America’s new watergate
The suppliers of rainwear to the USA at Celtic Manor posted a publicity shot on their facebook page on Wednesday showing Tiger Woods and his caddie Stevie Williams during practice on the TwentyTen course. The caption on their publicity shot reads: “That’s a fine looking USA jacket. Weather will most likely be a factor at this year’s event. May the team with the best outerwear win.”
Oh dear. Wardrobe malfunction.
As Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson played their opening tee shots to get the 38th Ryder Cup under way yesterday, the baggy blue rain suits they had been equipped with by captain Corey Pavin made them look like tracksuited tearaway teens but style was not the only issue facing America’s best as they began their fourball contests with Europe in heavy rain that forced a suspension of play after two hours.
The waterproof clothing supplied by Sun Mountain was, well, not as waterproof as they had hoped, and after much grumbling in the USA team room, officials from the PGA of America were dispatched down to the Ryder Cup merchandise pavilion to buy up some replacement outerwear similar to the more effective clothing being worn by their rivals.
So while the comfortable and dry Europeans relaxed in their team room, Pádraig Harrington and Miguel Angel Jimenez being so relaxed they nodded off, the American players dried off and their captain squirmed a little.
“Well, we were disappointed with the performance of them, and you know, we just fixed it,” Pavin said, trying to put his best spin (dry) on the embarrassing development. “They were not doing what we wanted them to do so we went out and bought some more waterproofs.”
Coming less than 24 hours after his opening ceremony gaffe when Pavin forgot to acknowledge one of his own team picks, Stewart Cink, during his player-by-player introduction, this is the last thing the American skipper could have done with and the blame lies squarely with him and his missus, whom he has entitled his “lady captainess” since the day he was appointed captain in December 2008.
Back then, Pavin was more than happy to delegate wardrobe responsibilities to his wife Lisa and it was she who took the plaudits when the team uniforms were unveiled in mid-September.
It became obvious yesterday that the captain and captainess had forgotten to test whether there was substance to match the style, in both the rainwear and, it emerged later, the players’ golf bags, which were also taking on “moisture”.
“All of the companies that produce this rain gear meet the technical specifications that you would want to have for extreme conditions,” PGA of America chief executive Joe Steranka said in defence of the clothing choice. “They do more testing than we could ever do on our own, and we look at the specifications and take them for what they are.
“The fact of the matter is, they didn’t perform as well as they needed to.”
Steranka said not all of the Americans were unhappy with the rain gear but enough were to prompt the unplanned shopping trip and the PGA did not intend to be caught like that again.
“Yeah, we would have liked the rainwear to have performed better, and we have filled in accordingly and don’t expect that that will be an issue going forward.”
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