STAFFAN, Ireland – Picture this: Tiger Woods standing up in front of his Ryder Cup teammates and their wives singing the Stanford University fight song.
That was the surreal campfire scene Tuesday night during the Americans’ nightly get-together, with members of the team and some wives forced into their own personal karaoke acts.
“It was sad,” Scott Verplank quipped of Woods’ performance yesterday. “He wasn’t good, and he didn’t like doing it. Tom (Lehman, the U.S.
captain) got him on the embarrassed side and everybody had a good laugh.” Such has been the vibe with Lehman’s camp kum-ba-yah.
If whichever side owns the best team harmony has anything do with who’ll bring home the Ryder Cup by evening’s end Sunday, the American team might well be on the verge of upsetting the European Ryder Cup dominance (four wins in the last five cups).
On the other side, however, the warm-and-fuzzy Waltonesque we-are-family harmony isn’t as it always seems to have been for the Euros, who have their fair share of rifts in the team room.
Those rifts, of course, are somewhat unspoken as the team puts up the good front to show its unity to the public.
But, according to those well in the know on the European Tour, Darren Clarke, for example, cannot stomach being in the same room as Colin Montgomerie, who Clarke believes is a cheat based on a controversial incident at last year’s Indonesian Open, where he was accused of incorrectly replacing his ball after a rain delay.
Montgomerie, who happens to be the most successful player on the European Ryder Cup side, was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing, though he did donate his prize money from the event to charity.
Among the players who questioned Montgomerie’s integrity were Clarke and Thomas Bjorn.
At an event a couple weeks ago in Madrid, Clarke was asked, “You and Monty haven’t been the best of friends over the last 18 months, have you?” His response was a sarcastic, “Who told you that?
You must have missed all the dinners we have had together.” Montgomerie is also not a favorite of Jose Maria Olazabal, whom he vigorously criticized last month for skipping the BMW Championship, the last Ryder Cup points qualifying event on the European Tour.
Montgomerie publicly chastised Olazabal wanting to rest, saying, “There’s a long winter to rest.” When asked during the Madrid event about Montgomerie’s rants, Olazabal said tersely, “Whatever I have to say to Monty I will say it to his face next week.” So much for the unified European side.
Even European captain Ian Woosnam can have a rather sardonic side to him on occasion – quite a change from some of the previous Euro captains such as Bernhard Langer and Sam Torrance.
All the while, Lehman’s campers look as if they’re having a ball.
“We’re like little kids just playing around,” Verplank said. “Captain Lehman is big on making sure we have a lot of fun together and do a lot of stupid things, funny things.
That little trip we made (to the K Club) a few weeks back was one of the greatest ideas I’ve been a part of.
“Tom has been amazing.
He has bent over backwards, gone out of his way to get us all together. His attention to detail has been immaculate.” Verplank, in particular, has been taken aback by Woods’ added involvement.
“He’s less reserved and he’s asserting himself a little bit more socially than he’s done in the past,” Verplank said. “He’s kind of buying into this having 11 buddies with him for a week instead of, you know, ‘Me against the world.’ He’s more accessible.
“I could see how it’s hard for him to let some of his guard down and fall under someone else’s schedule or plan, but I think he understands that to play well in this event that’s what he’s got to do, and he’s making steps to do that.”
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