BEFORE the Ryder Cup, Colin Montgomerie was asked the secret of winning at matchplay. “You start with a birdie at the 1st and then you add another for good measure at the 2nd,” he said. Easier said than done, no doubt, but when Sergio García and Lee Westwood followed his instructions to the letter against David Toms and Jim Furyk in the morning four-balls, they were up and running and never to be caught.
It was a start for which the American pairing — both of whom had undergone wrist surgery earlier this year — had no answer and in the end they lost by an emphatic 5 and 3.
So successful were García and Westwood as a pairing at The Belfry two years ago — they won three of their four matches and were only beaten at the 18th hole in the Saturday foursomes — that it was inevitable that they would be paired together again. Chalk and cheese as characters, as a team they go together like cheese and pickle.
“Sergio is extremely excitable and bounces and jumps all over the place,” Bernhard Langer, the captain, said on the eve of the event. “Lee is just about the opposite; he’s very calm and nothing flusters him. Lee sometimes needs someone to get him going and Sergio needs someone to cool him down.”
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In this first series of matches, none of that was necessary. There were no histrionics from the young Spaniard and there was nothing sleepy in the demeanour of his English partner.
So confident did they seem in their own abilities, so comfortable in each other’s company, that it seemed only a matter of time before victory was secured. And so it was. Four up at the turn, the Europeans dovetailed beautifully throughout.
They gave back one of the holes at the 11th before Westwood birdied the next two holes to take his personal tally to five and the team to five up with five holes to play. Furyk prolonged the inevitable with a consolation birdie from ten feet at the next hole but when the 15th was conceded to Westwood, the match was brought to a satisfactory end for the Europeans. All in all, this was a job well done.
It might have seemed surprising, then, that Langer chose to break up the partnership for the afternoon foursomes. Yet the captain has been meticulous in his planning and by pairing García with Luke Donald — another Englishman and one similar in temperament to Westwood — he looked to have found another perfect partner for the flamboyant Spaniard.
One up after two holes against Kenny Perry and Stewart Cink, García and Donald extended their lead to two at the 9th — after a superb bunker shot from García finished as virtually a tap-in for his partner — and three at the 10th. By the 14th, the Europeans had been pegged back to one, but when the Americans bogeyed the 15th and could only get a share of the spoils at the next, the Europeans knew that a half at the very least was in the bag.
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At the 17th, they wrapped it up with a rock-steady par and ran out winners by 2 and 1.
Since making his debut as a 19-year-old at Brookline in 1999, García has proved a thorn in the Americans’ side. In ten four-ball and foursomes matches, he has won eight and lost only once. What Tiger Woods would do for a record like that.