Perry almost home and dry

KENNY PERRY'S tight smile was a conscious reflex, forced insouciance as he accepted greetings and good wishes while going through his routine on the practice putting green. He could not mask the tension, as he would later concede.

"I said to Jimmy (Furyk, his partner), 'You're going to have to play the first couple of holes and let me settle down a bit.' I was nervous out there. I have never felt that way in my whole life, even in team competitions or anything."

Perry is a Kentucky native from just up the freeway in Franklin, so Valhalla represents a backyard of sorts and 40,000 neighbours dropped in to catch his progress. His unease was understandable.

Playing alongside Furyk, he was excused responsibility of the opening tee shot in the match against Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, but when it came to his turn to play, he could not shake that early-morning chill from his bones, pulling his shot from the fairway into a greenside bunker.

The wonderfully boisterous ovation that had greeted his arrival on the tee didn't provide the requisite adrenaline surge but a single shot four hours later would define Perry's opening day at Valhalla.

Furyk had missed a nine-foot putt to close out the match on the 16th, and Perry blew his par putt past the lip of the hole from five feet on 17 as the Americans again spurned the opportunity. But it was the 18th that will haunt Perry's dreams, as he failed to get the required draw with his driver, his tee shot finishing in the water.

Maybe it was the memory of the missed putt on the previous green or perhaps Garcia's booming drive that found the fairway but it was the 48-year-old Kentuckian who blinked first. The European gratefully accepted the escape clause, eventually conceding the hole to scramble an unlikely half. Dormie two, they could not have envisaged such a reprieve.

For Perry and Furyk, it was a catastrophic end to a morning that had promised so much. Despite conceding the first hole to a birdie the Americans responded manfully, Perry holing a great 18-foot putt for birdie on the third that was met with an explosion of noise.

The huge gallery that accompanied this match relished the opportunity to show solidarity with the local boy and this represented the ideal incentive.

The volume control was soon to be turned right up. Though Garcia holed a five-foot birdie putt to nudge the Europeans ahead again, a European bogey on six and Perry's three-foot birdie putt on the next put the home team one up.

The latter's body language at this point was in marked contrast to the earlier tension.

The pairings traded birdies on 12 and 13 but when Garcia found the water with his pitch at the par-five 15th, it appeared time to get the bunting out for Perry's homecoming.

The ebullience of the local supporters seeped away as the American pairing failed to close the deal, the putting blade dulled by pressure. Perry's drive on the 18th was accompanied by a collective, guttural howl of anguish from those outside the ropes.

Garcia voiced the feelings of the Europeans in salvaging a half point: "Two down and two to play (so to) get a half is greater. It was a very hard-played match and they played nicely."

Handed the afternoon off, Perry focused on the positives: "What an experience to be here in Louisville in front of my home folks."

It could, of course, have been just that tad sweeter.