Blues Brothers

Bill Elliott reflects on a dominant performance at a wonderful venue.

- Bill Elliott

In the end it wasn’t exactly easy, but it was wonderfully complete. It was also a sort of ritual humiliation of an American team that had landed in Paris lauded by some as that great country’s greatest ever side. Pride, as ever, came before the biggest of falls.

That ‘greatest ever’ tag was always a flippant nonsense, a thought proven by even a cursory glance at the USA side that pitched up at Walton Heath in 1981 – a team thrillingly embroidered with men such as Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Tom Watson, Johnny Miller, Hale Irwin and Ben Crenshaw.

In truth, this 2018 US team did look good, but looking good on paper and playing good, playing smart, over the threatening, watery acres of Le Golf National are two different things.

Europe, meanwhile, contained its own stars. More importantly, Europe had players who gelled together properly, who understood what they were about to try to do and who went about their weekend’s work with panache, with grit and with commendable determination.

For this, we should commend their character. Most of all we must commend their passion for the fight. Then we should thank Jim Furyk for messing up his captain’s picks.

Allowing a skipper to select four players is always a big risk and so it proved for this most amiable of men. Between them, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Bryson DeChambeau and Tony Finau contributed two points to the cause, both points courtesy of the admirable rookie Finau, who took to the whole deliciously raucous shebang with a rare and easy grace.

Mickelson, meanwhile, was a slashing parody of his former self. If he were a footballer you would suggest his legs had gone. At 48 he seems one step too many over an invisible hill. For Woods this was probably one big week too many for a man whose sensational return to the spotlight had peaked a few days earlier with his victory in the Tour Championship.