Padraig Harrington, still elated over his gritty performance in Munich last weekend that won him a place on the European team which will play in Brookline next month, doesn't plan to view the Ryder Cup venue until he arrives back in the US in mid-September.

"At this point I think it's best just to treat it as another tournament," said Harrrington. "I'll get in that week and play a couple of practice rounds beforehand."

At least eight members of the American team, by contrast, plan to fly to Boston at the conclusion of Sunday's NEC World Golf Championships at Firestone Country Club in order to familiarise themselves with the Ryder Cup course, but unless their plans are a well-guarded secret, none of the dozen Europeans in Akron this week are contemplating a Boston stopover.

To golf fans, the Country Club is probably most immediately familiar as the site of Nick Faldo's play-off loss to Curtis Strange in the 1988 US Open, but the storied course is over a century old. Founded in 1882, it, along with Shinnecock Hills, the Chicago Golf Club, St Andrews and the Newport Country Club, was a founding member of the Amateur Golf Association of America, which would later become the USGA, and has been the site of some of the more memorable moments in American golfing history.

The most prominent of these, to be sure, would be the 1913 US Open. Normally a June event, the championship was moved back to September that year, specifically to accommodate the travel plans of some of the world's most prominent professionals, most notably England's Ted Ray and Harry Vardon. As fate would have it, those two were tied for the lead at the conclusion of regulation play, and in a play-off the following day were beaten by Francis Ouimet, a 20-year-old amateur whose house abutted the course and who had not long before worked as a Country Club caddie. Ouimet's victory is still regarded as a defining moment in American golf.

The course has undergone significant tinkering for each Major championship played there since. The golf architect Rees Jones performed the surgery prior to the 1988 Open, and the membership had toyed with the idea of allowing Jack Nicklaus to re-work the course for this year's Ryder Cup.

After familiarising himself with the venue in a practice round a few years ago, Nicklaus returned to lunch with several members of the committee and began his presentation by announcing: "Well, that fourth hole has got to go!" The august membership fairly gasped in unison.

"But Jack," replied one when he finally could speak, "that hole is a 100 years old!" Needless to say, Nicklaus did not get the job. Instead, Rees Jones was once again charged with the project, and the result is a subtle restructuring which promises to make next month's Ryder Cup a superb test.

As in past Majors, the Ryder Cup course will differ substantially from anything the Country Club members play on. Normally the Country Club consists of 27 holes - the "championship" 18 and the nine-hole Primrose Course. For the 1963 and 1988 US Opens, as for the Ryder Cup, several weaker holes on the former have been omitted, while a number have been borrowed (and in some cases, combined) from the Primrose to create a muscular track that will play 7,033 yards to a par of 71.

The vestiges of a cinder horse racing track which were visible as recently as the 1963 Open have been removed. The second hole, normally a par-four for the members, has been shortened to play as an uphill par-three of 190 yards.

Following the spectacular third, the 335-yard fourth hole (the one Nicklaus wanted to eliminate entirely) has been redone by Jones, who used 60-year-old photographs to restore it to its original design. It remains a driveable par-four, but that is a decision that will not be without its perils, as the tiny green is well-bunkered.

The texture of the sand in the Country Club's bunkers, incidentally, will scarcely be recognisable to participants in the 1988 Open. In that championship, players missing the green were unconcerned about landing in the front bunkers, which contained sand so firm that an up-and-down was barely problematic. This time around, US captain Ben Crenshaw requested that the bunkers should be more penal, and they will be.

The seventh is another uphill par-three. In 1988, with the wind against them, both Strange and Faldo hit two-irons there - and both made two.

The detour from the members' course will begin with the ninth hole, a 513-yard par-five which is normally the 11th on the regular course. The 10th, a 447-yard par-four, has been lengthened by borrowing a tee from an adjacent Primrose hole, turning it into a dogleg-right on which it is virtually impossible to cut the corner, while the 11th is a composite of two Primrose holes which have been turned into a truly testing, 450-yard dogleg par-four.

IT WAS on this hole in 1963 that Arnold Palmer drove his ball into a tree stump. He took a seven, which cost him an outright win; Palmer lost in a Monday play-off with Jackie Cupit and eventual winner Julius Boros.

The 12th, a 486-yard par-four (which normally plays as a par-five for the members) and the 13th, a 436-yard par-four, are also borrowed from the Primrose.

The Ryder Cup circuit returns to the members' course for the 14th, a reachable par-five, and the 15th, which stretches in front of the clubhouse, with the club's driveway actually bisecting the fairway. From there it slides back into history with the testing par-three 16th, the memorable 17th and what is still called "Vardon's bunker".

A drive into this hazard proved the undoing of Vardon in his 1913 play-off against Ouimet and Ray. The bunker sits just 225 yards from the tee, and only a badly mis-hit tee-shot by one of today's pros could find it now. But it retains its place due to its historical significance.

Up until half a century ago, the Country Club's members still raced their horses on the track not far from the first green. The club also has an ice-hockey rink on a pond near the third green, where games are played during winter months, as well as an indoor curling rink.

While it is anything but a links course, the Country Club is more European in flavour than most American venues. (As someone recently pointed out: "It's a lot more like Sunningdale than Sawgrass.")

Still, the Americans have never lost at the Country Club - from Oiumet beating Vardon and Ray to Strange beating Faldo, nor in the two Walker Cups (1932 and 1973) which have been played there.