It’s 35 years now since Sam Torrance first played in the Ryder Cup. Nervous? Of course he was. “I put on the bicycle clips before walking to the first tee,” chuckled the decorated Scot as he reflected on that stomach-churning debut in the 1981 match at Walton Heath.
Over three decades on, Torrance is still having his senses stirred by this biennial battle. He doesn’t need the bicycle clips now, mind you. The occasion, the excitement, the anticipation, the butterflies in the belly; it’s all part of the intoxicating allure of the transatlantic tussle.
The adrenaline rush is performance enhancing which, is this day an age means that if the Ryder Cup was a pill, it would probably be on the banned substance list. “It’s totally addictive,” added Torrance, who is one of Darren Clarke’s vice-captains here at Hazeltine this weekend. “This is my 12th involvement and it’s in your blood. It’s the best, no question. I never won a major, I never had that privilege, but I didn’t think it compares. You ask players who have won majors and they say, ‘no, this is the business’.”
Torrance certainly got down to business in an event that has defined his long, successful career. The 43 wins he racked up on the European Tour, which spanned 22 years, simply underlined his sturdy, competitive longevity but the picture of him standing at The Belfry with arms aloft in triumph after holing the winning putt in the 1985 match remains an enduring image.
His debut in the contest, against the American dream team which included the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Lee Trevino, may have ended in an 18 ½ - 9 ½ drubbing but Torrance was at the vanguard of the Ryder Cup’s renaissance as the matches, for so long lop-sided, evolved into a series of fiercely contested and evenly fought jousts.
Gazing around Hazeltine, with its vast grandstands, huge, roaring crowds and money-spinning corporate tents that would make a Sultan's palace look fairly hum-drum, Torrance knows the Ryder Cup has developed into quite the beast. At its core, however, some things don’t change. “It didn’t seem smaller back then,” he added. “It felt just as big then as it does now. There’s much more ground and it’s physically bigger but the matches are the same and the pressures are the same.”
After a long, rewarding relationship with the Ryder Cup, Torrance played no part at all in the 1997 match at Valderrama. It was the first time since 1981 that he didn’t have a role. You’d assume then it would be hard to watch. Not quite. “Not being involved was the b*****ks, it was brilliant,” he said with a grin. “I just sat on the couch. I’d never watched the Ryder Cup, never in all that time since I was a kid. It was 16 years without watching a shot and all of a sudden it was like a feast. It was magnificent.”
He wouldn’t be away from it for long, of course. His inspiring captaincy in 2002 earned plaudits from all and sundry as Torrance simply revelled in the cut-and-thrust of the frontline. “I was more relaxed when I was captain than any golf tournament I’d ever played in,” he said. “The fact that I didn’t have to play had a lot to do with it. The pressure was off and it was wonderful to be part of those magnificent 12 players. I didn’t feel pressure.”
Today, it will be Clarke’s 12 men who will be feeling that Ryder Cup pressure.
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