It was the morning after the night before. And the morning after a night of unbridled Ryder Cup glass-clinking can dawn fairly hazy. “I feel more tired than hungover,” said a bleary-eyed Thomas Bjorn as ambled into the media centre clutching the cherished gold chalice.

The Ryder Cup itself looked pretty sprightly too given that it would’ve spent all evening in the merry midst of the jubilant frivolities. For Bjorn, his stint as captain reaped its reward with the ultimate triumph over the USA at Le Golf National.

For over 18 months, it’s been an all-consuming role. Now it’s time to get back to the day job. Whatever that is. “I’m quite looking forward to finding something to do and then put my time and effort into that,” he said. “This has been amazing. It’s been fun. It’s been testing. I learned a lot about myself in the process, as well. I learned how to work with people, and that’s not easy when you’re an individual sportsman.

“You’re used to getting your own way a lot, and in this, there’s a lot of people involved that you have to work with. My frustrations as a player comes from underachieving or putting in hard work and then not getting out of it what I feel like I’ve put into it

“With this job, I feel like I’ve put in the hard work but I was also well aware that I couldn’t deliver the result. The players have to deliver the result. So I can only push to a certain point, and then it’s for them to take over.

“Sunday is the hardest day at the Ryder Cup because once you put the (singles) order in, there’s nothing you can do. The only thought is what is going to be the end result on the end of the day.”

The result was magnificent. A 17 ½ - 10 ½ win was beyond Bjorn’s wildest dreams and in Francesco Molinari, who became the first European to win all five matches, he had a man who played like a dream.

It’s been that kind of season for the Italian. He won the BMW PGA Championship in May, went to America and won on the PGA Tour in July and then capped it off by claiming the Open Championship. In that series of events, Molinari had missed some major European Tour events – including the French Open over the Ryder Cup host venue – and his decision to play in the John Deere Classic in the US the week before the Open led to Bjorn questioning his scheduling.

“I said to him ‘is this the right move’,” added Bjorn. “I was a little bit worried. He said, ‘I have to do this but I promise you I will make the team’. I got a message on the Sunday night after he won the Open saying, ‘is this good enough?’.”

The seven point winning margin was certainly not what Bjorn had expected. “I prepared for something that was really tight,” he said. That preparation was thorough as he tried to build for a variety of eventualities.

“In this game of fine margins, Bjorn endeavoured to make sure those players in the lower order of the singles would be fully equipped should their match become decisive.

“When it’s tight, it comes down to those singles between nine and 12,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘how do I get that across to those guys mentally?’. Everybody is on the ground on the first and the second but as the day goes on, it empties out and when Alex (Noren) teed off, it’s a pretty lonely place. That’s a difficult place to be.

“So I made four videos. One with Paul McGinley from 2002, Monty from 1997, Graeme McDowell from 2010 and Martin Kaymer from 2012 when they were in those singles matches that were key and they told the story to camera about what they experienced.

“It was to give them (the current players) an idea that it might actually come down to their match. I wanted them prepared in their heads.”

Bjorn had 12 heroes over the three days with every player contributing at least one point to the European cause.

The thumping singles win for his fellow Dane, Thorbjorn Olesen, over Jordan Spieth gave him plenty of satisfaction. “I’m proud of all of them but as a friend, as a Dane, he’s probably the one that I’m most proud of for what he did,” said Bjorn, who left the rookie out of Saturday’s session but watched him roar back with a rousing win over the multiple major champion.

“It was tough for him. It was tough for me to leave him out on Saturday because I’m so close to him, I’ve followed him, I wanted to play him five times in my heart, but in my brain I had to go with what was right for the team.

“Leaving him out on Saturday was extremely difficult, it really was. Not everybody can do what he did on Sunday. It said a lot about his character He really stood up and he was angry in the right way. He channelled that out on the golf course to win a point.”

Bjorn and Europe would make a huge point.