Ryder Cup Clippings, Tuesday Edition

Easily the best read in the various Ryder Cup previews was the anonymous PGA Tour player talking about the teams in SI Golf Plus. You can read his assessments of the European team here and the U.S. team here.

Mark Garrod reports that the Lehman's have brought their own tortillas for chips and salsa. Not exactly the greatest endorsement of The K Club's cuisine.

This report attributes the team's late arrival to too much luggage. Hey, the wives have to pack for all occasions.

Mike Aitken transcribes all of the cliches that Monty rolled out in Monday's press gathering.

Mark Lamport-Stokes says that Tom Lehman already knows his Friday pairings, but after that pretty much anything can happen.

Golfonline's Cameron Morfit offers a graphic assessment of the U.S. team. And I mean graphic.

Would you know Wetterich if you saw him? Perhaps you'd know him if you smelled him, for according to one team insider the broad-shouldered Floridian demonstrated exceptional flatulence on the flight back from Ireland, where the Yanks made a recent reconnaissance trip to the K Club. And so for U.S. Ryder Cup fans still reeling from an 18 1/2-9 1/2 loss two years ago, and fearing the worst from these 36th Cup matches, it becomes official: we stink.

James Finegan's Where Golf is Great includes a K Club chapter, which GolfDigest.com has posted it. I just received the book and it's a beauty...all 10 pounds of it!

Ken Brown chimes in with his thoughts on the matches.

Lawrence Donegan writes about Monty's standing (or lack of) with his teammates.

Karl MacGinty in the Irish Independent talks to Seve, who has high marks for 1999 captain Mark James.

"Ian has a lot of Ryder Cup experience and I have no doubt he will be a good man for the team. He saw Tony Jacklin as a captain, Bernard Gallacher, me, Mark James," said Seve.

Then he paused momentarily, a devilish grin spreading across his face as he went on: "Though I wouldn't pay too much attention to Mark James's captaincy. "To me he did everything wrong."

"He was a disaster," added Seve, who described James' decision to leave three players, Jean Van de Velde, Jarmo Sandelin and even his captain's pick, Andrew Coltart - bizarrely selected ahead of Bernhard Langer - on the sidelines until Sunday in Boston as "just unthinkable, unbelievable."

Ballesteros conceded that Europe had taken a four point lead into the final day's singles but he argued: "Three players did not play one single hole until the singles so they basically were three points down before they started on Sunday.

"And he risked burnout with seven others because they had played both in the morning and the afternoon on Friday and Saturday. He destroyed the team, it's unbelievable what he did."