22 September, 2007
|
The PGA
After day one of the PGA Cup captain Gary Alliss was in happy mood after GB&I ended the day with their noses in front as they seek an historic first win on US soil.
What a first day - after more than a year's planning and preparation it was very exciting to get the PGA Cup underway.
The excitement was tangible with the accumulated photographers, TV, family and friends gathered and I think i was more nervous than the players.
It's been a terrific week - the best of my life (the birth of children aside) - and the guys were also champing at the bit and couldn't wait to get going.
I'm not sure what expectations I had but to come out 2-2 in the morning was special, because we weren't looking like favorites in a few of those matches. That was good.
Better was to come in the afternoon when Andrew Barnett and George Ryall, who had sat out the morning fourballs, came in and delivered the goods to take a point in each of their respective matches.
The quality of the golf from both sides was superb and the ball-striking was really impressive. What pleased me most was that our lads looked equally as good as the US team who are undoubtedly very fine players.
Perhaps the real key to the first day for us was the match Craig Goodfellow and Mike Nesbit played this afternoon when they clawed their way back from 2-down to the Americans (Don Yrene and Ryan Benzel) with two holes to play and walked off with a halve.
Mike and Craig had dug themselves into trouble with a bad shot and missed putt and suddenly were 2-down with two to play but these guys are scrappers and Craig is a phenomenally powerful player.
They rode their luck however when Craig took on a tight drive to get it as far down the 18th fairway as possible and left Michael in trouble but somehow he cleaved the ball 100 yards down the fairway, Craig pitched to 10ft and Michael holed out for the halve. Happy days.
We then saw George Ryall produce a stunning chip on the last to clinch a win for him and Jon Bevan. That was some golf shot I'm telling you.
After the first day, I've learned that the timing is very difficult. You just haven't got a whole lot of time. It's a little bit like right now -- we've got to cut this short because our tournament director is screaming at me on the radio telling me, "You've got 15 minutes to put in tomorrow's pairings!"
I'm struggling to get my head around that a bit, but I had better get to that!