THE NEXT ONE’S GOOD
FROM THE FRONT LINE An aging
Ballesteros played first to energise his teammates.
The Ryder Cup Seve Won by Losing BY JERRY TARDE
ON SATURDAY NIGHT at the Ryder Cup, the captains will have to make the most impor-
with the Europeans trailing 9 to 7, Seve Ballesteros shouted to captain Bernard Gallacher, “Put me down the bottom!” This was laughable on the face of it. Ballesteros was gasping on the last va- pours of his career with an aching back and a balky driver. He had been play- ing so badly that Gallacher left him out of the foursomes on Friday and Satur- day. For the previous 16 years, Seve had been the soul of Europe, and he wanted one more chance to play the deciding match. It was crazy. He couldn’t break 80. In a brilliant move, Gallacher’s strat- egy instantly came together as he re- plied, “No, Seve. You will not play at the end. We want you to play first! You will lead us!”
Often, the key singles match is third from the end on Sunday when the win- ning point is played; in this draw was the classic decider, Bernhard Langer vs Corey Pavin, both high-pressure players. Seve’s draw was Tom Lehman in the opening match. Lehman had the unim- pressive look, as Dan Jenkins said, of “a girls’ high school basketball coach,” but Lehman was a killer at the top of his game, contending in every major the next year and winning the Open Championship. “Seve’s game is a hor- ror movie,” Jenkins wrote. Seve’s manager, Roddy Carr, had dinner with the renowned teacher John Jacobs on Saturday night and asked him to give Seve a lesson. >
tant decision of the week – who to play at the bottom of the singles draw. If the matches come down to the end, you do not necessarily want your best players in the final spots; you want clutch play- ers for when the heavens shatter and the earth gives way beneath their feet. Tour pros might say otherwise, but in their hearts, they fear the bottom like the Normandy beaches on D-Day. Silence breaks like thunder in the team room when everybody’s head is bowed. Some might talk boldly, but “Oh, cap- tain, my captain, take anyone, not me,” is what they’re thinking. At the 1995 Ryder Cup at Oak Hill,
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