AN UNSTOPPABLE FORCE
It began with the Europeans wearing daft cheesy hats but it ended with them standing around with egg on their faces, Rory McIlroy adding genuine tears of remorse. Somewhere, a scratchy violin was playing a lament. This wasn’t a defeat, it was a thrashing. At 19pts to 9, it was, of course, a record win for the USA, the widest margin of victory since continental European golfers joined the old one-sided rumble in 1979. It also wasn’t a great surprise.
Even a cursory glance at the relative merits of the opposing players going into this 21st edition of the modern matches suggested that, if the Americans hit both form and the ground running, the power advantage of this new-look side would prove too much. What few of us anticipated was the nerve-nibbling extent of their collective superiority over those three days in Wisconsin.
I have seen big wins before, but not
