Bullish Sutton sees red, white and blue

There is good reason this time to believe, as all the combatants here have been at pains to agree, that there will be no repeat. Yesterday, James Montgomerie, a gentleman who was forced to leave the course at Brookline because of the intolerable abuse his boy was receiving there, now found himself having his hand shaken by a well-wishers who told him: "Good luck, I hope Colin plays well, I really do."

"The world is a different place, a better place since then," reflected Monty. Certainly, five years on, a much chastened nation now ought to be better able to put a mere golf tournament into perspective.

Yet you can't help worrying a bit about US captain Hal Sutton. He's come out with the best teasing stuff about we Europeans still moaning over Brookline - "Y'all have been kind of like a bad marriage partner . . . we've apologised for five years for what happened so y'all need to forget about that" - yet at the same time can't help still sounding as gung ho as when he was one of the worst cheerleaders among the players at Brookline.

"I just gotta keep Hal out of the china shops," joked Sutton's venerable assistant, 81-year-old former captain Jackie Burke, and you knew what he meant. Sutton is like a cross between General Patton and a barking Texan football coach.

He doesn't so much wear his patriotism on his sleeve as have it tattooed all over his forearms and his good ol' boy routine, complete with pearls of homespun wisdom, can't quite conceal an almost scary determination to win.

If it gets a bit OTT out there on Sunday afternoon, could he be relied on to calm down his troops and ensure they behave, as he has promised, like gentlemen? Hmm. Give us the understated Bernhard Langer any day.

Yet could Sutton's obvious desperation to regain the cup actually pile too much pressure on his charges? Even the way he is taking every opportunity in public to massage the ego of Tiger Woods, positively drooling over him, and to rave about the "greatest putting team" ever assembled could backfire on him. Because the bigger the build-up, the harder the fall.

The problem for Sutton is that the event itself has taken on a special significance within US sport. This nation's major team-sports showpieces - the Super Bowl, the World Series, the NBA finals - are purely domestic affairs. The Ryder Cup is different: it makes them feel like they're really flexing their international muscle, really taking on the world. "Golf 's Olympics", several of Sutton's team have called it this week and, just as in Athens last month, Olympian triumphs are not just expected but positively demanded.

You cannot envy him. Every day here, he and his team still get badgered about why the Europeans supposedly have greater desire and team spirit when it surely must be evident following the Brookline excesses that one of the US problems may well be that they actually want to win it too badly.

Yesterday, Sutton found himself having to defend allowing Phil Mickelson a day off from practice, while Mickelson then had his own commitment to the cause questioned because he had decided to use a new range of equipment close to the tournament. Both charges were ludicrous, but then the phoney-war hype here this week has been fairly absurd, too.

Sutton was finally going to reveal his pairing plans to his boys today amid much speculation that he's so determined to get off to the perfect start that he'll put up the "Dream Team" pairing of Woods and Mickelson in the opening fourballs tomorrow.

If so, the atmosphere here will be extraordinary from the very first tee shot. Over 40,000 will spill into the country club, most of them descending on that single match, and only then can we get the first real feel for whether the " Showdown in Motown" is going to be high on the passion but free of the poison that infected Brookline.

It's a critical test the Ryder Cup has to pass here. Two years ago, The Belfry got the balance of security, crowd control and player discipline right and we remembered why it is just about the grandest sports contest of the lot. Now America has the chance to once again embrace it in the right spirit, too.

"I have some control over these 12 guys. I don't have any control over anybody else in the world," protested Hal. Yes, but those 12 have the power to help control 40,000 by not attempting to deliberately whoop them up into a jingoistic frenzy. Of course, we can rely on you to do your bit. Er, can't we, captain Sutton?