Winner: Europe, 8.5-7.5
Around the wider world of golf: For the most part, this week's golf concerns the various Q-Schools, so I won't go into those here. Peter Senior did defend his title at the PGA Legends Tour Championship in Australia though.
You can be forgiven if you do not know what the Royal Trophy is, because it hasn't gotten a number of press. (At least, no longer in comparison with other worldwide competitions.)
The Royal Trophy is a group opposition among Europe and Asia, originally spearheaded via Seve. And the trophy changed into donated via the King of Thailand, therefore the call. It's a mixture of Ryder Cup and Presidents Cup thoughts: 8 players from every facet play sixteen suits over 3 days -- 4 change shot, four fourballs, and eight singles -- so every person has to play every consultation. It's currently performed every year, and GC furnished live insurance Thursday - Saturday night time.
The Asian group gained final yr, and the Euros had introduced their intentions to take the trophy back... But it did not appear to be it for maximum of the competition.
Asia dominated the first day, winning 3-1. Going into the final day, Asia had a 5-3 lead and, about halfway through the singles matches, appeared to be running away with it. The Asian team took the first two matches, jumping out to a 7-3 margin and most of the remaining matches were even -- there's a playoff in case of an 8-8 tie, but it didn't look as if that would be necessary. Then the unthinkable happened...
Ryo Ishikawa had been two-up after seven holes in his singles match but Marc Warren managed to square the match by the 18th. And then Ryo shanked a chip across the green (granted, it was a horrible lie) and Marc won the hole with par.
That seemed to open the floodgates. Starting with the Warren win, the Euros won 5 of the final 6 matches -- culminating in a sweet little up-and-down for par on the 18th by Nicolas Colsaerts to take down Liang Wen-chong and finish an unbelievable comeback. (You can get more details in this article from euronews.com. To be honest, I think they started the article when it looked like the Asia team would win, given that the url includes the phrase "asia-storm-ahead-in-royal-trophy.")
Let me be the primary American to welcome our Asian opposite numbers to the US Ryder Cup crew's global.
And let me also salute the Euro team's amazing finish with a Limerick Summary. (These last-minute victory charges have simply got to end eventually...)
The Asian crew could have succeeded?
But the Euros refused to concede it!
They got within the blend
Winning 5 of the six
Final matches to get what they needed. The photo came from the Royal Trophy website.
0 comments