Golf: Flag-waving captain a patriot missile

By JAMES LAWTON

Hal Sutton turned to the wall in a large room filled with grown-up men and women so they could get a better view of the American flag on the back of his shirt.

The US Ryder Cup captain said: "Y'all see that flag? Anything I can summon up, that's what we're going to do."

It did not seem like the action guaranteed to calm fears that when the 35th Ryder Cup starts today the nightmare of the 17th hole at Brookline Country Club five years ago, when the American team and their wives poured over the green in a premature celebration, will at some point be revisited.

He said America had apologised for five years for the invasion of the hole, and the overexcited, xenophobic galleries and the gross insults to, particularly, Colin Montgomerie ... "so y'all need to forget about that".

It was a little easier said than done in the emotion-charged wake of Sutton's latest declaration of patriotism - and the memory of his own pumped-up contribution to the floodtide of excessive feeling that swamped the course in Massachusetts when the Americans produced their pulverising last-day performance in the singles.

No more apologies, boomed the man from Louisiana. But the dangers have not been entirely extinguished by the decision of the Michigan hosts to put on-course alcohol under strict limits.


Where Sutton has been in such sharp contrast to the tone and the mood of his European rivals is in his declaration that while he has some control over his players - "let me emphasise, some control" - he didn't have any control over anybody else in the world.

This was not quite the position of the late Payne Stewart, who yielded a hole to the embattled Monty in Brookline and said, with some anguish, that the scenes witnessed that day made a mockery of the game.

"If that kind of thing continues in golf, I will not be interested in playing publicly the game I love," said Stewart disconsolately with a sea of stars and stripes in the background. Much more in that spirit has been most of the European noises here over the last 24 hours.

Montgomerie, the prime victim of Brookline, said yesterday: "I think Brookline has been spoken about an awful lot and probably over-analysed and written about. I don't think we're going to have that problem here. I don't think Brookline will appear again. I think the world is a different, better place since then."

Europe's sole French player, Thomas Levet, is taking a similar line despite the fact that after the invasion of Iraq he was barracked on an American course for his Government's refusal to participate. "I think it is over," said Levet. "It just happened on a day that was very warm and beer was flowing and the guys were next to a tent. It's something I have forgiven."

Perhaps the most elaborate of all attempts to defuse the legacy of Brookline has come from Padraig Harrington. While so much of the golf world recoiled from the events of '99, Harrington apparently saw it as an extraordinary confirmation of the new status of the Ryder Cup. It showed, he said, that finally the Americans cared.

"It was a sign of respect to us, that they thought we were worthy opposition ... you've got to hand it to the Europeans who had gone in '85, '87, '89, '91, '93, '95, those years they made the Ryder Cup what it is and brought it to the level it was in 1999 when both teams could be considered equal."

Sutton says now that he wants his players to be themselves and act like gentlemen.

It is a strangely mixed signal for anyone who was in Brookline. Who were the cream of American golf on that day of infamy?

They were golfers who broke the rules, the etiquette and spirit of the game which had so enriched them. All Sutton has been required to do here is underline the old values of the game as the Ryder Cup returns to America for the first time since Brookline. Instead he turned his back and showed his flag.

- INDEPENDENT