The spectators tightly packed in the temporary grandstands along the 1st hole had been there for hours by the time Rory McIlroy and Patrick Reed walked to the opening tee for the top singles match at 11.04am local time on Sunday, waving American flags that volunteers had distributed from brown cardboard boxes, sucking down Budweiser tallboys and gyrating to the Guns N’ Roses and John Cougar Mellancamp and Tom Petty that blared at ear-splitting volumes from the loudspeakers overhead as the sun climbed slowly over Lake Hazeltine.
The 9½-6½ shortfall Darren Clarke’s men faced entering the final slate of singles matches was a half-point closer than the 10-6 deficit Team Europe overcame the last time the Ryder Cup was held on American soil. Yet the prevailing sense about most of the more than 50,000 fans that descended on the grounds for the denouement on Sunday was there would be no repeat of the Miracle of Medinah. This time America would land the plane.
The final act opened with McIlroy and Reed, a delicious showdown between the world No3 and No8 respectively and the most in-form players from either side. Expectations were high. But as they marched down the fairway after cracking their opening tee shots into the Minnesota clear, few could have imagined the theatre to come. What followed was not only the match of the day – one of exquisite quality and heightened intensity between players and gallery that only the Ryder Cup can provide – but surely one of the more gripping clashes in the competition’s storied 89-year history.
The visitors knew they needed to finger the psychological scar tissue from Medinah for any chance of a repeat miracle and the responsibility started with McIlroy, who in eight years has gone from the indifferent passenger who once brushed aside the Ryder Cup as an “exhibition” to the team’s talismanic centrepiece, whose belligerent responses to the hostilities on offer at Hazeltine became a central plotline of the event. That objective was achieved as a flood of blue washed over the scoreboard while McIlroy and Reed exchanged haymakers throughout the front nine that left observers slack-jawed.
When the Northern Irishman created separation with a birdie on the 3rd to move one-up, the Texan answered with an eagle on the 5th that levelled the match. They kept in lockstep with birdies on the next two holes – with McIlroy punctuating his putt to save the latter half with a finger to the lips in the direction of the crowd.
After McIlroy drained a 55ft birdie putt on the 8th, he cupped a hand to his ear: “Fucking come on! I can’t hear you!” But Reed answered with a long-range putt and gesticulations of his own towards the delirious crowd. By then spectators following other matches scampered ahead as word of the heavyweight slugfest at the front of the queue spread. The scintillating theatre continued into the back nine as McIlroy gave the gallery an extended stare after saving a half on the 11th, but both men would return to earth down the stretch.
“I’d say maybe against anyone else, I might have been a couple up going into the turn but I was all-square and had a battle on my hands,” McIlroy said. “It was tough at the end, it really was. I ran out of steam.”
The PGA had issued a statement early on Sunday emphasising a “zero-tolerance policy” for vulgar language in the wake of Saturday’s extracurriculars, where McIlroy squared off with several groups of spectators who had taunted him with off-colour remarks. Yet the ill tempers of the opening two days had subsided as the galleries stood in rapt wonder of the quality on display. The spirit of competition between McIlroy and Reed was heightened and visible in their reluctance to make eye contact on the tees, but they shook their heads in resignation and offered the occasional fist pump on the greens as they trumped one another time and again. “Of course emotions were running high,” McIlroy said. “We both wanted to win very badly, but at the same time we both appreciated how good everything was out there. Patrick played phenomenal golf. There’s not much I can really do about that apart from trying to hang on to his coattails on the front nine.”
When McIlroy finally blinked with a missed par putt on the 12th, Reed curled in his effort from seven feet and led for the first time all day. Then McIlroy blinked again with another missed putt on the 13th that might not have cost him a hole but would have brought him all-square. On they went down the back nine. Several times McIlroy was forced to back off shots as fans shouted out, including on his approach shot on the 16th where he bogeyed to go dormie two. But then it was Reed’s turn to falter as a blown chip allowed McIlroy to two‑putt to force it to the par-four 18th hole.
That was where the players delivered one final show of extraordinary skill and oneupmanship: matching booming drives that split the fairway, approach shots that landed within 10ft of the pin. In the end it was Reed who drained a 7ft downhill birdie putt after McIlroy missed his and the American was the deserved winner in a match that will be long remembered, leaving the four‑times major champion to lament what might have been.
