With Rookies, and Without Woods, U.S. Reclaims Ryder Cup

With Rookies, and Without Woods, U.S. Reclaims Ryder Cup

Who would have thought the Americans would reclaim the Ryder Cup for the first time since 1999 with a bunch of rookies and no Tiger Woods?
They did, and with points to spare. In their wire-to-wire, 16 1/2 to 11 1/2 victory over favored Europe, captain Paul Azinger and his team of fresh faces at Valhalla Golf Club brought relevance back to an event that had lost its luster with back-to-back nine-point routs of the Americans.

Rich Bozich of the Louisville Courier-Journal gives all the credit to Azinger. “Golf is the ultimate individual game,” Bozich writes. “But for Azinger this was a two-year exercise in building a better, more unflappable team than European captain Nick Faldo brought to Valhalla. Azinger recruited support from the groundskeepers, the caddies and the Kentucky-fried fans as well as his players. He organized his guys in groups of four and shook with laughter when one of them — Boo Weekley, of course — created a new word to describe what they did all week: Compatibate.”

Mr. Weekley and his fellow five rookies — Anthony Kim, Hunter Mahan, J.B. Holmes, Ben Curtis and Steve Stricker — earned 13 1/2 of America’s points. And Mr. Weekley contributed new words and a new dance move, the latter giving ESPN’s Pat Forde his favorite image from the pressure-packed competition: “Thomas Brent ‘Boo’ Weekley galloping down the first fairway Sunday at Valhalla Golf Club doing a ‘Happy Gilmore’ dance, riding his driver between his legs and whipping it like a quarter horse. It was completely preposterous. And it was totally, wonderfully Weekley. What professional golfer does that? At the Ryder Cup? On Sunday at the Ryder Cup? Only one man could be so cluelessly, cleverly cavalier. Boo-S-A! Boo-S-A! Boo-S-A!”

wsj.com
9/22/08