Ryder Cup Digest

Woosie in the grooveIan Woosnam wasn't too pleased with the state of the bunkers in yesterday's first day of practice, even going so far as to take a rake into his hands on the ninth hole to demonstrate exactly what way he wanted the grooves in the sand.

Woosie's concern came about after watching two of his players, Darren Clarke and David Howell, fail to get the ball out at the first attempt early on in their rounds.

"You just can't get out of them, there's so many rake marks," said Woosnam, who indicated that he wanted the bunkers raked toward the greens.

"At least if the ball is lying in a groove mark, you're going with the groove rather than against it.That's how I'd like to see it," he explained.

Tiger hug for Darren

Ryder Cup rivals this week, a bond still exists between Darren Clarke and Tiger Woods that can't be broken.

Each lost loved ones to cancer during the year and, yesterday, on the first day of official practice at The K Club, Clarke - playing alongside Lee Westwood with Padraig Harrington and Paul McGinley - had spent a considerable amount of time signing autographs for the throngs gathered at the back of the ninth green and was on his way to the 10th tee when he spied a lone figure in the far corner of the range.

Instead of heading straight for the 10th tee, Clarke broke away from his intended route and headed down to Woods. The two had talked frequently on the phone since Clarke's wife, Heather, had lost her long battle with cancer on August 13th. But this was the first time they'd met, and Woods did as he said he would do whenever he did get to meet the Ulsterman: he threw his arms around his pal and gave him a big bear hug.

The show of emotion was poignant, but short and sweet.

As Woods released his embrace, his caddie Steve Williams came over to offer condolences to Clarke, who then proceeded on to the 10th hole, where he joined Westwood, Harrington and McGinley. Back to business, he cracked a drive down the fairway and went for the green in two, finding a greenside bunker.

Sophie joins the throngs

While Michelle Wie fancies the idea of one day competing in the Ryder Cup, Sweden's Sophie Gustafson has her feet far more firmly planted on terra firma and attended yesterday's practice round as an interested spectator. Gustafson, who won the Austrian Open on the Ladies European Tour last Sunday, is attending the matches at Straffan with her husband, Ty Votaw, who is the right-hand man to PGA Tour commissioner Ted Finchem.

Sinking feeling

Who was it said that Irish golf galleries are some of the most knowledgeable in the world?

Whoever it was should have taken a trip to The K Club this week and witnessed the phenomenon of dozens of inappropriately shod women sinking into Michael Smurfit's hallowed turf.

The social side of the Ryder Cup and the hospitality served up by those companies with enough clout to secure tickets might have put some guidelines on their invitations to guests and instructed them on the correct footwear for a rain sodden golf course.

High heels and cocktail dresses might be the height of fashion in the gin palaces dotted around the course, but the sight of women having to pull themselves from the four-inch holes their stilettos were making in the soft ground suggests that what knowledge they possess, it is not about Ryder Cup venues.