Don’t play it again, Sam

IT now looks as if Sam Torrance means it when he says he will not stay on as captain of the European Ryder Cup team at Oakland Hills, Detroit, in 2004.

He has again gone on the record to acknowledge the salient point that there is no way he could improve on the result achieved at The Belfry last month, that even a win on US soil couldn’t, and wouldn’t, have the same impact. Been there, done that and so on.

And, yet, in spite of his lofty words, you suspect the door is still ajar: if the players and the fans want me, and that kind of thing.