Golf: England grateful to Italians

THEY needed calculators as well as clubs yesterday as mathematics came into play as much as the Road Hole in the Alfred Dunhill Cup.

Stroke counts, not victories, became all important and an idea of the permutations at play was that England, who lost to Spain, got to the semi-finals only because an Italian defeated a Japanese. Confused? So was everyone else.

The spectators looked blankly at scoreboards trying to grasp what was happening and the players were hardly more enlightened. Certainly Silvio Grappassoni had no idea he had them dancing in the streets of Rotherham rather than Rome when he holed a putt of 20 feet at the first extra hole to defeat Japan's Nobumitsu Yuhara.

'I didn't realise who I was helping,' England's hero said. 'I was playing for my country, holing the putt for myself.' Did he have any connections with England? 'No.' An English girlfiend? 'No, but I'll try.'

The league format that the organisers introduced to the event for the first time was the chief cause of the confusion. In theory, yesterday should have been the climax of the four round-robin groups, but results on the first two days had conspired to ensure that most of yesterday's matches were irrelevant.

Three of today's four semi-finalists lost and the surviving team who did win, Australia, could also have been beaten and still made it into the last four.

Only England's group was in question as the leaders in the other three leagues had such commanding leads in terms of strokes played that only a calamitous sequence of scores would prevent Scotland, the United States and Australia from progressing.

'It was hard to get yourself going,' the US captain, Tom Kite, said after the 2-1 defeat by Ireland. 'We knew we'd go through as long as we didn't hit 80s and we did just enough.'

England did just enough to ensure they would not be involved today, but then the Italians intervened. David Gilford beat Jose Rivero with a 69, but Steven Richardson's 77 and Jamie Spence's 72 ensured they lost 2-1 to Spain and their combined stroke total of 653 would have left them in second place if Japan had won yesterday.

The Japanese came reasonably close, too. Hiroshi Makino lost to Costantino Rocca, but Yuhara and Masahiro Kuramoto's halves with Grappassoni and Guiseppe Cali respectively meant that, under Dunhill Cup (if not the Ryder Cup) rules, both drawn matches had to go into extra time.

Two years ago the regulation had cost Japan a place in the final when they lost to England despite getting a win and two halves in their semi-final, so they would have appreciated the irony if they could have ousted England by the same sword yesterday. Instead Grappassoni came to England's aid.

The Ireland-United States match might have had an edge to it, but any suggestion it was going to be played in an atmosphere of ill-feeling was refuted as soon as Christy O'Connor Jnr and Fred Couples, the Masters champions of Britain and the United States, confronted each other on the first tee. On Friday the Americans had questioned O'Connor's role when Korea's Park Nam-Sin had been disqualified on the first day, but yesterday there were smiles rather than insults flying.

'There was no question of it being a grudge match,' Couples said. 'We're friends. We talked all day. There was no problem. In fact we joked about it.' O'Connor, too, played everything down. 'I apologised for what had got into the papers,' he said. 'It was a very minor issue and the way it's been blown up is ridiculous. Fred and I have written to each other since we played in the Ryder Cup in 1989 and he's going to come over to Ireland after next year's Open. There was no acrimony.'

Another team, too, were happy in defeat even though they will play no further part in the tournament. Before a ball was hit, Thailand were looking to avoid a whitewash in all their matches and halt a sequence of 3-0 defeats in the finals. 'Our ambition is to lose a match 2-1,' their manager had said and yesterday his wish came true when Thaworn Wiratchant's 77 was too good for Germany's Torsten Giedeon.

Indeed the Thais almost won the match, Heinz-Peter Thul defeating Santi Sophon only through a play-off. On Friday Thul had needed a birdie three to beat South Africa's Ernie Els at the extra hole, but yesterday a four was good enough as Sophon three- putted his 19th hole of the day.

That was a result the spectators understood. What followed was nothing like as clear.

(Photograph omitted)