every bit as vicious on that subject, by the way — the hosts’ instinct is to root, root, root for the home team, not to slander their guests.
AT the first tee the American chants were about America and 90 per cent of Europe’s chants were, too. They really don’t have the tradition of sticking it to the away end out here.
They sing about the USA, and they chant ‘I believe that we will win’ because a believer in America is a person of steadfast conviction.
At which point a figure among the European travellers did something funny with the tune of Delilah and its rhyme with Medinah — scene of the last Ryder Cup debacle on American soil — and another spotted that the Will Griggs song could be adapted with the line ‘USA are terrified’ and when America had no answer it was pointed out that they’d only got two songs. They’ve got rather more golfers, it would seem.
It says something about the benign nature of America’s sporting partisanship that Patrick Reed putting his fingers to his lips at Gleneagles is still considered pretty ballsy.
On this occasion, he and partner Jordan Spieth had scant need for dramatics. Leading from the second green to the handshake on the 16th where they won 3&2, they were a perfect lead pair. Charming manners, too. On the third, when Stenson missed a putt, Spieth moved quickly to quieten a celebrating crowd.
And, yes, the locals were delighted when Europe’s game went awry — but why wouldn’t they be? Just two wins in 10 coming to Hazeltine, America has conjured up task forces, mainlined on inclusivity, espoused the virtues of emotional ownership and even tickled a few smiles out of old stoneface Tiger Woods, as vice-captain.
They dropped the seventh best player in the world, Bubba Watson, and he turned up anyway. As Lee Westwood pointed out, if they don’t win this time, where have they to go? It is a huge Ryder Cup for America and they began by rising quite spectacularly to the occasion.
Dustin Johnson and Matt Kuchar annihilated Westwood and Thomas Pieters — the partnership hastily formed when Willett retired hurt — while Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler won from one down on the 16th tee, and Martin Kaymer and Sergio Garcia were up at the 11th, but lost 4&2.
So the cries grew louder and the swagger greater. And yes, when America win, they can be heard, and they show it.
But they’re America. They’re a country big enough to play a continent. So what do we, or Peter Willett, expect them to be? Luxembourg?