I am watching anxiously the start of the second day’s play in the Ryder Cup with some relief that Europe are only two points down after what felt like a complete pasting yesterday. I really love the Ryder Cup; annoyingly to watch it (and test cricket) on television requires me to pay a subscription to Murdoch, which is horrible. The greed of sports administrators results in a monopoly on broadcast rights for major sporting events; if governments actually cared about consumers, that would be stopped.

I watched every ball broadcast yesterday, which ridiculously was not every stroke of the competition. Adverts don’t help, nor the times when the US host broadcaster obviously goes into news or a feature There was a long hiatus at the start of the fourballs yesterday. But it was a pretty agonsising eleven hours watch, with Euope on the receiving end from about 3pm onwards..

The extraordinary course set up Love has organised at Medinah, with no real rough, did indeed favour long hitters, but even more did it turn it into a putting competition and on these super-fast greens the Americans were simply brilliant. Colsaerts putting was also unexpectedly incredible, but that was pretty well it for the Europeans in the afternoon. Westwood looked like he couldn’t hole anything, and a key factor was Justin Rose’ putting touch of the morning deserting him also – if Rose had holed all his putts within six feet, the team scores would have been even.

A mistake by Olazabal not to put Poulter out in the afternoon, and a mistake also I think not to play Paul Lawrie this morning – who was playing well under par yesterday despite being initially blown away be Watson and Simpson.

But I think Europe’s well problem yesterday was that I wasn’t drinking. Good Ryder Cup days always involve plenty of beer. So I have bought myself eight pints of Wadworth’s and I expect a good day.