Weekley tees off in Ryder war of words

Boo Weekley today warned that Paul Azinger's team are ready to put a stop to their Ryder Cup misery by ending Europe's domination at Valhalla.

While the rest of his US team-mates have been making all the right diplomatic noises and deliberately not winding up the visitors, rookie Weekley, the team's most colourful personality, raised the ante with his booming declaration: "The past has got to change. It's time for a new era."

The man from the Florida backwaters who loves his hunting said: "On paper, we're the underdogs but you don't know what you've got until you get out there and play.

"It's like when we were growing up and getting a new pack of hounds when we went deer hunting. You don't know what kind of dogs you've got until you run them - so let's run them and we'll see."