Captain Davis Love III and the rest of the United States Ryder Cup team were left stunned on Sunday evening after they allowed Europe to 'steal' the trophy from out under their noses.

Heading into the final day with a 10-6 lead at the Medinah Country Club, the hosts needed only four points in Sunday's 12 singles games but they somehow managed to come out on the losing side.

The Europeans won eight singles matches and secured a draw to run out 14.5-13.5 winners in the end.

Love was shell-shocked in the immediate aftermath of the collapse.

"I don't have a reaction yet, we are all kind of stunned," he told reporters. "We know what it feels like now from the '99 Ryder Cup.

"It's a little bit shocking. We were playing so well, everyone on our team was playing so well, we just didn't figure it didn't matter who we sent them out there.

"We put who we thought was our hot players up front and who we thought was our steady players in the back that would get us points and we all thought it would come down to Jason Dufner.

"He played very, very well. We got a couple matches flipped there in the middle that cost us."

Having been part of the United States' greatest comeback during the 1999 Ryder Cup on home soil in Brookline, Love knows how it feels to have the shoe on the other foot.

"Well, it's exactly the same score," he said. "They came back and won. Give them a lot of credit, they played very, very well.

"They got on a couple of hot streaks the first two days and that kept them in it.

"Guys that started hot (for us) the first couple of days, did not start hot today.

"It was tough."

When the dust finally settled after the dramatic Sunday evening in Medinah and Love had time to reflect, he said: "I wouldn't have done anything different. They played great.

"We had a couple of matches get flipped there at the end that made it a little easier on them.

"This is a great team, we had a great week. We played together as a team and we said we wanted to win every segment.

"But we got beaten badly in this one, and any time you lose a segment that badly it is going to cost you the Ryder Cup."

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