Ryder Cup: A Bear tamer's endless burden

Barnes will never be allowed to forget the day he beat his American idol twice in one day

A fly-past of former players will be the highlight of the presentation ceremony at the 34th Ryder Cup this week. "All the old farts from way back when," to use the inimitable words of Brian Barnes, who will be one of them.

Barnes has been allotted a one-minute 45-second slot for an interview, 15 seconds more than his father-in-law, Max Faulkner, who was a member of the triumphant GB and Ireland team of 1957, and a whole three quarters of a minute more than Tony Jacklin, widely regarded as the architect of the Ryder Cup revival.

Barnes, of course, has a story to tell, one which, he says only half-jokingly, has become more of a burden than a thrill. Barnes has done many things in his life, some heroic, some less so. He has battled alcoholism and, at the age of 57, is involved in a daily struggle against the onset of rheumatoid arthritis. He was a golfer of prodigious talent and eccentric temperament, a man who made shorts and pipe-smoking fashionable and who can boast the eighth best record of all British players in the Ryder Cup.

Had ordinary Tour events been played over three days, like the Ryder Cup, Barnes would have won many more than his total of 10. But one day out of four his mind tended to vanish. He never won a major, never really came close, but making good friendships and having a good time proved decent compensation. It was just the misfortune of the greatest golfer in the world to meet Barnes on one of those days when the drives arrowed down the middle and the putts rolled into the hole, at the 1975 Ryder Cup in Laurel Valley, Pennsylvania.

It was all Arnold Palmer's fault. Arnie, the United States captain, wanted someone to give Jack Nicklaus a game in the singles on the final day when the trophy was just about won and lost. Bernard Hunt, the Great Britain and Ireland captain, suggested Barnes. So, with a little bit of help from the draw committee, Barnes went out to play Nicklaus. He won 4 and 3. But that was not the end of it. The afternoon singles had yet to be drawn. "Give me that Barnes again," drawled Jack. In the afternoon, Barnes did not play so well. He only won 2 and 1. So there it was, a career defined. "The man who beat Nicklaus twice in one day."

When he ventured across the Atlantic to play the Seniors Tour in the mid-Nineties, the epithet proved a money-spinner. "And on the tee, from Scotland, Brian Barnes, the man who..." But, mostly, Barnes would prefer his career to be less easily distilled. Quite apart from anything, he finds the constant harking back disrespectful to Nicklaus, his golfing idol and good friend. But the fact that his double win is deemed a surprise worthy of celebration 27 years on irks himself almost as much.

"I'm not trying to be blasé about it, but it was matchplay and I can get round a course, you know. So what's so special?" He pauses then laughs. "Mind you, Jack was pissed off."

Barnes knows quite well what is so special. He played in six Ryder Cups, in an era of fading competitiveness, forming a brilliant partnership with Bernard Gallacher and proving a formidable foe in singles. Barnes did the hitting, Gallacher the chipping. In his first Ryder Cup, GB and Ireland managed to halve the match – "we tied, all square, and I played crap"; thereafter, it was mostly men and boys, though anyone in the opposing corner to the 6ft 2in Scotsman knew he had a match.

"We were the poor relations," Barnes recalls. "We'd walk on to the first tee with our plastic golf bags, airtex shirts, two-ply wool sweaters and two golf balls and the Americans would be there with beautiful leather bags, cashmere sweaters and trousers that actually fitted.

"But I'd go into the American dressing-room at the end of the day and Lee Trevino and I would go out to dinner together. They wouldn't do that now, would they? Sam Ryder wanted a friendly rivalry between two teams from either side of the Atlantic. It would be nice to get back to that but I think it's too bloody late. There's too much hype."

Barnes once topped his drive off the second hole of the afternoon singles. "The ball went no more than 20 yards. I've never done that before or since. Luckily, there weren't so many people watching back then. I'm actually not sure I could drive it off the first tee now because of all the pressure." So what happened when all your team-mates gathered to watch? "I told them to piss off back to the clubhouse. I was doing my damnedest to beat the opponent, for pride, and I didn't need them piling on more pressure. To be honest, there were only two times I felt part of a team, when I put on the blazer and at night when they put the scores up on the board. I had pride in my performance and I wanted to beat the hell out of the Yanks, for sure. But I didn't need to be told how important it was."

It is best not to appear at the door of Barnes' beautiful West Sussex house in search of sentiment or reverence. His successes were his own, his failures too. Only once, in winning the British Seniors Open in 1995 did he feel more elation than relief at victory. He had come back from the brink then, in life and golf. But golf was probably not the safest pastime for a character so easily bored. "In the latter part of the Eighties, I'd go out for dinner with the pros and it was all getting too bloody serious," he says. "All they wanted to do was talk about their rounds." But he would have made a good Ryder Cup captain. "Then we really could have started World War Three," he laughs.

He cannot identify much difference between the teams this year nor imagine anything other than the ritually tense finale. Instead of Nicklaus, the Americans have Tiger Woods, whose own relatively poor Ryder Cup record echoes that of Nicklaus himself.

"I don't put anyone in a class close to Jack, apart from Tiger," says Barnes. "Not Faldo, not Seve, not Watson." So who would win? Tiger or Jack? "Tiger, playing his A game. Jack had a weakness – his bunker play wasn't great and his chipping wasn't great. Mentally he was brilliant. Tiger hasn't got a weakness unless you count trying too hard a weakness."

Barnes' involvement this year is limited to the commentary box where his trenchant views will be worth hearing and, of course, to his cameo role in the pageant as the man who beat Nicklaus twice in one day.