Valhalla awaits golf’s gods

Golf's biennial transatlantic grudge match isn't a time for understatement. Two years ago in Ireland, beaming after his European team had outclassed America for their fifth win in the last six editions of the Ryder Cup, tubby Welsh captain Ian Woosnam described what he'd just experienced as "the greatest weekend in history". Four years ago, asked what his European teammates thought of their opponents, Paul Casey replied: "Oh, we properly hate them".

Now the hyperbole moves on to the Valhalla Country Club in Louisville, Kentucky, which should have recovered from Hurricane Ike (it felled a TV tower on the 12th and uprooted some trees).

The choice of captains this time round - lone wolf Nick Faldo (right) and cancer survivor Paul Azinger - will do nothing to calm things down. The pair have feuded ever since the American took umbrage with Faldo's lack of grace in winning the 1987 Open, and Azinger recently called his opposite number a "prick". "The bottom line is that the players from his generation and mine really don't want to have anything to do with him," said Azinger.

If anything can dim the brouhaha, perhaps it's the absentees. The great Tiger Woods, never the most enthusiastic Ryder Cup team man, is still recovering from an operation on his left knee. Short of form, Europe's talisman Colin Montgomerie won’t be able to resume his longstanding battle against the noisy, fidgeting American galleries. And Darren Clarke, who last time round played so well so soon after his wife had died, also failed to make the cut.

Faldo has deliberately gone for a young team - he's even ordered a couple of drum kits to keep his charges entertained - and with seven of the world's top 20 players, Europe start as favourites.

They have Padraig Harrington, the Irishman who has won three of the last seven majors. They can pair inspirational, hyperactive Sergio Garcia with Miguel Angel Jimenez, a more laid-back and worldly fellow Spaniard. Then there's Lee Westwood, who’s won more than 60 per cent of his Ryder Cup matches, and a triumvirate of reliable Scandinavians.

Striding the fairways alongside them, the American underdogs will need players like World No 2 Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and Stewart Cink to improve their unimpressive records in this competition.

US golf hasn't spawned too many young stars in recent years, but, since he toned down his partying, 23-year-old Korean-American big-mouth Anthony Kim has made the step from prospect to prodigy. Others among the six rookies on the US team include Boo Weekley (left), who says he used to wrestle alligators off his grandpa's porch in Florida, and local boy JB Holmes, the second biggest hitter in golf.

On their own patch, with the partisan whoops and shouts of "Be the club" behind them, Azinger's team certainly have a chance. Rowdy crowds played a bigger part than they should have when America won both the 'War by the Shore' at Kiawah Island in 1991 and in the 'Bear-pit' at Brookline in 1999.

On the 601-yard seventh at Valhalla, there are two options: play it safe and go the long way round by land; or try to land your drive on a tiny island and reach the green with a long second shot over the water.  Matchplay golf tends to favour the brave. ·