Ryder Cup 2018: If America can reverse their fortunes, it won't be hard to spot the turning point

The road to 14 points is a long and hard one for the United States. Time alone will tell if they can find it - but have Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth given them hope?

A five-foot putt. No real break. No real slope. Just a hole, your ball and four feet of grass. Even you would give yourself a decent chance of making that putt. A professional golfer, a major champion, a world No4? In his sleep.

But Justin Thomas isn’t in his sleep. He’s awake, he’s alive, and every second thuds with the approaching footsteps of disaster. Not a real disaster like you see on the news, but when it’s your world, your life, your career, your country, sometimes it can feel that way. The United States are 8-3 down in the Ryder Cup and Thomas is his side’s last chance.

He and Jordan Spieth are 1 up, but Spieth is struggling a little and Ian Poulter and Jon Rahm are pounding them hard. With the other three matches over, the crowds - already large - are swelling to noisy multitudes, roaring on the Europeans, heckling the Americans, doing the big Icelandic hand clap thing. The atmosphere is febrile, verging hostile. By the side of the green, both captains, along with Phil Mickelson, Gerard Depardieu and about 250 photographers are watching on expectantly.

There’s your five-foot putt, then. And so the fact that Thomas managed to hole not just one but a whole string of them up the back nine, keeping his nerve and keeping the United States in the Ryder Cup, told you everything you needed to know about him. On a morning of pure theatre, under the highest pressure and with the scoreboard washing blue, Thomas and Spieth were America’s last stand, their final port in a European storm.

One down after seven holes, they levelled the match on the 8th, took the lead on the 11th and then simply withstood everything Poulter and Rahm - Europe’s jack-in-the-box and its Hungry Hippo - had to throw at them. If their resistance at times had the feel of a siege, then it was one also furnished with some luxurious iron play, clear-headed course management and of course those vital clutch putts.

“Huge,” was Thomas’s verdict afterwards. “When one person was out of the hole, the other would pick him up. We knew how big this point was. And we’re not even halfway done with the golf tournament yet.”

Thomas may have been the strongman on the stretch, but it was Spieth who first started to swing the match their way, holing a big 20ft up the hill at the 11th to put America 1 up. Thomas put a 9-iron sumptuously to 4ft on the 12th to double their lead, the first of the iron-willed short putts that would show his team-mates exactly the level of resolve required to turn this tie around.

There was a briskness to the pair as they strode from green to tee, tee to fairway, fairway to green: the blood pumping, the European songs somehow girding them, strengthening them. Rahm, erratic off the tee but extremely dangerous when he found the short stuff, pulled a hole back at the 13th with a lovely approach of his own. The chase was on.

By now, Spieth was essentially a hanging appendage in this match: his game still not quite in tune after his disappointing play-off campaign. Another big 5ft putt by Thomas at the 14th, after which he cupped his ear to the partisan galleries and invited them to do their worst. The 15th, another tense half. The 16th, three birdie chances. Spieth, a miss. Poulter, uproariously, in. Thomas, again 5ft away, with the weight of the Cup on his shoulders also, impressively, in through the side door.

And so to the 17th: Poulter and Rahm both off the green, Thomas on, with another 5ft for birdie. Spieth’s arm was raised even before the ball had hit the bottom of the cup. Against the scoreboard, against the crowd, against a punchy Poulter and a resurgent Rahm, Spieth and Thomas had made their point. “Justin just came up absolutely clutch there,” an impressed Spieth exhaled afterwards.

How big could it be? “As a team, to get the momentum back, getting us closer than four points by the end of the day would be the goal,” said Spieth. “And we know if it’s four or less, it’s been done before. It was a big match. Ian was playing phenomenal golf. And the one hole he took off, Jon birdies.”

“This session is huge,” Thomas said before dashing straight back out with Spieth to play Poulter and Rory McIlroy in the afternoon foursomes. “It’s so easy to look at the scoreboard. But we’re not even at the halfway point of this golf tournament.”

The road to 14 points is a long and hard one for the United States. Time alone will tell if they can find it. But one thing is for certain: if they do manage to turn it around, it won’t be hard to spot the turning point.