There is no animosity, says Love

Davis Love today insisted there was no lingering ill-feeling between the opposing Ryder Cup teams after the controversial scenes in the last contest at Brookline.

Members of the European team, and Colin Montgomerie in particular, were the victims of sustained heckling three years ago, and Justin Leonard’s crucial birdie putt on the 17th in his match against Jose Maria Olazabal provoked much-criticised celebrations by the American team before Olazabal had a chance to putt.

But Love revealed how all was forgiven soon after the American’s dramatic last day comeback from 10-6 down and how the European players did not ask the Americans to “beg forgiveness.”

“There was a time, maybe in 1989 and 1991, when there was a little bit of bad blood in the matches, we don’t like them, they don’t like us,” said Love, the 1997 USPGA champion. “And now we’re friends.

“Darren (Clarke) supplies me with cigars and was letting me practice with his putter last night – although maybe Sam (Torrance) doesn’t want anyone to know that.

“We play a worldwide game now, they’re on our tour, we’re playing on their tour. We didn’t meet Sergio Garcia at the Ryder Cup in 1999, we met him on our tour. And Jesper Parnevik lives in Florida plays our tour.

“Where would we be without the Jesper Parneviks, Sergio Garcias and the Bernhard Langers, guys that have come over and made our tour even better than it was.

“I can’t go and say, ’I’m sick of Darren Clarke this week, I want to beat his butt.’ I do want to beat him, but we’re still friends. If you had given us a choice and said ‘there’s no galleries you all go do whatever you want‘ we might have played together today.

“We’re here to win, we’re not in it as a grudge match. I wish the world could see what happened when we all got together after the last Ryder Cup, and we all sat down or met on the range or had dinner at Valderrama at the American Express tournament.

“They said there is no apology needed. We understand things got out of hand on the 17th green, but it didn’t affect the matches, we’re all friends let’s move on.

“They didn’t expect us to sit down and beg forgiveness. They were happy to move on and go on as friends and there’s no bad blood over any of these matches. That’s the way it ought to be.”

Love believes the home crowd will also help to achieve that goal and feels it is no coincidence the rowdiest crowds have both been in the north east of America – Brookline is just outside Boston and this year’s US Open (where Sergio Garcia was heckled by the crowd) was in New York.

“We’ve always been treated well in Europe,” Love added. “At Valderrama we were getting thrashed and they were enjoying it, but we were treated fairly.

“Our fans at the US Open weren’t very good this year. I think fans in the north east have not been the best golf fans in the world, and the best in the world are in England and Scotland. In Ireland last week they were the most well-behaved golf crowd outside of the Masters.

“As for Brookline, there wasn’t a whole lot of complaining on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, there was just some on Sunday.

“On Sunday they weren’t happy with the way things went and it did get ugly. But it wasn’t all because of the fans, it was just they got beat bad.

“Outside of a few isolated drunk fans, the Ryder Cup has been excellent the times I’ve played in it.”