Don't blame Hunter
It probably wasn’t fair to put that much pressure on one person.
Hunter Mahan was playing Graham McDowell in the final singles match of the Ryder Cup in Wales on Monday, a role he apparently requested. It remains unclear why someone would volunteer themselves for that kind of pressure but that’s beside the point. The
hopes of a country were riding on U.S. player Mahan while an entire continent was leaning on McDowell, the Northern Irishman.
Before the week began, it seemed like everyone was saying that this year’s competition would be close. And with what transpired, that word “close” needs an adverb. How about agonizingly close? Or stupendously close?
For the first time in recent memory, a Ryder Cup would be decided by the outcome of the final match on the course.
The two final combatants reached the par-three 17th hole with Mahan only two down in the match, one McDowell needed to halve to secure the Ryder Cup for the Europeans. McDowell hit his ball to the fringe while Mahan landed his in the fairway, about thirty
feet short of the green. When McDowell knocked his putt close, assuring him of a par, Mahan required a chip-in birdie to win the hole and stay in the match, but he fluffed his short chip, not even reaching the green, and extended his hand to McDowell conceding
the hole and the match.
It was a grim reminder that there is nothing quite like Ryder Cup pressure, which seemed to get the better of Mahan on Monday. With the Ryder Cup down to the deciding match, not only did the 35,000 loud and boisterous fans converge on one hole but every
teammate, captain, assistant captain, wife, girlfriend, caddy, and cameraman did the same. Factor in those watching on TV all around the world, the weight of a nation on his trembling shoulders, and the fact that mostly every fan in attendance desperately
wanted him to fail. It is this unenviable position that Mahan found himself in.
Here’s what McDowell, who ended up winning the match three and one, had to say. "The U.S. Open felt like a back nine with my dad back at Portrush compared to that. I was really nervous there. Wow. It's a different feeling. It's just so much pressure."
During the closing press conference, when Mahan broke down and couldn’t find the words, his teammates spoke for him.
"It really doesn't come down to Hunter," said Steve Stricker. "And you hate to put a guy in that position. Because it really shouldn't have come down to that. But unfortunately it did, and we are taking this as a team loss. We are trying to help Hunter along
here in this situation. But it's a tough deal for him."
"If you go up and down the line of the tour players in Europe and U.S. and asked them if they would like to be the last guy to decide the Ryder Cup, probably less than half would say they would like to be that guy and probably less than 10 percent of them
would mean it," said team-mate Stewart Cink. "Hunter Mahan put himself in that position today. He was a man on our team."
Ryder Cup veteran Jim Furyk hopes that Mahan's display will finally put to bed the theory that the Americans care less about this event than the Europeans.
"We all know what it means to us," Furyk said to the media. "Whatever you’ve all written in the past, it’s your observations, the way you feel. But that judgment, really, I mean, we know what it means. I’m glad maybe finally you’ve all figured it out. And
I’m sorry it happened this way."
In a classy move, Luke Donald, a member of the European team, took some time away from his team’s celebration to express the pain he felt for Mahan. Because at the end of the day, any week other than this one, these guys are friends and colleagues.
"You don’t like to see what happened to Hunter on 17," said Donald. "It is really tough and you don’t want to see that happen to anyone, especially at a time like that."
Even though Mahan’s chip shot could prove to be the defining moment of the 2010 Ryder Cup, it shouldn’t be and we should all hope that it gets forgotten quickly.
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