Edoardo and Francesco Molinari made a losing start to their Ryder Cup careers as they were beaten by Zach Johnson and Hunter Mahan.
Italians slip to narrow defeat against Johnson and Mahan
Brothers Edoardo and Francesco Molinari made a losing start to their Ryder Cup careers as they were beaten by two holes by Zach Johnson and Hunter Mahan.
Due to the late delayed finish of Steve Stricker and Tiger Woods' fourballs match on Saturday morning, the Italians were promoted to the top game of the revised session two schedule, which saw six foursomes matches played simultaneously.
There was a bizarre start to the match with the Europeans' caddies apparently refusing the opportunity to take a revised pin placements sheet.
It proved costly as they lost the first hole to the US duo, although they were straight back on terms after the second.
Indeed, the Americans went one up three times on the front nine, but with a chance to level again on the long ninth Edoardo knocked his birdie attempt five feet past and his brother missed as they feel two back.
It was back to one when Johnson and Mahan bogeyed the 12th and they did the same at the 16th after a poor bunker shot from Johnson.
That enabled the Italians a comfortable two-putt to level the match with Edoardo obliging by nudging his birdie putt to the hole.
But Johnson then dramatically holed from 22 feet at the short 17th to edge his side ahead again as the match headed down the last.
There Francesco needed to hole from 15 feet to keep it alive with their opponents just in front of them, but he left it short and the Americans claimed the point.
Francesco told
Sky Sports afterwards: "It's a bit disappointing. We didn't have a good start, but we managed to get back into the match in the last few hours.
"But they made a great birdie on 17 and it's really disappointing when it's so close to go away without even half a point."
Edoardo added: "We played great from the 11th on. We had a lot of chances for birdie, we hit a lot of greens and the course is playing really difficult.
"It's a shame we didn't get half a point from this match because I think we deserved it the way we played on the back nine, but we have two more matches top play and hopefully we can get some points."
