Remembering Brookline
The Golf Channel replayed a special called “Comeback at Brookline” this evening and it was interesting to watch the highlights of that Ryder Cup all over again. A lot was made of Ben Crenshaw’s Saturday evening comments when he said something to the effect of “I feel something special is going to happen” (and I’m paraphrasing). And with all due to respect to Mr. Crenshaw, he was grasping at straws, a kind of “win-one-for-the-gipper” last-gasp attempt at getting his boys motivated.
Just to recap, the Americans trailed 10-6 going into Sunday’s singles matches and everyone pretty much wrote them off and didn’t give them much of a chance. The first 5 matches were won by the Americans in almost blowout fashion and that ultimately set up the drama on 17 when Justin Leonard and Jose Maria Olazabal arrived. Everyone knows that Leonard dropped a 45-foot bomb and the celebrations by the Americans on the green still leaves a bad taste for some European players.
The Americans did show a lack of self-restraint by trampling the 17th green and it was unfortunate that the long delay in getting players and their wives off the green may have had a negative affect on Olzabal making his putt. On the other hand, if this would have happened in Europe, I believe that similar behavior would have ensued.
There’s no doubt that it was one of the most riveting sporting events of that year, and quite possibly one of the most exciting golf events of all time. A couple of other observations while I was watching this program: Tiger Woods was a skinny kid that was already making his mark on the PGA tour but you can clearly hear in his voice that the Ryder Cup then, didn’t really hold a lot of priority for him.
The other observation I made is that the golf world in general misses Payne Stewart. He was instrumental in that Ryder Cup and little did we know that only a month later his life would be taken by a horrible plane crash. Payne would have been 50 years old in January of 2007 and there’s no doubt he would have breathed some fresh air into the Champions Tour and quite possibly might have single-handedly saved it.