Ryder Cup: 'slave' Mahan Seeking On-course Forgiveness

As comments about slavery go, it was as ill-advised as Sepp Blatter's remark regarding Cristiano Ronaldo. Hunter Mahan, the 26-year-old who will make his debut in the Ryder Cup for the United States this week, offered this withering attack of the venerable event back in July.

"From what I've heard the whole week is extremely long," he said. "You've got dinners every night – not little dinners, massive ones. As players, that's the last thing we want. We want to prepare ourselves. You're just a slave that week."

On witnessing the backlash on either side of the Atlantic, the Californian immediately backtracked, apologizing to the American captain, Paul Azinger, and PGA officials. Did he think he had blown his chance of making the team? "I didn't know," he said. "I said it so long ago. I was right on the edge of making the team the whole time. I talked to Paul after, I talked to the PGA of America, so I didn't feel like I had. We had a good chat and cleared the air, and moved on from that.

Although Mahan finished outside the automatic selection places in 12th on the US money list, Azinger forgave the rookie his outburst and awarded him a wild card earlier this month, as Jack Nicklaus had for last year's Presidents Cup when he gave Mahan the honor of playing the first shot in Montreal. Mahan had also said that whereas the match against the international team "was a lot of fun", he had been advised "that isn't the case with the Ryder Cup".

It is a warning he is now keen to disprove. "I'm just looking forward to playing golf," he said. "I haven't experienced a whole lot yet, just one night. It's a very busy week, you are constantly doing something, but the tone of the article was not the way I intended it to be. It's a great week, not something I didn't want to participate in. I'm excited to be here and ready to play golf and experience everything. Only 172 guys have ever played in this, so it's an honor."

He has also previously remarked about the Ryder Cup that "what is not in doubt is that [the Europeans] are more passionate". With six first-timers in the US team, Mahan, who as a teenage fan cheered on his compatriots to the remarkable comeback victory at Brookline in 1999, expects youthful enthusiasm and the partisan Valhalla crowd to reverse that trend. "The team has great energy and we're really excited to be here," he says. "You usually don't have a home-court advantage in golf and this is it for us. The fans are going to be very excited to have the tournament here and I think it's really going to bring out a lot of good emotion in everybody."