A 30-foot eagle putt on the final green at the Barclays Singapore Open yesterday made Rory McIlroy the European Tour's youngest money list winner since Sandy Lyle in 1980.

Ian Poulter, the new golden go-to guy of European golf, will in due course make a "wonderful" Ryder Cup captain, according to Jose Maria Olazabal, but whether the Englishman will accede to the post as a major winner remains far less certain in the Spaniard's mind.

Smitten by Europe's epic comeback at Medinah on Sunday? Here's our brief blaggers' guide to the game for Johnny-Daly-come-lately golf fans

Belgian rookie Nicolas Colsaerts described the post-match Ryder Cup party as “a bit wild” after emerging bleary-eyed this morning following Europe's remarkable comeback win over United States.

Europe may have taken 8 1/2 points from 12 singles matches to win the Ryder Cup - but captain Jose Maria Olazabal believes the seeds were sown the previous afternoon.

Man from Vermont and his childhood idol are proving to be the most compelling American pairing since Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as they beat all before them

Today

Thank God for the passion and the achievement of Mark Cavendish and the uplifting evidence that enough people in this country still value such extraordinary effort they voted him BBC's Sports Personality of the Year in a landslide.

Rory McIlroy is not only playing for Ireland in China this week, but possibly for the future of the World Cup as well. Certainly, a high-profile win for the young golfing prince would give the 58-year-old competition a better chance of survival.

Like the bloat fish says at the end of Finding Nemo: "Now what?" Rory McIlroy rolled into Royal St George's riding the wave of hype and expectation that he surfed so effortlessly to win the US Open in Maryland last month. He got blown out to sea in Kent. McIlroy was unlucky with the draw and got as battered as the fish on sale in town. Hours before the end, he knew he'd had his chips, too. He trudged off the links looking like he was suffering a nasty case of indigestion from a soggy Sandwich. He shot a final-round 73 to finish bedraggled, befuddled and delighted to be in out of the rain at seven over par.

When Seve Ballesteros dinked a tricky shot along the ground between the bunkers during The Open at Royal Birkdale in 1976, "golf had a new entertainer". So said Gary Lineker in Seve: The Legend (BBC1, Sunday), adding that the Spaniard combined "sport and showbusiness". So Seve was the new rock 'n' roll of golf – or at least the new chip 'n' run – and his premature death in May adds to the impression. The sport whose only claim to craziness was lurid trouserwear could boast flair of a different kind.

A stranger to the game of golf would have been hard-pushed to recognise Luke Donald as the world no 1 yesterday, partly because there was very little accompanying razzmatazz – spectators were manifestly more interested in the group just ahead, which included a young Ulsterman called McIlroy – but partly also because Donald's short game, usually as reliable as a metronome, clicked only sporadically.

From a boy to a man. Eight-year-old Rory McIlroy used to chip golf balls with a plastic club into the washing machine at his Holywood home in Northern Ireland. The 22-year-old spent the last four days tossing the world's greatest players into a spin cycle and hanging them out to dry. It has been a glimpse of what to expect for the next decade.

It was an emotional day here at the famous Surrey course yesterday as some of the game's biggest names gathered to play in a pro-am to raise funds for the Seve Ballesteros Foundation and Cancer Research UK.