Ryder Cup Clippings, Wednesday Edition

If you don't mind Flash-based stuff (it slows things down here), GolfDigest.com has a couple of nice features posted. The first is the Golf World course map, with some noteworthy hole-by-hole comments from Brett Avery.

Even better is an interactive team analysis, with bios by Avery, U.S. comments by Brian Wacker and European player comments by John Huggan. There's also more than you ever wanted to know about player records in previous matches.

Story wise, thanks to reader Van for this Independent story noting Melissa Lehman's involvement in establishing the team curfew, including the wives shopping hold-out.

In the slow news day category, James Corrigan and several others built their stories around Tiger Woods and Darren Clarke embracing.

This wire story says Tiger was reluctant to join Tom Lehman's sing-your-college-fight-song hazing session. Can't say I blame Tiger for that one. This team bonding stuff is getting a little ridiculous.

Jim McCabe takes a close look at Tiger's Ryder Cup record and says it's not as bad as it looks.

SI has posted the "grid" I compiled on Arnold Palmer's life and design career, along with the text of his Dream 18. Gil Hanse's map of the Palmer course appeared in Golf Plus.

Add Golfonline's Connell Barrett to the list who will not be receiving honorary memberships to the K Club. Or for that matter, fan mail from the European Tour folks. He includes this quote from Peter Alliss:

"A course like Portmarnock would have been a magnificent choice," Alliss says. "I care passionately about this event, so I find this rather sad, losing the Irishness of links golf. An event that was once tough, bloody and wonderful has lost much of its charm. It's all because of money, money, money."

Lawrence Donegan comments on bonding exercises and offers other Tuesday practice round observations.

Sidetracking for a moment, Donegan is mentioned in a story about his former career as a bass guitarist in this Scotsman story about singer-songwriter Lloyd Cole, whose next album "Antidepressant" is due out September 25th in the UK, and October 10 in the U.S.

Regarding Cole and his love of golf:

There are periods, he says, when he's toyed with the idea of giving up music altogether and concentrating on his other passion: golf.

"I love playing it and I have this ridiculous dream that I could design golf courses for a living," he says wistfully. "Apparently, you have to be good at numbers and I was a real maths whiz at school. But my overwhelming feeling is that, if I can keep on plugging away with music and adding to this body of work that I've been developing since the early 1980s, then in the future people might find it something worth treasuring. That's really all I want."

Back to the Ryder Cup. BBC's Iain Carter blogs about the caricature-drawing exercise the Euros undertook, which is only a bit more ridiculous than the U.S. fight song nonsense. Apparently everyone was asked to draw Monty so that their thoughts could be determined by a "mind magician."

Wouldn't you just love to see Jakartagate-skeptic Darren Clarke's rendition?

BBC's Matt Slater blogs about the U.S. team's tweed outfits:

the librarian meets poacher creation was inspired by some old-fashioned view of what the Irish themselves wear when enjoying the great outdoors. The "begorrah, top o' the mornin' ta yer" Ireland of The Quiet Man or Ryan's Daughter or Boston's St Patrick's Day celebrations.

Karl MacGinty considers the dreadful weather forecast and the possibility that remnants of hurricane Gordon could reach The K Club by the weekend.

And finally, SI's E.M. Swift says the U.S. team is historically soft and pretty much says this team is doomed too.