After the standing-room-only experience that was Ian Poulter's packed press conference at Gleneagles yesterday morning, the politest way to describe Patrick Reed's equivalent briefing a few hours later would be to say that nobody was ever in much danger of being crushed in the stampede to get there.

For those of us who did go along, the experience was something less than life-affirming. In his younger days, Reed acquired a reputation for being (a) a bit wild, and (b) a complete pillock, but it was hard to square the more lurid tales of his colourful background with the figure who, invited to share his thoughts and opinions on the Ryder Cup ahead, proceeded to regale us with a remarkably accurate impression of a root vegetable.

After a while - 15 minutes or so, although it felt much longer - Potato Patrick took his leave and was replaced by Jimmy Walker. Now Walker has a dry sense of humour and the sometimes prickly bearing of a man who got to the top the hard way. He also has an interest in astronomy, but his answers to questions were about as revealing as a look through the wrong end of a telescope on a particularly foggy day. He wasn't quite in the David Duval 'personality of a divot' league, but he wasn't far off.

At the end of which, a fair number of the assembled hacks had indeed lost the will to live - or at least the will to hang about to hear yet another droning Yank put the bland into blandishments with a succession of narcoleptic quotes. Which was a pity, for the stage vacated (eventually) by Walker was then occupied by Webb Simpson, who turned that pattern on its head.

The cartoonist H M Bateman used to prick the pomposity of golf with sketches along the lines of 'The Man Who Broke Wind Near the Lady Captain'. His drawings portrayed aghast expressions and looks of outrage and astonishment. Bateman would have found some rich material on the faces of golf's commentariat as they witnessed this cameo: 'The American Who Said Something Interesting'.

For after a week of polite denials by his team-mates, Simpson admitted that, yes, being skelped out of sight by the Europeans at Medinah two years ago was not the happiest experience of his life. And, moreover, he was more than happy to use the memory of it to motivate him ahead of this year's match.

A little history lesson here. Going into the final day of the 2012 event, the US team held a lead that was not so much comfortable as flock-lined. They were four points ahead. Only the singles matches, traditionally their strongest suit, remained. They couldn't lose. But they did.

Simpson was one of the first to fall, caught in the manic glare of Ian Poulter. A blue tide swept over the scoreboards around the Chicago course, and by the end of the day they told the world that the home team was on the wrong end of the 14½-13½ result. Europeans remember the miracle of Medinah; Americans remember the massacre.

And few more bitterly than Simpson. The 29-year-old missed out on an automatic place in this year's team, but such was his anxiety to be part of it that he took to texting captain Tom Watson, begging for the wild card slot that would allow him to go looking for absolution. The most critical message was sent at 4.30am on the day the captain's picks were to be announced, which probably told Watson he was serious on the matter.

"I made my final plea," said Simpson. "I told him that I wanted revenge for what happened in 2012 and that I really, really wanted to be on the team.

"In our game there's always another tournament. The only downside to that was the Ryder Cup is two years away, so we did have to wait a long time. So I would say it lingered for a little bit, and then I went back to business, trying to play golf and win tournaments.

"Then, this being a Ryder Cup year, I started really thinking about it this summer. Not so much of what happened but that I wanted to be on this team, to try to kind of get back in the moment where we could perform better on Sunday than we did at Medinah."

It was the kind of attitude Watson wanted, the kind of attitude he had himself. Last night, Watson was asked if he would be pressing the psychological vengeance buttons for his team as the start of the 2014 matches loomed. "You bet," he replied. "It affected me. That was a hard, hard loss.

"You learn quickly when you have a defeat like that. You have to carry on and take what experiences you had and make them right for the next time you go out and play. After that loss in 2012 I was in a grand funk, I really was."

Seven of the US team from Medinah are at Gleneagles this week. Seven of the victorious European side are here as well.

By Sunday evening, the American wounds might have healed. Or the Europeans might have poured more salt into them.