Sutton lays it on the line for misfiring US

American captain Hal Sutton has set his team a target of five points from today’s eight matches in the 35th Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills.

Trailing by a record five points, Sutton dropped Phil Mickelson for the morning fourballs after the Masters champion and Tiger Woods combined to lose both their matches on the opening day.

Woods was handed his 10th different partner in Chris Riley for the second match on the course this morning, and Sutton revealed the former world number one had tried to rally the stunned home side in last night’s team meeting.

“I told them you all have to take responsibility for the fact you didn’t play well,” said Sutton, who also pulled no punches in a frank press conference on Friday evening.

“I said let’s set some goals and Tiger agreed with that and he had a few things to say about that and we took it from there. He was a little more vocal.

“I said a reasonable goal was to score five points. Any more than that is the icing on the cake but let’s make sure we get the cake.”

European captain Bernhard Langer had warned his players to brace themselves for an American fightback and the majority of the 38,000-strong crowd quickly had something to cheer in the opening match.

Veteran Jay Haas and Chris DiMarco, the home side’s only winning pair yesterday, were up against Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood and Haas rolled in a 15-foot birdie putt to win the first hole.

Woods missed a similar birdie putt to Haas on the first but still won the hole after Clarke three-putted, Poulter also unable to make par after finding trouble off the tee.

Westwood also three-putted the par-five second after his approach was unfortunate to run through the green, keeping the European pair one down in the first match.

The all-rookie pair of Paul Casey and David Howell were taking on Jim Furyk and Chad Campbell in the third match of the day, and both missed good birdie chances on the opening hole.

Langer had unsurprisingly kept faith with the pairing of Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington, who had won both their matches on the opening day.

But they got off to a poor start with bogeys at the first to trail Stewart Cink and Davis Love, the first time for 143 holes that Montgomerie had been behind in a Ryder Cup match.

Clarke and Poulter still trailed Woods and Riley but Clarke’s par three on the third was enough to reduce their deficit to one hole, while Garcia’s 25-foot birdie on the same hole got the top match back to all square.

Casey and Howell were also on level terms, Howell holing a testing eight-foot putt on the second to match Furyk’s birdie.