Dismantling of García By Kim the Magnificent Puts States on Track

The first of Nick Faldo's hunches went badly wrong yesterday as Sergio García, sent out to carry the European flag in the opening singles round, collapsed to an emphatic defeat at the hands of Anthony Kim, playing in his first Ryder Cup. Kim repaid the faith of Paul Azinger, the United States captain, by floating around the course in a bubble of self-confidence to crush the hopes of a Spaniard whose days as the youthful prodigy known as El Niño must now be consigned to history.

Yesterday he was completely outmanoeuvred and out gunned by a man five years his junior. The chunky Kim played faster, harder and smarter, and his reward was the heaviest victory for a rookie in the competition since David Duval beat Jesper Parnevik by the same score as an avalanche of US singles successes buried Europe's ambitions at Brookline in 1999.

Faldo must have known that García's exemplary Ryder Cup record rests on his Friday and Saturday performances. The Spaniard went into yesterday's match with 14 wins, five defeats and four halved matches, but in four appearances in Sunday's singles round he had accumulated only one victory against three defeats. Two of those losses, moreover, came when he had gone out high in the order, second behind Colin Montgomerie on both occasions, in 2002 and 2006. To expect the 28-year-old to set Europe's ball rolling was therefore unrealistic, even more so in the light of his indifferent recent form.

But as the two players prepared to set out at high noon, the atmosphere was boiling around the tee box. Behind them a grandstand full of home fans - many dressed like their team in red shirts, as Azinger had requested - held up signs reading "The streak ends today" and "Not on our turf" while chanting "U-S-A" and "K-I-M" in response to the Europeans clustered in a smaller side stand, who were serenading a moustachioed US television commentator with a chorus of "Are you Magnum in disguise?". This, it seemed, was the real Amen Corner.

García and Kim started out with three holes of the finest golf imaginable. Both responded to the surrounding fervor by producing excellent drives at the 1st, followed by superlative second shots. Encouraged by galleries occupying every inch of the ropes from tee to green on both sides of the fairway, Kim hit an eight-iron from 150 yards to two feet from the pin, and the roars had barely subsided when García followed him with a wedge from 130 yards to three feet.

When the Spaniard's suggestion of a joint concession was rejected, he rolled his putt home and then nodded to Kim to indicate that he should pick up his ball.

Was this the move with which 007 tried to lure Auric Goldfinger to defeat at Royal St George's almost half a century ago, inviting his opponent to pick up a short putt early in their match in order to be able to put greater pressure later on, when a similar putt arose at a more vital juncture?

Perhaps Kim had read the same book, because yesterday he was falling for nothing.

An eagle drifted majestically over the 2nd green as his second shot stopped five feet from the hole, giving him the opportunity for a birdie putt which put him into an early lead. The battle of wills was joined at the 4th, when García invited Kim to hole his three-foot birdie opportunity whereas the American conceded his opponent's two-foot putt.

It was at the long par-four 6th that García sowed the seeds of his defeat. His drive landed in the downslope of a bank above the winding creek, buried in a matted carpet of foot-long bluegrass. Lengthy discussions with the rules official ended with Kim muttering "You gotta do what you gotta do" before striding away to complete his par as García accepted a penalty drop on the way to a bogey that doubled the deficit.

Real disaster, however, lurked at the par-five 7th, with its two carries over water. García's second shot landed in the water in front of the green, as did its successor. The sun winked off the jewels in Kim's USA belt buckle as the Spaniard took the long walk to concede the hole.

García was deliberating over every shot, perhaps trying to disrupt his opponent's remorseless rhythm. At the short 8th Kim hit his first false stroke into a sand trap, but got up and down to maintain his margin. His lead was reduced at the 10th, where his chip out of the deep greenside rough failed to make the green, but García immediately forfeited the gain with a tentative putt from 18 inches at the 11th. Arriving on the next tee in a strop even after receiving consoling words and an arm around his shoulder from José María Olazábal, he kicked over his golf bag as a prelude to dropping shots at the 12th and 13th. One hole later it was all over and Kim was raising his arms to an ecstatic gallery.

"I've played with him a couple of times before and I know what he's capable of," García said afterwards. "There were a couple of misses on seven that were huge, and after that the short miss on 11 put the dagger in. It was a hard day - he played awesome and it's hard when you get in this sort of situation. I felt like I couldn't get anything going today."

Kim expressed a regard for his opponent that had not always been apparent in their frosty exchanges on the course. "He has a great Ryder Cup record," he said. "I've looked up to him for a long time and I have a tremendous amount of respect for him.

"It's been the experience of a lifetime," he added. "I got chills up my spine the whole day." And as if the scale of the experience might still not have been understood by his listeners, he expressed it in the values best understood by professional golfers: "I wouldn't trade this for 10 million dollars."