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Bad start for Europe as team lodges official complaint over food! |
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September 15, 2004; Source: AnyoneForTee World Exclusive Square Game Pie and Black Forest Gateau have team in turmoil - and that's only on the flight out!  By our Food Correspondent, Anne Choviz DETROIT. "An army marches on its stomach" as Napoleon Bonaparte (pictured right, nursing a mild case of dyspepsia) once famously declared, and if that is the case Bernhard Langer's European Ryder Cup team is not off to a good start in defence of the Cup in the United States.  The European team left London on Monday on board a specially chartered Virgin Atlantic A340-600, and although they put on a creditable show of unity for the world's press upon arrival in Detroit (picture left), Anyone For Tee understands from team officials travelling with them that several of the twelve man squad had formed a committee during the flight and lodged an official protest to Captain Bernhard Langer about his choice of inflight meal. "It all began with the 'Golf Game Pie'," said one official, who agreed to tell us the whole story on condition of anonymity. "They were specially made for Bernhard and the team by The Square Pie Company of London, and they were supposed to symbolise the pan-European make-up of the team, by using ingredients from each player's country.""There was rabbit from England, Scottish venison and wild boar from Germany. The meat was all flambéed in Irish whiskey and we used butter from Northern Ireland in the pastry crust. Then it was all cooked in red Spanish Rioja with a hint of garlic from France. It was absolutely delicious, but for some reason they all got very upset about it."  "Colin Montgomerie started it all off by telling us he wasn't going to eat anything with rabbit in it. He said he'd had quite enough of Americans calling him Mrs Doubtfire, and he was damned if he was going to give them a chance to say he was a rabbit on the golf course. Then Lee Westwood said he'd played often enough with Bernhard and had to put up with his slow play, but while he could live with him being a bore, he couldn't stand it if he was going to become a wild bore from Germany." "Well, that got Sergio going, because he said he didn't like hard drink so he wasn't having anything to do with the Irish whiskey. Then, of course, Padraig got stroppy and said that if Sergio didn't like a drop of the hard stuff, he was bloody well not going to swallow any of his Spanish plonk. As you can imagine, Miguel Angel Jimenez got annoyed by this and defended his country's wine, but said he wasn't touching the pie because it reeked of garlic and he didn't want to breathe the fumes all over his team-mates." "Naturally enough, this got up Thomas Levet's nose, who said there was nothing wrong with garlic and that, on the contrary, it had vastly improved the flavour of what was otherwise a pretty stodgy, typically British dish, and that what's more any fool knows that you have rich Burgundy with game, not Spanish plonk. So then Paul Casey said he enjoyed 'typically British' food, and that it was all these foreign influences which were spoiling traiditional English cuisine." "At this point David Howell said that what he would really have enjoyed was a good old-fashioned fish and chips, out of a newspaper with salt and vinegar, but that he agreed with Paul that they weren't going to be up to much against the Americans on a diet of poncy foreign food. To which Luke Donald replied that he lived most of the time in America, and that Europeans knew nothing about decent nutrition. With food like this, he said, they were going to be too heavy and slow to face the Americans, and that what they should be having was lightly grilled fish with a green salad and sparkling mineral water." "Well, Paul McGinley got very angry about this, and said that if anyone was going to try and make him eat Mickey Mouse food and drink mineral water, then they could count him out. What he really fancied was a Jameson's with a pint of Guinness to follow if they had one on board, and would they please wake him up when they arrived. And by now the noise had caught the attention of Ian Poulter, who had his headphones on watching an 'Arsenal's Greatest Games' video, and he said that all this was a load of crap and he could murder a Big Mac and double fries, and anyway he wasn't going to get bloody gravy stains from the pies on his Union Jack trousers for anyone, Ryder Cup or no Ryder Cup." "After this it all went quiet for a moment, and everyone looked round at Darren Clarke, who hadn't said anything yet, as he'd been trying to pick the bits of meat out of the pie without all the pastry and gravy because he was on a diet. He pushed his plate away and started to light up a cigar, at which point all the others except Miguel Angel shouted that it was a non-smoking flight and that they weren't going to let Clarkey poison the cabin air. So then Clarkey said if he couldn't light up when he felt like it, it wasn't worth being on the team, and if any of them wanted to stop him smoking they could go downstairs with him to the economy cabin and try and take the cigar off him.""Well, that seemed to calm everyone down somewhat, so we got the crew to clear away the pies and bring on the dessert. That'll put everybody in a good mood, we thought. But not a bit of it!"  Apparently Sir Richard Branson had asked Bernhard what he would like for dessert on the Virgin flight, and Bernhard told him his favourite was his mother's Black Forest gateau. So Virgin only went and found Bernhard's mother to ask her the recipe, and then brought her along on the flight [picture left - Ed]! That was when it got really bad.""Most of the players just refused outright to eat the gateau. Bernhard's mother was terribly offended. Apparently the players have these superstitions, and it only needed one of them to say, "Black Forest?! Don't eat that, you'll be in the woods all day long, you'll never get a ball on the fairway!" and suddenly none of them would touch it. Seems there are a lot of trees along the fairways at Oakland Hills - oaks, I suppose... Rotten luck for them, the gateau was delicious, but now the players won't talk to me because I ate it."  "The rest of the flight was miserable. After they'd formed their committee and made their complaint, everyone just sat in his seat in silence, except for a couple of them who were really hungry and who kept talking about how the Americans were probably at that very moment tucking into a nice, juicy steak. That didn't do a lot for the atmosphere, I can tell you! Then, to cap it all, someone had forgotten the inflight movies and all we could watch were reruns of old TJ Hooker episodes (right). You can imagine what the guys thought of that! The players were all in a foul mood when we got to Detroit, and they only agreed to pose for the press when Bernhard promised to let them order their own meals for the flight home, win or lose. I just hope we can put all this behind us and concentrate on playing the Americans. You won't tell them about this will you? We all agreed to keep it quiet, you understand."Keep watching Anyone For Tee for further behind-the-scenes revelations from the Ryder Cup. |
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