In the airless squeeze of a margin-free Ryder Cup, the numbers mean everything and they mean nothing. At exactly 2.10 on Monday afternoon, Graeme McDowell walked off the 12th green at Celtic Manor two holes up on Hunter Mahan. At exactly 3.10 on Monday afternoon, he stood on the 17th tee with the same lead still in his pocket. Although the state of his match was technically unchanged, that hour had gathered the whole of the Ryder Cup up into a cloud and showered it down on him and Mahan. In the space of just 14 shots, McDowell went from being part of a twosome trailing off the back of the action to being the molten core of the whole competition. This is the story of that hour.

2.10 (Europe 13-9 ahead; Up in 2, down in 4) Bubba Watson’s head wasn’t in Wales for most of last week. He turned up, did what he could but offered hardly anything to the US team on the course. The one point he posted came courtesy of partner Jeff Overton in the Friday-Saturday fourballs and by 2.10 on Monday he just wanted it all to be over. He wanted to be on a plane heading west so he could be with his father who is dying of throat cancer and whose time left is counted in days now rather than weeks.

His 4&3 defeat to Miguel Angel Jimenez almost came as blessed relief, even as it left his team 9-13 down. He straight away went to look for his best friend on the PGA Tour, Rickie Fowler, who was four down to Edoardo Molinari a couple of holes behind him. If he couldn’t contribute with a club in his hand, he’d do his best with a set of pom-poms.

Fowler had just seen Tiger Woods hold his putter in the air and walk towards the hole on the 13th green even as his ball was six feet from the cup. He couldn’t have known it but Woods was had just gone eight-under-par for his previous 10 holes when the putt dropped. “That was the point that turned around my match.” said Fowler later. “When I saw Tiger make that putt, that kind of gave me a little extra life. I went on to win the hole with a par, and that kept me moving those last four where I made a little run.”

Up ahead on the 16th, Ross Fisher had just three-putted from birdie range to complete a tired collapse and hand a 3&2 win to Overton. It meant that none of the five matches left on the course were closer than the two-hole lead McDowell had over Mahan as they played the 13th. The crowd following their match was starting to swell.

2.25 (Europe 13-11 ahead; Up in 2, down in 2) From the beginning of the week, Woods had been an exemplary teammate by all accounts. The first thing he did on Sunday night when the American team gathered in a conference room at an Atlanta airport hotel was to tap Overton on the shoulder and introduce himself. The pair had never met before and Overton had been quoted a few times in the build-up as saying he was looking forward to finally doing so. “Hey, it’s Tiger Woods!” shouted the rookie when he turned around, much to the hilarity of all in the room.

Woods will come back one day. Maybe not all the way but he’ll come back. The field is bunched behind him and he may lose the world number one spot before the year is out but people still broadly love to watch him. On the first tee on Monday morning, someone in the crowd tried to start a chant that went, “Elin is a Euro, Elin is a Euro...” but he didn’t get any traction. He got shushed, in fact. Just under four hours later, Woods finished Francesco Molinari off on the 15th after a brutalising display.

As he walked off the green, it seemed like the whole of the US team (and a fair proportion of the European one too ) was up on the bank waiting for him. And they were, in a way. But there was more to it than just him. Any look at the state of play told you that the US had to find three points from the remaining four matches if they were to hang on to cup. Two of those were as good as in the bag, as Zach Johnson was five up on Pádraig Harrington and Phil Mickelson had just gone dormie four over Peter Hanson. That meant either Fowler or Mahan or both needing to find a way back into their matches before they ran out of road.

So Woods took his spot beside Watson and Corey Pavin and Colin Montgomerie and everybody watched as Fowler and Molinari hit to the 15th with the Italian three up. Meanwhile, as McDowell walked off the 14th green having got up and down from the rough, he nervously asked his caddie Ken Comboy if a half would be good enough from his match. Comboy checked the scoreboard and saw Edoardo Molinari three up on Fowler. “A half will be plenty,” he said.

2.40 (Europe 13-12 ahead; Up in 2, down in 1) A bad 30 minutes for Europe looked to be taking a turn for the better when Molinari hit the best drive to the 15th green all day, rolling up 12 feet away from the hole and giving him a real chance of an eagle that would kill the match dead with Fowler’s ball in the rough. All through the week, Dodo (so-nicknamed because when they were kids Francesco couldn’t pronounce Edoardo) had been by far the stronger brother, his assured putting stroke proving again that the Ryder Cup is won and lost on the greens and really nowhere else. Now, he had a 12-footer to move Europe to 14 points and leave McDowell needing only that half.

