Poulter: Kim Hit On Me!

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Well, he hit him, or so the blonde wonder claimed after chewing on Saturday's incident during the long flight back to England.

Mike Adamson confirms what Tim Rosaforte first reported on NBC Sunday morning: it was a shoulder barge. But Poulter wouldn't say who, just that he was short, had just lost his match with Phil Mickelson and his last named was started with a K and ended with an M.

It is believed the culprit was Anthony Kim, who led America's rout on Sunday with victory over Sergio García. Kim and Poulter were caught on television exchanging words after they collided during the Englishman's Saturday fourballs match, a game Kim was following. Without identifying the player, Europe's top points-scorer said: "He hadn't played very well and decided to walk around in the afternoon and make his point. As opposed to walking around me as I was walking off the tee, he shoulder-barged through me. It was pathetic. He should grow up. I said: 'That wasn't awfully nice.' I said in the team room: 'Let's use their energy and turn that in our favour.'"


WorldGolf.com: "Fight breaks out on shuttle bus among drunk media after Ryder Cup Matches"

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Brandon Tucker files the best exclusive of the week:

According to our shuttle bus driver from Valhalla to downtown Louisville, her van turned into The Octagon.
“There were two Americans in the van and the rest British,” she recalled. “One of the Americans said something about Sergio’s putting…and they started arguing.”
It’s about a 30-minute drive from Valhalla to the downtown hotels. The argument escalated along the way.
“When we arrived at the hotel, they got out of the van and went to blows,” she added. “They scratched my van!”
First and foremost: what is there to argue about Sergio's putting?

Scribblers and lens luggers: I want names and details. Now!


First Ryder Cup Question: Was Faldo Really That Bad?

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Paul Hayward of the Daily Mail lays into "Captain Calamity" while AP's Robert Milwood compiles the other not-so-flattering morning headlines.

Nick Faldo, not the crowd, was America’s 13th Man, sending an aircraft carrier to a conflict that was already over.
Hindsight is the media’s favourite language, but there is no escaping the gruesome fact that, when the Americans broke Europe’s Ryder Cup dominance here last night Graeme McDowell, Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and the dual Open champion Padraig Harrington, were all stranded on the Valhalla course.
And...
Emotionally overcome by Muhammad Ali’s visit, and the tension of a draining week, the captain’s gaucheness in press conferences and at the opening ceremony were minor foibles compared to yesterday’s aberration.
Maybe the warning came when Lee Westwood and Sergio Garcia were rested in Saturday morning’s foursomes. The abiding point is that Europe squandered their man-for-man advantage over an inferior American dozen. To have the better team and lose is the mark of all managerial fowl-ups.
Okay folks, was he that bad?

Poulter played brilliant golf and justified his selection.

Oliver Wilson came through Saturday morning when stars were benched.

Padraig, Garcia and Westwood weren't even close to resembling themselves.

A few putts here and there and Europe wins. Oh and Faldo, made up for the opening ceremonies speech with an excellent presentation at the closing ceremonies.

And just think, by losing this time the Ryder Cup has been restored to its place as golf's most thrilling and anticipated event.

Thoughts?

Monday Ryder Cup Clippings

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On GolfDigest.com's Ryder Cup Rumblings you can find my final installment of the daily clippings analysis, or you can access it directly here.

There's also an archive of all posts for the week.

I'm also really enjoying your comments. Great stuff, keep it coming. I'm especially happy to see how many people equated the reasonable setup with the quality of the golf we saw. Oddly, there have not been articles about that yet, and I've been looking!


Lift, Clean, Place Claims Another Victim

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From the AP story on Will MacKenzie's costly mistake Saturday at the Viking Classic.

