Poulter's Claim of Shoulder-barging Adds to Post-ryder Rancour

Just when it seemed this year's match might have passed off without diplomatic incident, the Ryder Cup was embroiled in a fresh row last night. Europe's Lee Westwood, outspoken all weekend about the crowd's hostility towards him, blamed the United States captain, Paul Azinger, for inciting the home fans and Ian Poulter accused an unnamed US player of deliberately shoulder-barging him.

It is believed the culprit was Anthony Kim, who led America's rout on Sunday with victory over Sergio García. Kim and Poulter were caught on television exchanging words after they collided during the Englishman's Saturday fourballs match, a game Kim was following. Without identifying the player, Europe's top points-scorer said: "He hadn't played very well and decided to walk around in the afternoon and make his point. As opposed to walking around me as I was walking off the tee, he shoulder-barged through me. It was pathetic. He should grow up. I said: 'That wasn't awfully nice.' I said in the team room: 'Let's use their energy and turn that in our favor.'"

Westwood claimed the "shameful" abuse he received from a minority of spectators had been worse than the tense atmosphere at Brookline nine years ago, citing derogatory comments about his mother, phone calls both he and his parents took in the middle of the night before Sunday's singles and cheers when he played a bad shot. He bore the brunt of the heckling after his disapproval of Boo Weekley's attempts to gee up the crowd when he was still putting.

"If you look at the crowds when we played in Europe there was a silence when they missed a putt and there was a clap when we won a hole," said Westwood. "There was not the clapping and the cheering and all that kind of stuff straight away. But you know they were incited to do that."

Asked by whom, he replied: "It is down to the captain. You do have to say that, yeah." Azinger and his team had staged a pep rally in front of 15,000 people in Louisville on the eve of the match where he told home fans it was acceptable to celebrate missed putts and mistakes from the European players.

Bernard Gallacher, the Europe captain between 1991 and 1995, joined Westwood in his criticism. "That's not in the spirit of the game or the Ryder Cup," he said. "The problem with Paul Azinger is he tends to speak before engaging his brain sometimes and then goes around apologizing later."

Poulter also conceded that saving Europe's best players until last in Sunday's singles may have been flawed, although he maintained it was a decision made by the team rather than just the captain, Nick Faldo. "We talked about the order for a long time," he said. "We chatted as a team - it wasn't just Nick. It doesn't look good but I don't think it is a true reflection."