Bring on the Bunker Banter

Over the years, Colin Montgomerie has needed a thick skin on the golf course. While the Scot was practising for one tournament, a loudmouth repeatedly called out from the watching gallery of American fans. "Hey, Monty," he shouted. Our hero carried on honing his swing, splashing one shot after another out of a bunker. "Hey, Monty," the barracker continued, ever more loudly "Hey, Monty!" Eventually, Montgomerie turned to the crowd to search for his tormentor, only to hear, "Hey Monty . . . nice tits!"

After losing about three stones during his troubled summer, the chances are that Montgomerie will not have to endure jibes about his bra size when Ryder Cup hostilities begin on Friday at Oakland Hills, near Detroit. However, there will be no doubting the passions of the crowds that will throng the course, nor the fact that Bernhard Langer's European team may have to face some pretty ripe badinage as the US tries to regain the trophy lost at The Belfry in 2002.

Mercifully, it has never been my misfortune to stand on a golf tee where thousands are hoping my opening drive will be lashed into the trees or that a nervy little downhill putt will stay out of the hole. Goodness knows, it can be bad enough on a Sunday morning on the 1st at the local course while several waiting, chortling four-balls enjoy the moment as a tee shot is hoiked into the clubhouse garden. And that gruesome personal experience simply underlines the fact that the US and European players need to have nerves of steel.

The "Yo, you're the man" and "Get in the hole" shouts have long since become tedious but standard sounds on American tournament courses. But the Ryder Cup has taken matters on to another plane: notably at Brookline in 1999 when things became decidedly ugly, and the US team was rightly slapped down for boorish behaviour and fans' indiscipline.

Who could forget the hostile atmosphere? Certainly not Montgomerie, who recalls one particularly nasty remark from a spectator during his match. "I started getting annoyed on the 6th hole. Let's just say I was annoyed enough so I didn't want to lose - and I didn't." And Jose Maria Olazabal will not easily cast aside the memory of the disgraceful scenes at the 17th as players, girlfriends, wives and seemingly umpteen people viewing the event through Stars and Stripes glasses did a jig of delight across the green as Justin Leonard canned a monster putt while Olazabal still had a putt remaining to halve the hole.

Perhaps it was the ensuing backlash, with the widely held perception on the other side of the Atlantic that the US team's actions had been a national embarrassment, that led to the meek, almost supine performance of Curtis Strange's team at The Belfry three years later. Yes, Europe played wonderfully well, helped by some questionable captaincy decisions by Strange, but the gung-ho nationalism of Brookline had been lost in favour of a gentlemanly approach that might just have swayed a little too much in the other direction.

Enter Hal Sutton: a passionate, up and at 'em type, who has been selected to captain the US and inject some of the fighting qualities conspicuously lacking within the Strange ethos. In the first Ryder Cup after 9/11, Strange trod a fine diplomatic line, reminding many that winning and losing is not everything.

However, I get the feeling that Oakland Hills and a team led by Sutton are about to remind Langer's men that normal service has been resumed.

And the crowd will not be some kind of American middle-class gathering. As anybody who has ever travelled to Detroit would surely concur, it is a tough city. Downtown Detroit is a virtual no-go area after dark, and some of the most violent turf wars in the United States are fought between rival drugs gangs in neighbourhoods that contribute to the city's reputation as the country's murder capital. Of course, Oakland Hills is some 40 minutes drive north from the worst of the city, but security is tight.

Local residents need passes to get into their own homes, schools have been closed, and there is no parking on all the surrounding roads. But on the course it is to be hoped security does not go over the top. Some 400 volunteers will swell security to unprecedented levels, and all fans will be asked to surrender mobile phones, pagers, radios, banners, food and anything that might vaguely resemble a weapon.

That is fair enough, but the crowds must not be browbeaten into submissive silence, or the magic of the tournament is lost. Nobody wants idiots yawping on the backswing, but Europe's former captain Sam Torrance believes the hostility of the crowd can work against the home team. "When the crowds started chanting 'USA, USA!' that always lifted me," said Torrance. "The Americans are going to be under huge pressure. The fans expect victory, but if they play badly the galleries have been known to turn on them."

It is the passionate atmosphere within the galleries that helps cement a team spirit normally lacking in what is essentially an individual sport. And it is that group involvement that, in turn makes the Ryder Cup such hypnotic entertainment with an appeal that propels it beyond anything to be experienced at any of the major golf championships.

So let's hope the loudmouths can still be heard, because the fairway critics are most delightfully silenced by winning European golf. And, as objectivity flies firmly out of the window, let's hope that is what happens.