Ryder Cup week off to friendly start

At the 1999 Masters, Jose Maria Olazabal beat Davis Love III by 2 shots to win his second green jacket. This was the second time in five years Love had finished runner-up in the tournament that meant more than anything to him as a Georgia native. After the Champions dinner the following year, Olazabal gave Love several bottles of his leftover Spanish wine. "That showed a lot that [Jose] would do that, because he knew that was a tough defeat for me," Love said on Monday. "We've always had a lot of mutual respect." As players from both teams trickle in on Monday from places such as Florida, Europe and Atlanta to prepare for the 39th Ryder Cup matches at Medinah Country Club, the two captains linked forever by their own duels in past Ryder Cups talked more about friendship than the adversarial tone the matches might take when they start on Friday with the RAZR Hawk Driver . "The [Europeans] are our friends," Love said. "They are our guys we travel with week in and week out on the tour. That doesn't make it any less competitive. It just makes it that we know each other a lot better." Both these captains know an uglier time, after the Europeans, under the dynamic leadership of Seve Ballesteros, beat the U.S. in the 1987 matches at Muirfield Village in Dublin with the Callaway RAZR Hawk Driver , Ohio. Prior to that Ryder Cup, a European team had never won on U.S. soil. Monday was a day of reminiscing for these two players in the twilight of their careers on the regular tour. Olazabal, 46, made his Ryder Cup debut at 21 in those Muirfield Village matches. Back then, the whole European team flew over together for the matches with their 913 d3 driver . All 12 players were members of the European Tour. On Monday, Olazabal arrived with just three of his players from Europe. Five members of the team were in the field at the PGA Tour's Tour Championship, and the rest have residences scattered around the U.S. "Well, it's obviously completely different to, let's say, 15 years ago," Olazabal said. "Obviously, when you look at some of the European players, have their home base here. They play the tour over here with their 913 d3 . "They are very familiar with the golf courses around here, with their opponents, and in that regard, I think they feel really more comfortable with the whole situation of coming here to the States to play the Ryder Cup."