MacKenzie's triple bogey Saturday on the par-5 18th left him tied for second with Brian Gay, two strokes behind Turnesa on the Annandale course. MacKenzie was penalized for moving impediments in the hazard while his ball was also in the hazard.
Turnesa, a PGA TOUR rookie who also topped the second-round leaderboard, shot a 6-under 66 for a 17-under 199 total. MacKenzie and Gay had 67s.
MacKenzie, who has one TOUR victory, the Reno-Tahoe Open in 2006, opened with birdies on the first two holes and made the turn at 32. His only stumble before 18 was a bogey on the fourth hole.
MacKenzie said he "spaced out" after a day of being able to lift, clean and place his ball because of wet conditions. There were a a few blades of grass near his ball, not anything that would be a problem, he said.
MacKenzie said he brushed them away with his hand, then he realized what he had done and told an official, who assessed the penalty.

Saturday Ryder Cup Clippings

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It's going to be tough to top Friday for drama, shotmaking, strategic second-guessing,  incredible atmosphere, and media coverage to match, so soak up Saturday mornings clippings and if you missed anything, here's the entire Ryder Cup Rumblings archive to date.

Make sure to check in during the day at GolfDigest.com as I'm posting all weekend.


Red Numbers Can Be The Game's Friend!

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Over at GolfDigest.com I posted about some of the nuances we're seeing today that have bred some downright thrilling Ryder Cup golf.  It's so simple really. A little room off the tee, hole locations not buried in places to prevent birdies, green speeds within reason and an overall philosophy of allowing for aggressive play.

The question I ask, as always: why can't we do this all the time in golf?

Is protecting par really that sacred?

Is everyone able to watch day one enjoying it as much as I am?

"Unashamedly, we have to be commercial when we allocate the event"

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I posted this as the last item on the GolfDigest.com clippings post along with a few more new items, and while the matches are proving quite compelling so far, I'd hate to see this item get forgotten. Paul Kelso writes:

George O'Grady, chief executive of the European Tour, is proud of the commercial profile that the event now enjoys and says there is no limit to where it might be staged; he would even consider staging it in Dubai, soon to be the setting for the European Tour finale.

"Unashamedly, we have to be commercial when we allocate the event," he said this week. "The Ryder Cup underwrites the finances of the Tour and funds all the game development and charitable work we do. Every penny we make goes back into the game, but we have to make as much as we can from the home match."

O'Grady believes the tournament has thrived because it delivers measurable benefits to the regions that act as host, and does not rule out a match in the Middle East.

Unashamedly, won't someone step up and explain to the European Tour that it's one thing to subject us to some truly awful golf courses, but another thing entirely to go outside of Europe?

"The tour's veterans may sense it's time to go back to the Way of Palmer, but the young guys know only a one-way street."

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I'm not sure how I missed this, but Jaime Diaz files an intriguing diagnosis of the pro game's woes and picks up on the theme echoed in other recent columns: the players have lost touch and don't have much flair.

Golf without Woods underscores how decadent the PGA Tour has become—and by extension, how fragile. In a tanking economy in which leisure time is evaporating, what was thought to be a momentary bobble is looking more like a bursting bubble. With corporate America and TV networks worriedly wondering if they overvalued the product, that dreaded euphemism "market adjustment" is in the air.
And...
All the taking without sufficiently giving back didn't seem to matter for a long time, but now it does. As CEOs reassess where to spend their money, purses actually could be headed down for the first time in decades (following TV ratings). The tour's veterans may sense it's time to go back to the Way of Palmer, but the young guys know only a one-way street.
Camilo Villegas is a good example. Much has come the 26-year-old's way because of his looks, his body, his clothes and his game. But the native of Colombia has never been expansive with the media, so it was a welcome change when after his third-round 63 at Boston, he thoughtfully reflected on subjects ranging from his struggle as an A-student at Florida to speak English, to his fitness regime. But then, casually but with a hint of impatience, he said, "If you guys let me go, I'll go get another workout in." It's a sentence the PGA Tour doesn't need. It does need Phil Mickelson signing autographs, Padraig Harrington opening the book on his recipe for winning majors, Geoff Ogilvy offering astute analysis, Paul Goydos being droll and Rocco Mediate being Rocco.