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Golf Digest, Sept, 2001 by John Hawkins, Tim Rosaforte

The lost ball

A pivotal moment occurred when Woods and Coltart, playing in the fifth pairing, reached the ninth tee. Two down at the time, Coltart drove his ball into the rough. After a five-minute search, Coltart's ball was not found, dropping him to 3 down against Woods, who won the match on the 16th green.

Coltart: I have absolutely no doubt that I was being directed to a very strange place--where people were pointing was almost like a rock face. If my ball had gone up there, it would've had to come back down, too, but they kept sending us farther and farther up the hill.

Ricci Roberts (Coltart's caddie): There were four or five marshals down there. We're on our hands and knees looking near this rock face. Even Prince Andrew was in there, helping us look for the ball. Eventually, they said, "Sorry, your five minutes are up." So I give [Coltart] another ball. He gets in the cart and heads back to the tee.

Coltart: Just as I got into the buggy, my coach [Tim Barter] saw these guys yelling, "Job done!" and high-fiving each other. So I got back to the tee and hit another drive, and lo and behold, the first ball appears.

Roberts: A marshal was standing on it, no question about that. He was right behind me. He goes, "Uh, there's a ball here. Titleist with a blue dot." He was standing on it the whole time. The ball's 10 or 15 feet off the fairway, at least 15 yards from where we'd been looking. The ball is imbedded and there's a footprint around the ball, so you tell me.

Coltart: I'm not sure someone stood on it, but it was half under the ground just off the fairway, maybe 20 yards from where they sent us to look. It's hard to lose a ball in a tournament, never mind a Ryder Cup, but it happened. Tiger didn't say anything--I'm not sure he was aware of what happened. He was a long way up ahead at his own ball.

The tension builds

The United States swept the first six matches to take a 12-10 lead. Pate would then knock off Miguel Angel Jimenez and Furyk would beat Sergio Garcia, leaving the U.S. just a half-point short of reclaiming the Cup, but three of the final four matches involved players who had struggled the most--Leonard, against Jose Maria Olazabal; O'Meara, facing Padraig Harrington; and Stewart, versus Montgomerie. Maggert was way behind against Lawrie. If the U.S. was going to win, somebody had to produce.

Love: Ben came on the radio and said to go catch Justin on 10. I figured Justin was left for dead [Leonard was about to go 4 down], but they said, "No, go with him, because you're the only guy who can walk with him." They didn't want Justin to be out there all by himself getting crushed, getting beat and picked on. He'd been having a bad day all week.

Bob Riefke (Leonard's caddie): He was so dejected. I'm doing everything I possibly can to keep him focused. We'd been paired with Olazabal before. I kept telling Justin, it's only going to take one shot to rattle this guy--I knew Olazabal's tendencies. The first time Justin put pressure on him is when Olazabal started hitting it sideways off the tee.