From the London Times opining that the US won't win a Ryder Cup until it is allowed to behave as a team.
Lack of spirit haunts golf in the States
Wednesday September 22nd 2004
FUNNY how things turn full circle. Did you see Team America on Sunday night? How old did those guys look? Balding, chubby, tanned nut brown from the eyebrows down, soft and milky-white from the forehead up.
They looked like human cappuccinos, except not so frothy. Kenny Perry gave the quote of the night. This run has to end some time, a passing optimist said. "It may not," Kenny intoned. "We may just keep losing."
At the press conference, he stared mutely ahead in the manner of Jack Nicholson at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Where was The Chief to put the pillow over his head?
Hal Sutton resembled the type of Louisianan who drives a pick-up and gets called Bubba by his beer buddies. Maybe without Dad's money, that is what he would have been.
No offence, America, but your team seemed kinda dumb. They looked like podgy bank executives who had gotten their ass whipped by some young bucks playing Sunday softball. Even Tiger has that Ivy League, middle-management hairline now.
And Europe? Young, slim (ish), bleached, cocky, funny and quite possibly roaring drunk. There was a nine-point differential in attitude right there. Which group seemed the more vibrant, vital, optimistic and free? Which group better represented all the things America holds dear?
Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It was overflowing in Team Europe. Everything they invented, we perfected at Oakland Hills.
The organisers told players that they could not sign autographs on the course. The Americans obeyed, to huge local resentment; the Europeans ignored it and won friends and fans. These days it is American golf that appears royal and ancient. A new lads' magazine called Golf Punk has Ian Poulter on its cover.
Next month it could be Miguel Angel Jimenez (a dead ringer for the lead singer of the great Euro-dance band, Yello, by the way), fellow cigar aficionado Darren Clarke or the double act of Paul Casey and David Howell. No Americans, though.
Right now, they could just about make centre spread in Embalmers Weekly. Even one of their rookies, Chris Riley, cried off from the Saturday afternoon foursomes because he was a bit puffed out before getting nailed by Poulter in the singles. Maybe he was saving himself for something more important. Such as checking his investment portfolio on Monday morning. He has that look; they all do.
There is no 'I' in team, the corporate cliche goes, and no 'U' or 'S', either, to judge from this performance. Sutton's party of 12 arrived in order of merit, played in order of merit and lost in order of merit, an utter failure of imagination on the part of their captain.
By Sunday, it had become impossible to separate rookies from old-timers in Bernhard Langer's thinking, but Woods remained first among equals for Team America, Phil Mickelson was second and Davis Love was, quite literally, the third. Not that these outdated attitudes were confined to the team-room. For those hooked up to the dismal NBC, it was possible to view the Ryder Cup as a putting competition between three American millionaires.
In the Oakland Hills clubhouse, where members gathered around several wide-screen televisions, Europe did not exist and neither did numbers four through 12 on Team America. Occasionally, Fred Funk might be shown sinking a long putt, to give the impression that a mighty fightback was taking place, but mostly we followed the money. Woods, Mickelson and The Third are the richest Americans on the circuit, draw the best viewing figures and sell the most advertising. NBC producers are not interested in the whole, they like American golf singular and detached so they can pick off individuals at prime time.
The idea of following Paul McGinley and Stewart Cink is an anathema to them; Jim Furyk stood five up on Howell and was given less coverage than Amy Mickelson. Fairway irons, too, were clearly a ratings downer. Typically, Woods, Love and Mickelson would putt, the score would flash up - don't dwell too long on those blue numbers, people - and we would be introduced once more to the fascinating world of miracle cures and extremely large cars.
I used to wonder why spectators attended golf events when so much more could be seen from home. NBC cleared that one up. No wonder the American public have been so hard on their Ryder Cup losers; they think all golf holes are 30 feet long and the only guy the US have to beat is Colin Montgomerie. No one treats American golfers as a team, yet they continue wondering why they cannot play as one.
By late afternoon, champagne had been sprayed around the 18th, there were football songs and men in kilts and ginger wigs running around and the locals found it rather charming. Yet what would our reaction have been had Americans behaved so exuberantly in victory? Sutton got one thing right: his players have spent so much time saying sorry over Brookline that they do not know how to be themselves any more.
American sportsmen and women are among the most perfect specimens in the world, yet they go everywhere apologising for it. At the Olympics they were given instructions on how to fade into the backdrop, at the Ryder Cup barely a day went by without required contrition over celebrations that took place five years ago. The notion of American pride and American foreign policy has somehow merged. You think you are the best, don't you America? You think you can rule the world. And now you have drained that 30-foot putt and are looking pretty smug about it. Well, that's just despicable.
The PGA Tour is almost entirely conservative with a capital NEO. Watson's 1993 Ryder Cup team initially refused to meet President Bill Clinton at the White House, in protest at his plans to raise taxes for the super rich.
Ben Crenshaw, a former US captain, gave a short interview to NBC on Sunday wearing a baseball cap pledging support for President George W Bush in election year. Too much of Sutton's management style resembled the simple thought processes that have unleashed carnage in Iraq. Pairing Woods and Mickelson was Hal's equivalent of shock and awe, the absence of a coherent plan thereafter all too familiar.
It is possible to see the wealth of American golf and golfers as representative of a more significant injustice. Yet because the world is down on America right now, should it also be down on its sport?
The Oakland Hills club in Michigan went out of its way to make visitors welcome. America is crushingly friendly and polite to its guests, yet what does it get in return? Sneers for souvenirs.
We wonder why they don't play with spirit, then get the vapours if someone so much as waves a flag in our face. NBC frets over dead air time, yet turns every event into That Tiger Show. The lesson from here is simple. If America wants to reclaim the Ryder Cup, it needs to find a team; but more importantly, it has to be allowed to behave like one.
Everything we invented, they need to perfect. Again.
© The Times, London