THERE must have been a Roman in the gloamin'.

There was certainly a Frenchman, a Northern Irishman, two Americans and a cast of thousands. Some of them behind ropes, a couple of them on the green, some of them in the grandstands and the rest of the them on the fairway watching as Graeme McDowell sized up a 25ft putt.

The Ryder Cup was reaching the dusk of a frantic Friday. McDowell, Victor Dubuisson, Phil Mickelson and Keegan Bradley had spent the best part of four hours missing putts before a travelling army inside the ropes that surely must have tested their forbearance.

There were so many people travelling in their wake that one expected the scene to be shot in black and white with a Laurence Olivier voiceover pointing out the bathos of this horde of refugees with a cut shot to an old woman shoving a pig in a pram.

This motley bunch looked on as the paying punters took a communal intake of breath and McDowell knocked the putt firmly in the hole. One of Mickelson's targets in Litigate had made a convincing closing argument.

Mickelson, a successful prosecutor in the morning, had not so much rested his case as succumbed to fatigue. His winning streak with Bradley had been broken after four successful ties, including a piece of morning larceny when they nicked a win on the last hole from an under-performing Rory McIlroy and Sergio Garcia. But Phil is 44 and has not spent every year enclosed in the gym. He started his day at 8.20am for the fourballs, had the briefest of lunch breaks, and returned for the afternoon foursomes. He played 34 holes and spent the best part of 10 hours on the course.

His morning shift took five and a half hours with Phil & Keegan and Rory & Sergio being overtaken by a man in a top hat walking in front of a black limo, a tortoise with sciatica and a snail carrying a full house-warming party.

This was a slow morning. It was followed by a slow afternoon. It was all played out, of course, in an atmosphere that was viscerally thrilling but never approached crass discourtesy to the Americans.

The problem for Bradley and Mickelson was two-fold. First, Mickelson transgressed against the main law of matchplay: don't miss short putts. He did so on the fourth and fifth greens and handed Europe an advantage they never surrendered, winning 3&2 by dint of McDowell's putt. Second, Dubuisson, the rookie, was the best player in the group.

"I was fortunate to be playing alongside a player who I think is Europe's next superstar. He was awesome today. He didn't miss a shot," said McDowell.

The Europe team played percentage golf in the wind, though McDowell was guilty of two slack shots on the 8th and 9th that made the match closer than it should have been. All was forgiven, of course, when he drilled in the putt on the 16th.

Dubuisson, at 24, admitted he had been feeling nervous before his first start in the Ryder Cup. He said the stress had "completely disappeared" by the time he had walked to the first tee at 2.26pm.

By then Mickelson had spent five and a half hours on a draining Gleneagles course and had to face two fresh players. Tom Watson's thinking was obvious. Why break up two players who are on such a winning streak? Bradley and Mickelson stood on the tee with four matches played as a pair and four matches won. They, too, would have been energised by winning two of the last three holes against Garcia and McIlroy to take a match they could, perhaps should, have lost.

However, there was little spark from the Americans in the afternoon. They missed chances and when presented with opportunities they seemed to back off. The result was that Dubuisson was given an introduction to the Ryder Cup that was not precisely gentle but was certainly comfortable. Much of this was down to his considerable talent and his sangfroid but Watson must have wished that he had decided to tell Mickelson to take the afternoon off. The captain hinted as much later when he said: "Phil and Keegan struggled this afternoon. They missed a lot of short putts."

Mickelson still had the energy to argue his case after a lacklustre defeat but he was not convincing. Butch Harmon, the coach and commentator, said the five-time major winner "had run out of gas".

"I didn't feel I was out of gas in terms of energy but I stopped hitting good shots. I ended up not making putts that I normally would make and hitting some shots that I haven't been hitting," he said.

Case closed.