Golf: Furyk Angered at Ryder Cup Claims

The cream of the United States team have the opportunity to regain a little pride, as well as take home a £683,778 winner's cheque, at The Grove, near Watford, over the next four days, although there was still time yesterday for one last Ryder Cup inquest before the first ball was struck at the American Express Championship, the final World Golf Championships event of the season.

Jim Furyk, last spotted being hammered by Paul Casey in the singles at the K Club on Sunday, will laugh when people make fun of his, to put it kindly, idiosyncratic swing. But there are some things this most mild-mannered player will not put up with, such as the suggestion that he, Tiger Woods and the rest of the hapless US team that fell to an 18½-9½ defeat in Ireland do not care about the game's most prestigious team event. One American journalist put that argument to the world No3 on Sunday and got an earful for his impertinence.

"When someone questions what is inside me or my team-mates, that's the offensive part, that's where I think guys get upset," Furyk said yesterday. "Everyone who knows me inside knows how important the Ryder Cup is. And if you can't get up for the Ryder Cup you don't have a pulse. I had a very well respected writer ask me point blank to my face whether in the whole big scheme of things, whether it actually mattered to me.

"Now, without wanting to reach out and just strangle him or send a few F-bombs his way, I just bit my tongue, told him he offended me and walked away.

"The Ryder Cup is the premium event. I get more jacked up for that than I could imagine ever getting jacked up for an event individually, maybe to a fault at times." Furyk, paired with Woods in the foursomes and fourballs in Ireland, ended up winning two points from five.

As for Sunday's defeat at the K Club, Furyk professed to being puzzled. "You just got slapped in the face and it's hard to come up with an answer right off the bat. I think it'll be a good time for reflection. You can run with it probably a million different ways. We obviously got outplayed in all aspects and in the five Ryder Cups I've played, [in] four of them we've done just an horrendous job on Friday and Saturday in team play," he said.

If American golfers flounder in team play, they continue to dominate in individual strokeplay, not least Woods, who is seeking his sixth successive such victory here. The world No1 will, though, need to string a few more wins together if he wants to set a record. In 1945, Byron Nelson, who died on Tuesday, won 11 consecutive events on the US Tour - a mark that not even Woods thinks will be beaten.

"I actually talked to him [Nelson] about this, he said he had to beat four or five guys every week and when you're hot that's not that hard to do. It's 40 or 50 now, so it's a lot different," said Woods.