* Sport * Ryder Cup Ryder Cup 2010: Graeme McDowell the perfect hero for Europe

Graeme McDowell celebrates during his decisive match against Hunter Mahan. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

The sport was enthralling, the climax gripping and the celebrations tumultuous as the rain-delayed 2010 Ryder Cup in Wales finally ended yesterday in tears for the losers and buckets of champagne for Colin Montgomerie and his European team.

A victory by Graeme McDowell over Hunter Mahan in the last of the 12 singles matches was enough to give the home team a 14½ against 13½ victory over opponents who refused to bow in the face of impossible odds. Only the brilliance of the Northern Irishman, who holed a stunning birdie putt on the 16th green to extend his lead in the match, and the nervousness of Mahan, who duffed a chip shot on the par-three 17th that sealed his defeat, finally turned back an American tide that had threatened to deny Montgomerie a captain's victory to add to the many he has won as a player in this event.

"I didn't hit a shot out there so it's not much of an achievement," the Scot said afterwards, dedicating the victory to Seve Ballesteros. "But it is a proud, proud personal moment for me and for all of us in European golf. My players all played magnificently, all 12 of them."

For his opposite number, the USA captain Corey Pavin, there was the consolation of knowing his team had obliterated once and for all the notion they could not care less about this event. Clearly they did. "Europe played better than us but only by a little bit," he said afterwards. A little bit? The margin was smaller than that.

As for Monty's magnificent dozen? Well, if there was some artistic licence in that epithet he can be forgiven; unremitting euphoria and all that goes with it are the prerogative of the winning captain.

In any case what mattered was that McDowell, who won the US Open earlier this summer, was magnificent when his captain and his team-mates needed him to be. Through the years the Irish have developed a habit of holing the winning putt in this event and if the latest member of a club that includes Eamonn Darcy, Philip Walton and Paul McGinley was disappointed in being denied the chance to actually watch his ball roll into the hole, he hid it well.

"I didn't need to hole a putt, thank God," he said. "I was so nervous out there. I just can't describe the feeling of this golf tournament – trying to win it for 11 other team-mates, the caddies, the fans and Monty; it's just a special feeling. There is nothing quite like it."

Europe went into yesterday's singles holding a three-point lead and at one stage during the afternoon were ahead in eight of the 12 matches. An easy victory beckoned, or at least it did until the visitors won a series of matches, some decisively (Tiger Woods over Francesco Molinari 4&3, Dustin Johnson over Martin Kaymer 6&4) and one by a narrow margin (Steve Stricker beat Lee Westwood on the 17th green). Even Phil Mickelson, one of the weakest players on Pavin's team over the previous three days, managed a victory, beating Peter Hanson 4&2, though he took much of the blame for defeat upon himself.

"When I didn't win any of my first three points, I felt more disappointment than I've ever felt, because this is an opportunity for us to win here in Europe," said Mickelson. "And so the fact that we came so close, and I let some of these opportunities to gain points for our team slide, it does hurt more than some of our past losses."

The home team responded, with points coming from Luke Donald, who beat Jim Furyk one-up, and Ian Poulter, a victor over Matt Kuchar, but as the day progressed a victory that had seemed inevitable began to look uncertain – a feeling that intensified as Rickie Fowler, the youngest member of the US team, clawed his way back into his match against Edoardo Molinari.

Going into the back nine, the Italian was four-up on his opponent. He was still three-up with four holes to play, at which point the Beach Boy-lookalike reeled off three successive birdies to narrow the margin to one-up. That turned the par-five 18th into the golf's very own Gunfight at the OK Corral.

Molinari got his ball into the hole first, but in the regulation five shots, leaving the youngster with a 15-foot putt for a birdie four, which he rolled straight into the centre of the cup.

Even Tiger Woods was impressed. "It was great to see some of the new kids doing so well out there, especially Rickie," the world No1 said, taking the trouble to single out the youngster among all his team-mates.

In the end, it came down to McDowell and Mahan on the 17th hole, watched by their team-mates and captains, a good portion of the 35,000 mud-splattered souls up at Celtic Manor, and a television audience around the world running into many millions. Major championships come with their own particular pressure but, as McDowell said, the Ryder Cup exerts pressure of an altogether different order and in the end it proved too much for the American. His attempted chip from 15 yards short of the green did not even reach the green, far less the flag.

Afterwards, he was distraught, unable even to string a few words together to explain what had just happened. In the end, Stewart Cink made an impassioned defence of his colleague . "If you go up and down the line of the Tour players in Europe and the US and asked them if you would like to be the last guy to decide the Ryder Cup, probably less than half would say they would like to be that guy and probably less than 10% of them would mean it," he said.

"Hunter Mahan put himself in that position today. He was, as a man on our team, to put himself in that position. Hunter Mahan performed like a champ out there today, all right. And I think it's awesome."

It was hard to argue with any of that, but the pain of disappointment will remain with Mahan for a while yet, and maybe forever, just as the exultation will never leave McDowell. Sainthood beckons for the man who had been placed 12th in the singles order by his captain in case of such an emergency.

Montgomerie and his plethora of vice-captains – five at the last count – held a pow-wow on Sunday night and decided a man who could hold his nerve on the final nine holes of a US Open had the makings of a Ryder Cup hero.

It was a risky strategy to hold back one of Europe's best players but like all good captains the Scot, who later confirmed that he would not be seeking to captain another Ryder Cup side, has not only been good this week, he has been lucky. "There was a reason we put Graeme where we put him and it worked out brilliantly," he said.

It did and, in the end, so did the 2010 Ryder Cup, a glittering jewel in a landscape of mud; as good as it gets in the world of sport.