Paul Azinger's men tweaked a little history there. Tweaked a lot of things. Tweaked the nose of Lee Westwood with their boisterous behaviour. That's changed, too. Since 1999 the Americans have shown up with a set of polite young rookies, boys sent out to do the work of men. Their JJ Henrys and their Zach Johnsons and their Vaughn Taylors and their Brett Wetterichs have been intimidated and beaten to a pulp by Europe's wiser heads. But America turned up at Valhalla with a new breed of rookie this time.

Boooooooo! Weekley is a newcomer of a different kind. Boooooooo! lives in a bubble in Boooooooo!land. Not many people can get to him but he gets to most people with his whooping and his hollering and his all-round hicksville act that plays so well with the gallery. To hear Westwood and Soren Hansen complain about him on Friday night was to know that Boooooooo! has got into their heads, just as Paul Azinger hoped he would. Weekley's rival in the singles today is in for a torrid time. What he gets up to today when the crowd are chanting his name is anybody's guess. It'll get lively though, you can be sure of that.

Enough weird stuff has happened already at Valhalla to warn us of the dangers of making predictions for the singles. The sudden implosion of Phil Mickelson and Anthony Kim yesterday. Need we say more? Europe usually win the session in a canter but too many of Nick Faldo's team are off form, not enough of them holing the kind of putts they need to.

They did at the Belfry in 2002, they did at Oakland Hills in 2004, they did again at the K Club in 2006. Thirty-six singles matches across three Ryder Cups and only nine American victories, none of them with the name Phil Mickelson attached. Lefty goes into today on the back of three consecutive blowouts. But after what we've seen in the singles in the recent past – Phillip Price beating Mickelson in 2002, Chad Campbell pulverising Luke Donald in 2004, Scott Verplank destroying Padraig Harrington in 2006 and Stewart Cink doing a real number on the seemingly unstoppable Garcia the same year – we should get ready for the unexpected. Particularly after what we've seen here already this week. Who'd have guessed, for instance, that Garcia and Lee Westwood, two of Europe's big beasts, would both be dropped for yesterday morning's foursomes after two winless matches?

Who'd have picked out Hunter Mahan and Justin Leonard, the apparent sitting ducks of the American team after they had a bogey-bogey start together on Friday morning, as the stars of day one, the electrifying pair that had a better ball of a startling 9-under for just 15 holes on Friday afternoon in their rout of Garcia and Miguel Angel Jimenez? Who'd have thought that America would win the opening two sessions for the first time since 1977, long before Anthony Kim, JB Holmes and Weekley were born? Strange happenings indeed. And we can expect some more today.

Europe needs its big guns firing now more than ever, but it's tricky. Garcia has lost three out of four in the singles. Jimenez has lost two out of two. Westwood has a winning record in foursomes and fourballs but a losing record – two wins, three losses – in the singles. Robert Karlsson has only played one singles match but lost it. Before the conclusion of his afternoon fourballs yesterday he had played five Ryder Cup matches and hadn't won any. Padraig Harrington, tired and unhappy with the state of his golf, has gone eight games without a win.

Making a correct call on who will rise and who will fall today is like asking the Valhalla crowd to keep it down when Boooooooo! comes sauntering into view. It just isn't going to happen. None of these European players knows what it is like to go into the singles trailing, not Westwood, not Garcia, not Harrington, not any of them. Time to get the putters hot, boys. Or else...

Read Tom English's latest blog from the Ryder Cup