Golf: Garcia's genius balanced by Parnevik's poise

IT WAS only the second match on the first morning of what will probably turn out to be a knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out contest of the most gruelling kind, but the opening battle of the prodigies certainly went Europe's way yesterday when Sergio Garcia and Tiger Woods came face to face in competition for the first time since the Spaniard gave the American a fearful chasing at the USPGA Championship last month. Garcia and Jesper Parnevik, undismayed by finding themselves two down after five holes, held their nerve to catch Woods and Tom Lehman by the turn, overtaking them on the testing 12th and finally winning by 2 and 1.

While Woods struggled all morning to set a match to his genius, Garcia took the initiative with a sparkling all-round display. And while Lehman's play largely reflected Woods's inability to find the killing touch, Parnevik came up with enough of a contribution to ensure that Sergio's moments of brilliance did not go unrewarded.

The 19-year-old Spaniard drove efficiently, sank a beautiful eight-foot putt at the seventh to bring his team back to parity, and went on to deploy his short irons with deadly imagination and efficiency. He looked relaxed and confident, enjoyed the company of his partner and his opponents, regularly shared greetings with family and friends following him around the course, and attracted a constant flow of good-natured salutations from American spectators who had been beguiled by his charge at Medinah.

"It was fun," he said afterwards. "It was great playing with Jesper. It feels like a good team. We even felt comfortable when we were down. You always like to start better, but I felt like we could come back, and we did."

The Americans blamed their putting for the defeat. "We both played well," Woods said, "but we weren't able to bury the putts at the right time." Lehman blamed himself. "Tiger's iron play was superb," he said, "but I just never got the ball to drop. I either misread them or read them correctly and had the wrong speed. Frustrating."

On a bright Boston-blue morning, with long shadows striping the dew-matted greens, the match had started with the two senior partners displaying their intention to provide something more than moral support. Given the task of putting the balls into play at the first hole, they gave the young stars a decent send-off, although Parnevik later admitted to a bad case of nerves.

It was Lehman who set the match alight by chipping in off the flag-stick from 25 feet with the pair's third shot, producing a birdie that gave the Americans an immediate advantage and set the gallery whooping and hollering.

Woods and Garcia both reached the green from the tee at the short second, watching as their partners missed with long birdie putts. At the third, after Lehman and Parnevik had sent their drives down the throat of magnificent twisting, falling fairway, the two young men produced superlative approach shots to the raised green and then stood together in the shade of an oak tree, talking quietly while the birdie putts again refused to drop.

Offered putts to birdie the fourth, Garcia and Woods themselves declined to make profit. But Woods took the US into a two-hole lead on the fifth, a long par four, after Lehman had sent the pair on their way with a blind drive over a rocky mound and into the rough on the left of the fairway, requiring Woods to play an astounding eight-iron on the narrowest possible line from 140 yards to within 20 feet of a pin set tight to the left of the green.

There were deafening whistles and cheers as the four players made their way down from the sixth tee and through the amphitheatre of the scooped- out fairway, on the trail of massive drives from Woods and Garcia, with Mark James zooming up alongside in the captain's buggy. Woods had put his partner in trouble, landing the ball wide to the right and close to a bush, from whence Lehman's uncontrollable recovery flew over the green and into the opposite gallery. Parnevik, however, could not take advantage of a better position, failing even to reach the green with a marshmallow chip from 30 yards out, requiring Garcia to revive the opportunity they had been given.

The sweetest of Spanish pitches rolled to 18 inches, while Woods had to smash his chip out of the four-inch rough and watched it roll 15 feet past the pin, from which Lehman left his return putt short.

Now only one down, Garcia and Parnevik listened to an urgently whispered message from their captain on the elevated tee of the 197-yard seventh before the Swede hit an inspired four-iron to within six feet of the pin, leaving Sergio with the chance to putt along the line of his own shadow for a birdie. Woods's 25-foot birdie putt shaved the upper lip of the hole, Garcia's dropped, and the match was all square.

Conservative drives from the two younger men set up a half at the eighth, but the Europeans were in peril at the long, snaking ninth when Sergio topped the second shot and sent it flying low like a wounded partridge into a mound of grass 60 yards short and to the right of the green. When Parnevik's attempted recovery travelled only half-way to the green, Garcia needed all his finesse to chip to within three feet and salvage the half.

But it was on the 12th, the most feared hole on the course, that Sergio produced the decisive moment of genius. Woods had outdriven Garcia off the tee, and Lehman had sent an awesome long iron spearing blind at the flag over an intimidating rise, but Sergio's wedge from 20 yards provided the perfect example of what it means to play with soft hands, producing a low pitch that left Parnevik with a four-foot putt to win the hole after Woods and Lehman had missed with putts from 50 feet and 10 feet.

In the lead for the first time, maintained the pressure by matching the Americans with every shot. At the par-five 14th, the longest hole on the course, Garcia and Woods both drove the ball more than 300 yards, their shots straddling the centre of the fairway, 15 feet apart, with the Spaniard's perhaps six inches ahead on distance. As they reached the spot, and while Lehman and Parnevik sized up their second shots, the two prodigies stole a glance at each other and grinned with boyish pleasure at the symmetry of their talents.

All the way round they had been watched by large, appreciative crowds, vociferous in their patriotic urgings but never unreasonably so. On the 14th green, as Parnevik putted in from 12 feet to produce another half, the audience was joined by ex-President George Bush and the former First Lady, but the Americans' poor putting form continued through to the 17th, where Lehman missed from 12 feet to allow Parnevik to sink a match-winning eight-footer.

Four hours earlier, shaping to play the stroke that would start the match, the Swede had been given a sudden reminder of what the Ryder Cup can do to a player's mind, even after such lengthy and comprehensive preparation. "I couldn't make up my mind whether I was going to cut it or draw it. I had about 50 thoughts going through my head on the downswing and I was just glad to see it go straight." There were no such nerves, it seemed, for the boy who was about to step out of his shadow.