But the Ryder Cup does rotten things to good men. Fowler’s chip finished three feet away and suddenly Dodo Molinari’s putt doubled in length. Suddenly, the guy who told his brother on the final hole of the World Cup last year to put his bunker shot anywhere on the green because he guaranteed he’d hole the putt – suddenly, he couldn’t get a 12-footer up to the hole. Fowler rammed his home and stayed alive heading to the 16th.

In the match ahead, Hanson finally succumbed and Mickelson stitched another point into the US total.

As McDowell and Mahan looked through the trees to the 15th green, they saw nothing but faces.
Thousands of faces.

2.55 (Europe 13-12 ahead; Up in 2, down in 1) The awful truth is that McDowell wasn’t even sure he wanted to be the one. It looked like a choice that made sense to outsiders and obviously the whole of the golfing world knows now that it did but when Montgomerie announced his running order on Saturday night, McDowell didn’t exactly jump at it. “I was on the verge of saying something,” he says. “I think I had a blank look on my face and I remember Thomas Bjorn saying to me, ‘G-Mac, you okay?’

“I was like, ‘Yeah, I think I’m okay’. Because I had spoken to [Paul] McGinley night before and he had asked me where I might want to play. And I said – I don’t how honest I was when I was saying it but I said it anyway – ‘Put me anywhere, give me a tough game’. I remember Harrington saying that two years ago at Valhalla. He said, ‘Give me a dog-eat-dog kind of game’. And I guess I kind of said the same thing to McGinley. I’m not sure how honest I was when I said that.”

Talk about being careful what you wish for. He and Mahan hit to the 15th green – Mahan short and he into the deep rough on the right. Mahan squirted a chip to two feet but McDowell fluffed his and only moved it about five feet. Though he would lose the hole, he made sure to drain a 10-footer for par just to make Mahan hole out. They moved to the 16th with only one between them now.

Meanwhile up ahead, Molinari threw away the 16th after a bad drive and a loose putt to leave Fowler only two back. Europe were bleeding badly.

3.10 Europe 13½-USA 13½ (Europe up in 1) A full hour had passed since Montgomerie’s side had made any impression on the scoreboard. An hour in which the only good news for Europe was Harrington somehow managing to keep his match alive by winning the 14th and 15th. But nobody thought for a second that so solid a player as Zach Johnson would throw that kind of lead away in the end and so it proved. Despite the 3&2 defeat, Harrington finished out his Ryder Cup with honour and obduracy – not a bad way to be setting out on the road back.

Up ahead though, Fowler was pulling Excalibur from the rock. On 17, he holed from 25 feet, left to right – a death blow to Molinari who had now lost three of the last four holes without playing especially badly, the putt on 15 aside. When he did the same on the 18th in front of an enormous crowd, it looked like loaves-and-fishes stuff.

One of the all-time great Ryder Cup comebacks had whittled the whole weekend down to two men who right at that moment were standing in the 16th fairway, waiting to play their second shots to the green. Montgomerie was standing 10 feet from McDowell and looked over towards him when he heard the cheer.

“Do you want to know what’s just happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” replied McDowell. “Do you want to tell me?”

“Fowler just got a half. You need to win your match.”

“Shit.”

And then he fizzed a six-iron to 15 feet. Whether he knew it or not, he wanted to be the one. Mahan’s drive had caught the thick stuff and so his approach came up short. He chipped to five feet for an almost certain par but we’ll never know. McDowell never gave him the chance. Technically speaking, it wasn’t the putt that won the Ryder Cup. In everything else but name though, that’s what it was. It dropped deadweight into the right lip and caught the back of the cup just in time. After that, most everything is blur.

3.23 (Europe 14½ USA 13½) Montgomerie had taken him aside on the 17th tee just to make sure he knew what was what. Nothing was won yet, nothing was certain. If Fowler could finish birdie-birdie, there was no reason Mahan couldn’t too. But then the American got tight, under-clubbed and flubbed a chip. To Europe, the cup. To McDowell, the tingle that won’t go away.

“I just remember standing on the 17th green being surrounded by 10,000 people shouting and screaming and wondering, ‘What do I do now? Where am I going?’ It was just nuts.”

That it was, Graeme. That it was.

mclerkin@tribune.ie