The United States team won the competition by 141⁄2 to 131⁄2 points, winning back the Cup on the 18th hole of the final match.

Bernhard Langer missed a six-foot (1.8 m) par putt which would have won his match and clinched a 14-all tie and retained the Ryder Cup for Europe.

This brought heavy criticism from the general media and the European team feeling a sense of bad sportsmanship on behalf of the Americans.

Especially considering U.S. captain Dave Stockton had chosen to play Pate in an earlier match thus risking causing further unnecessary injury to the player.

In post-match interviews serious questions were asked of the American's reasoning and tactics behind claiming half a point for one of their weaker players.

[11] The bad blood escalated at Kiawah Island when on the morning of the Friday foursomes with Ballesteros partnering José María Olazábal against Paul Azinger and Chip Beck the Europeans noticed the Americans had changed the compression of the ball on the 7th tee which is in violation of the one-ball rule.

However once it had become apparent to the Americans that they were not called up on the violation at the time of incident therefore could no longer be penalized by loss of hole they admitted to switching their ball.

[12] This incident was the stem of accusations of the U.S. side of repeated gamesmanship, bad sportsmanship and ill tactics in many future matches to come.