FRIDAY POLL - Ryder Cup: Marquee fourball sets the tongues wagging

It was a line delivered with a little mischief from a master of kidology, but it was one laced with meaning.

On Wednesday, Phil Mickelson addressed the elephant in the European team room when he made a joke about Rory McIlroy’s court case against former management company Horizon – which has seen team-mate Graeme McDowell dragged into the dispute as he is still represented by them.

“Not only are we able to play together, we also don’t litigate against each other and that’s a real plus, I feel, heading into this week,” quipped the five-time major winner.

In some quarters it has been whipped up into an attack designed at disrupting two of Europe’s key players.

In the real world it has been greeted as it was meant, a joke, a little dig at friendly rivals that the protagonist knows will be returned with interest when the two next meet on the golf course, around about 8.15 this morning.

That is five minutes before the first tee shot will be struck in the marquee fourball on the opening morning of the 40th Ryder Cup.

The only two men who have played the phoney war in the lead up to golf’s biggest week, thereby giving the army of journalists something to cling to amid the non-stop fawning over opponents that has characterised the pre-event press conferences, have been paired together on the first day.

Perfect.

Just what the punters wanted.

McIlroy and Sergio Garcia versus Mickelson and Keegan Bradley is exactly the kind of high-powered match-up a Ryder Cup craves and invariably producers, such is the calibre of players on show.

McIlroy is the world’s No 1 golfer, Garcia is a competitor who lives for the Ryder Cup, and the Mickelson-Bradley axis won three out of three at Medinah two years ago.

As Tom Watson said, the game is a “barnburner”.

Being the fourth match out of the gate, it is one that will ultimately determine whether Europe or the United States win the morning session or salvage a half.

Much more than that, it has the potential to give the victors a psychological edge to exploit for the remainder of the weekend.

A victory for Europe, taking down the visiting team’s No 1 pairing, will give the home team a major boost. A win for Mickelson and Bradley, at the expense of the 
No 1 player in the world, could send a surge of adrenalin coursing through American veins.

That was exactly what happened on the opening morning of the Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills four years ago, when American captain Hal Sutton sent out Mickelson alongside world No 1 Tiger Woods in the top match.

They ran into Europe’s top pairing that week, Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington – and lost, famously.

Mickelson hit his tee shot on the 18th so far left that it slammed into the fence, nearly hitting a 15-year-old McIlroy in the process. The Northern Irishman was in the crowd having played earlier in the week in the Junior Ryder Cup.

The US lost that opening game and never recovered on the way to a record defeat on home soil.

The importance of that opening win can not be downplayed.

But as well as Europe’s senior partnership performed that week, their rawest two-ball also delivered a telling blow.

English rookies Paul Casey and David Howell trailed Jim Furyk and Chad Campbell in the Saturday morning fourballs but turned round their match on the last two holes to snatch an unlikely win.

It was Europe’s only win of the morning and had an infectious affect on the afternoon foursomes as they went on to clinch the fourth session 3-1.

Casey and Howell were the first European rookies to be paired together and win a point, a cautionary tale when you fast forward a decade and look at the third fourballs game of the 40th Ryder Cup at Gleneagles.

Jordan Spieth and Patrick Reed, two rookies, have been thrown together as a pairing and matched with Ian Poulter and Stephen Gallacher, one of three rookies on the European team.

Watson has also thrown Jimmy Walker, his third and final rookie, out into the white-hot atmosphere at the first chance he got. “It’s a good place to get their feet wet,” said the captain. “This way they each get to play every shot.”

European fans will look at that third match and mark it down straight away as a point for Europe. How could Poulter, Mr Ryder Cup, the Postman because he always delivers, a winner of 11 of his last 12 games at the event, lose to two rookies?

But stranger things have happened in a Ryder Cup, and home fans should beware the unknown quantities.

Just think of that Casey and Howell partnership, as well as more recently at Celtic Manor, when debutants Bubba Watson and Jeff Overton shocked the seasoned pairing of Harrington and Luke Donald.

Bubba Watson is now one of the more experienced players in that opening octet his namesake has sent out for Team USA.

His partnership with Webb Simpson and match-up against Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson is one that could go either way, much as the Rickie Fowler and Jimmy Walker pairing versus Thomas Bjorn and Martin Kaymer looks like a coin flip.

The safest thing to say as you sit in your armchair this morning, with the sun rising outside the window as you settle in for a day of golf viewing, is that you can never predict a Ryder Cup.

That is the beauty of it, the mystique, the allure.

The only thing certain about watching a Ryder Cup is that you have to surrender all control over your emotions.

As the putts drop and the chips lip out, so the cheers ring out and the groans echo around the course.

The next three days are like none other in sport.

What unfolds over the 18 holes of Gleneagles will render everything that went before it irrelevant, including Mickelson’s mischief – no matter how pertinent his comment about the strained relationship between McIlroy and McDowell given they have been kept apart by captain Paul McGinley for the first session at least.

It was a clever joke from Mickelson, one that got all sides talking and one that for the first time in a long time, cast doubt over the legendary team spirit that has provided the bedrock of Europe’s success in five of the last six Ryder Cups.

But the talking is over now, and the golf can finally start.

The battle lines have been drawn.