By this morning, America and Europe will have moved on from Medinah and the 39th playing of the Ryder Cup.
Better brains, better writers and better golfers will have discussed, dissected and deconstructed every shot, swing, decision and surge that went into Europe`s 14 1/2 to 13 1/2 victory over the United States in golf's foremost team event. Indeed, thanks to social media, the postmortem was already tweeted, blogged and shared to every corner of the earth even before Tiger Woods meekly pushed a meaningless putt past the hole to halve the last match with the mortician-faced Francisco Molinari.
By Monday, those last three days of September will have attained the patina of bards' tales and ancient lore after days of replays, analysis and second guessing. The narrative of the event will have been spooled and unspooled - Ian Poulter's five-birdie rearguard action on Saturday to salvage a dismal four-point deficit for Europe after two days of foursomes; Europe's stunning Sunday charge that secured 8 1/2 of the day's 12 singles matches to retain the Ryder Cup. By now it will have been given some nickname, the Miracle, Misery, or Meltdown at Medinah, to commemorate arguably the greatest comeback in Ryder Cup history, equaling the U.S. win at Brookline in 1999 and surpassing it since it was accomplished by a visiting team on foreign soil.
Perhaps more impressive is that endless days of Golf Channel chatter built the event to such a ludicrous pitch it seemed the only way it could fulfil its epic promise was if Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Michael Jordan and Barak Obama fought ninjas with lightsabers on the 18th green to win not only the Ryder Cup but save humanity. Instead, the event, for all its eventual magnitude, satisfied by being a simple old fashioned ghost story.
The spectre at work in the Masonic mishief of Medinah was the Spaniard Seve Ballesteros, who succumbed to brain cancer in May of last year after almost singlehandedly turning the event from an American-dominated jamboree into perhaps golf's greatest spectacle. Seve was everywhere during the first Ryder Cup after his death, in stories, in retrospectives, on Europe's uniform and embodied in Jose-Maria Olazabal, his dominating Ryder Cup partner and now Europe's captain. Much was made of 13th men - America had a raucous Chicago partisan crowd but Europe had Seve.
Perhaps the most poignant moment came when Olazabal touched the visage of his iconic friend that he'd had embroidered into the sleeves of Europe's team sweaters and said in a voice like red wine and paella: "Seve is here." It provoked another breakdown from golf analyst Nick Faldo, who'd battled at Seve's side, with a simple, "And I`m crying" as European crowds serenaded him with "There`s only one Nick Faldo."
Apparently the Europeans needed to believe in ghosts and in retrospect the Americans never really stood a chance as Ballesteros, golf`s great escape artist, somehow engineered one last great, impossible, up-and-down from beyond the grave.
Speaking of ghosts, the other mischievious spirit at work was the Poulter-geist, England's Ian Poulter. A perfect 4-0 during the three days, his maniacal gaze and preternatural short game brought to mind Eddie Izzard's biting quip in The Good Wife: "I am not the England of Big Ben and bobbies. I am not the England of doillies and cucumber sandwiches. I am the England of football holigans and Jack the Ripper." Cocky, infuriating, insufferable, superior, he went through the Ryder Cup like a Bond villain.
He was part of a symphony of the sublime around the greens, that was marked by spectucular play on both sides: Rory McIlroy's chip-in in the opening match; that hesitating bomb that brought a smile from Jason Dufner; the flag-whipping dagger from Keegan Bradley; Peter Lawrie's momentum-grabbing pitch that crushed Brandt Snedeker; Justin Rose`s back-to-back birdies had even Phil Mickelson clapping; German Martin Kaymer's clinching seven-footer for par that added a postscript to Bernard Langer's miss that ended the 1991 War by the Shore. But it was the misses that defined this Ryder Cup: Jim Furyk's gut-rending pull that handed a point to Sergio Garcia; Steve Stricker's series of blunders that opened the door for Kaymer.
It`s easy to forget how grim it looked for the Europeans on Sunday. As I ran to get eggs that morning, I bumped into my buddy Kyle in the grocery store parking lot. He said he wasn't watching, there wasn't much point; I told him Europe was making a charge.
Were they ever.
As Poulter said, champagne dripping down his face: "We were four down. I`m not going say we were going to say we knew we were going to win but there was a little chance, a glimmer of hope. It was Seve looking down on us. It`s historic. It`s unbelievable."
