First of all, for the impatient ones, yes, you will all get your participation certificates over the weekend.
I will now say the last few things that I would like to say to all of you, and that will be the end of me until next year. The speech has turned out to be a bit long, cos I´ve had plenty of time to think about it over these nearly eight months that have gone past :)
I have plenty of thank yous to give away today, and the first one has to go to those who make any competition possible: the players. To the qualifiers and the non qualifiers, I hope to see you all again next year trying to get into the teams.
Next, to those who I, and no organiser, can control. Those who made this much more interesting than I could have planned it to be: the supporters. The people who didn´t qualify, or didn´t even try to qualify, but followed their team´s progress and turned up for the matches on IRC. And, talking about that, also thank you to those who have made IRC commentary possible. It was a last minute addition, and it was simply great.
And last but not least, a big thank you to both captains. If, when we had the elections back in May, you would have asked me what sort of Captains I, as organiser, would like, I would have said exactly what Paul and Niv have been. They helped me when they had to (and when they didn´t have to, did it volunteerily) and they cheered on their teams at the same time that they kept respect for the other team.
I think this tournament has been the proof of what I usually say: the best way of making friends on here is to join the Community Organised Tournaments section and start playing. I have finished this tournament with a new bunch of people on my list and with a satisfaction that I will never forget.
And there´s not much more to say. The Ryder Cup has gone as smoothly and as well as I could have hoped for considering it was the first edition. It has been exciting to the end and we´ve had some terrific matches. There have been a few issues which I will try to do something about next year, and a couple of tense moments, simply due to misunderstanding in my opinion. Besides, what would a Ryder Cup be without a bit of spice? A couple of people have suggested it has been the best tournament ever. Well... I don´t know about that, and I´m not the one to judge it anyway, but thanks for saying it, it shows that people have enjoyed it.
Finally, congratulations to U.S.A., the big winners of the first ever WGT Ryder Cup.
Qualifying process for the 2010 Ryder Cup will start in April. More details then :)
Goodbye