My favorite Ryder Cup memory: John Cook

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We asked several Champions Tour players to share their favorite memories from the Ryder Cup. What did John Cook say was his favorite moment?

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Tom Watson was our captain and I just remember it was such a team thing. He made it that way and promoted it that way. He didn't have a lot of assistant captains to do this and that and really left things up to the players to get themselves ready. His thinking was that we didn't need much, if any, motivation. We just needed to get out and play and get the job done. I remember that part of it that it was really up to us to get ready to play. But I do remember Tom made it a real team thing.

I remember after every dinner we had, once all the official dinners were over and we got into the actual event, Tom would pick four players on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights to talk about what was going on. Each of the 12 players on the team would have the opportunity to address the other members of the team and talk about what was going on. It didn't matter whether it was good, bad or ugly. There were no questions; it was just about how the experience was going and what you thought. Some guys got emotional over it and some guys had one liners which cracked everybody up.

I didn't play a match until Saturday afternoon. Chip Beck and I didn't play on Friday or Saturday morning. We were kind of just going, "Shoot, when does the plane leave on Sunday?" Tom put us in Saturday afternoon against Nick Faldo and Colin Montgomerie.

Tom just kept telling us to be ready when it was our turn. Chip (Beck) and I were fired up and ready to go when we played Faldo and Montgomerie. They hadn't come close to losing a match and we beat them. I remember Chip, old Mr. Positive Chip, was just that the whole day which really helped. He played pretty well and made a couple birdies and I played really well and made some early birdies to either halve or win some holes. We got down to 18 and I hit a good shot in to pretty much close them out and I think we were up and I think we won 2-up.

I remember the atmosphere there at The Belfry was very pro-European, but Tom said if we start winning we'll hear silence and on Sunday there wasn't a lot going on. It was pretty silent and I said to myself, "Well, we must be winning." There were a lot of good memories from that experience for me.