Ryder Cup 2010: Sky Sports apologises following singles mix-up

Sky Sports has apologised for displaying the wrong Ryder Cup singles matches yesterday evening 20 minutes ahead of the official announcement and put the error down to a "simple, human mistake". A predicted line-up chosen earlier in the day by Butch Harmon and Mark Roe, two of its experts, was used in rehearsals as a dummy for the evening's highlight show. The rehearsal was being shown on a monitor in the Sky Sports News studio and was wrongly thought to be the actual pairings. Sky Sports News broadcast these live and Sky News, the BBC and the Ryder Cup's official radio station saw the pairings and also broadcasted them. The wrong matches, which included Lee Westwood facing Tiger Woods, were then disseminated on news wires, Twitter and other media sources. A Sky Sports spokesperson said: "It was an honest mistake and we are sorry about it. These things can happen on live television." Meanwhile a spokesperson for the BBC added: "There was some inaccurate information circulating regarding the Ryder Cup singles pairings. We, among others, printed the pairings in error. As soon as we became aware of the inaccuracy we corrected the mistake. "They were only put up on the Live Text section of the site. The official Ryder Cup site on our website waited until the official pairings were released before putting them up." Fortunately Betfair, the gambling exchange did not open any markets on the wrong pairings.