This was the greatest of all Ryder Cup comebacks. The US team who overturned a 10-6 European lead at Brookline 13 years ago were on home turf. Ian Poulter and company flipped the odds on foreign soil.
Though it was Martin Kaymer who nailed the final putt, on the 18th green, Poulter was the leader and the star, ending the weekend with the best percentage record of any Ryder Cup player.
Olazábal, who was like a brother to Ballesteros, wept, saying: “This is for the whole of Europe. Seve will always be present with this team.
"He was a big factor for this event, for the European side, and last night when we were having our meeting I told the boys that believing was the most important thing – and they did.”
Never in Ryder Cup history has a home crowd been left so shocked, so deflated. Maybe this was karma for the lone idiot who shouted, “F––– you, Seve,” at the 16th on Saturday night.
Luke Donald, Poulter, McIlroy, Justin Rose and Paul Lawrie were Europe’s hit squad, rattling up five victories. Lawrie, the veteran, struck a 50-foot birdie and then an eagle to crush Brandt Snedeker 5&3. In the second half, Sergio García, Lee Westwood and Kaymer finished the job.
A day of searing tension picked out four of the also-rans of this cup to decide its fate. Steve Stricker, Tiger Woods, Kaymer and Franceso Molinari had not won a single point from nine outings and yet here they were with the eyes of the world boring into them, with the score tied and both their matches all square.
We had no right to ask for this, much less to expect Europe to match the feats of the US team at Brookline in 1999. The Americans lost the first five matches and seven of the first 10.
A European onslaught neutralised the partisan home crowd and dumped intolerable pressure on the bottom half of America’s 12.
A suspicion is that leading 10-6 on the final morning is harder than it looks. The assumption is that victory is already in the bag.
With a few early setbacks there is a whiplash effect. The sense of a big lead slipping away inflicts terrible stress on the brain, in all sports. In a Ryder Cup, it must feel like a vortex that cannot be escaped.
Jim Furyk is no fresh-faced lad. But by the end of his defeat by García he looked like a stricken geriatric.
In match eight he led by one with two holes to play. On the 17th green a putt from the edge seemed to paralyse him. He backed off it twice, dropping to his knees to make the read. You could see his sinews tightening, his face turning grey.
Then he did it again on 18, missing an easier one and losing the hole to García, and with it the match. In his face was scored a terrible despair.
Guilt, you would call it. The Ryder Cup’s special cruelty is that it can make one man responsible for the suffering of another 11.
Imagine the ghosts and demons that haunt the psyche when an apparently safe victory is tossed away. America will turn on Furyk, Woods and Stricker, who contributed almost nothing.
“We just knew we had a chance, and do you know what? This is history, right here,” Poulter said.
So, to recap: this summer, a British rider has won the Tour de France for the first time, Britain has turned in its best Olympic performance and a Briton has won a major tennis title for the first time since Fred Perry in 1936.
In this Ryder Cup, seven UK citizens contributed to the greatest of all fightbacks in this most compelling of golfing tournaments.
The leaves turned golden and red in a single week at Medinah, so surely now the summer cycle is over.
Even the farce of McIlroy’s late arrival looked like part of the fun after Bubba Watson. Webb Simpson, Keegan Bradley, Phil Mickelson and Brandt Snedeker were blown away in the first five matches.
Chicago: Europe’s kind of town.
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