Yee haw, Ryder cowboys, here's Pawd-rayg Harrison . . .

TV VIEW:"LAAAAAAYDEEES AND GENTLEMEN," said the announcer in one of those spine-tinglin', goosebump-inducin', fist-pump-inspirin', high-five sparkin', 'let's get ready to rumble' kind of voices, "welcome to the first day of the 37th Ryder Cup!"

Whoo whooo! "This is match number one, a foursome between the European team represented by Pawd-rayg Harrison and . . ."

Hold it right there, buddy.

At that moment we felt as much enthusiasm for the Ryder Cup as the Kentucky butterfly spotted by Bruce Critchley later in the day. He might have been, as Bruce boasted of Sky's pictures, in "wonderful high definition and ultra slow motion . . ."

. . . the slow-motion technique more often used to capture WABs (wives and birdies, as they so gloriously describe them), emoting when they spot their men stranded in bunkers . . .

. . . but he ruefully observed that the butterfly was fluttering away, heading, roughly, for South Dakota. "Not everybody's caught up in the fever of the Ryder Cup," he sighed.

Well, we were tempted to hitch a lift from the butterfly after "Pawd-rayg Harrison" was introduced to the crowd, just before he got to work with Robert Karlsson against Paul Mickelson and the other fella, who were representing the Paul Schwarzenegger-captained US team.

Pawd-rayg seemed considerably less aggrieved than ourselves, welcoming his new surname with a giggle, but as his team-mates suggested earlier in the day in Sky's QA type thingie, he's a bright man who isn't easily flustered.

"Who would you like to be your phone-a-friend?" they were asked. "Pádraig - he looks educated," said Lee Westwood, making it sound a bit like an insult, while Ian Poulter revealed our fella to be a "closet know-it-all".

Who would you not like to share a tent with on a mountain top? Westwood ruled out Miguel-Angel Jimenez because his "cigar smoke would kill me", while Jimenez ruled out everyone. "I would lub to live with me," he said. Bless him, how could you not lub Miguel?

When they're all in a restaurant, who chats up the waitress? Graeme McDowell: "Sergio." Justin Rose: "Sergio." Oliver Wilson: "Sergio." Karlsson: "Sergio." Poulter: "Sergio." Sergio: "Me."

"Well, we've seen it done, you know," said our host, David Livingston, confirming that Garcia man is, indeed, the ram of the European team.

"Do you beleeb in lub at first sight . . . or should I walk by again?" we can hear him say to the unfortunate woman topping up his rioja.

The American QA, meanwhile, revealed Boo Weekley to be sort of the Sarah Palin of the team, the kind of fella who might believe global warming is "just God huggin' us closer", as that Saturday Night Live sketch put it.

Boo - and why would we doubt Wikipedia? - dropped out of the Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College after a year and started working as a hydroblaster at the Monsanto chemical plant in Pensacola, his job involving him being lowered into large ammonia tanks to clean them. Golf rescued him and he hasn't seen the inside of a tank since.

Who would you least like to make your best man speech? Pretty much all of the US Ryder Cup team: "Boo."

"I don't think any of my friends would understand what he was talking about," said Jim Furyk, scratching his head, but Boo took it well.

"Yee haw," he sort of told the Sky man, at which point Furyk rested his case.

Let the puttin' commence. Off we went. And Harrison was off to a flier. In fact Mickelson and the other fella, were proving to be the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac of the US team; big names counting for nothing, they crumbled.

"Seriously, that is so uncool," said the Mickelson fella when disturbed by a photographer, before having the hapless snapper removed from the course. The pressure was, then, telling - Pawd-rayg and Robert were romping home.

As a nation we might have rejected the Lisbon Treaty, but Pawd-rayg's heart was sure as hell with Europe. In many ways he is the Dick Roche of the team.

But you know yourself, you should never tot up premature chickens before they brew.

"It's an awful feeling when you haven't got a plaster big enough to stop the bleeding," said Rob Lee as Europe's spine-tinglin', goosebump-inducin', fist-pump-inspirin', high-five sparkin' start went awry.

Westwood and Garcia, though, salvaged half a point against Furyk and Kenny Perry.

"Well, half a point isn't really half a point, it's a full point in this, obviously, because they lose half a point," Westwood explained to Rob Lee.

Back in the Sky Sports studio Butch Harmon said he knew exactly what Lee meant, so for fear of looking stupid we were afraid to ask for enlightenment.

We will learn, though, as this Ryder Cup wears on, just as the announcer, we trust, will learn that the name's Harrington, Pawd-rayg Harrington.