To wear or not to wear, that is the question for the US team (Extra)

Oct 1, 2010, 19:47 GMT

Newport, Wales - When the floodgates opened over the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales on Friday morning and players started their matches in the rain, American officials were soon running to the Ryder Cup merchandising store.

There they bought wet-weather gear for their players.

Not that they had come to Wales - where it is said that it can rain at any time; and normally does - without rain-gear, it was just that the rain-gear that they had was not doing the job.

American captain Corey Pavin said that they had been disappointed with the waterproofs they had. 'We were disappointed with the performance of them and we just fixed it. They were not doing what we wanted them to do so we went out and bought some more waterproofs.'

The CEO of the PGA, who are responsible for the American team, Joe Steranka, said that the weather was particularly extreme. 'Any time you're going to deal with weather like this, it's going to test the extreme performances of the uniforms and equipment and everything.

'We would have liked the rainwear to have performed better, and we have filled in accordingly and don't expect that that will be an issue going forward.'

He said that the rain-gear had been tested in advance. 'All of the companies that produce this rain gear meet the technical specifications that you would want to have for extreme conditions.

' They do more testing than we could ever do on our own, and we look at the specifications and take them for what they are. In this case the fact of the matter is, they didn't perform as well as they needed to.'

He said that there had been some players who had been happy with the wet-weather gear they had. 'But not everybody was, and you know, we have got to represent all 12 players and 12 caddies, as well.'

The change obviously did wonders for the team as from 3-1 down when play was stopped in the morning, the US managed to take a 2.5- 1.5 lead by the end of the afternoon session.