Hmm, a preview, synopsis, analysis of the Ryder Cup the day prior to the gun sounding and what are supposed to be the best dozen players from each side of the Atlantic battle it out for bragging rights for the next two years. Where to start?
Well, I could talk about the captains, but I’m sick to death of both of them. Not only from their past competitive days, including Ryder Cups, where Nick Faldo was Faldo and Paul Azinger, in general, acted like a jerk. (“We went over and thumped the Iraqis, and now we’ve won this,” he said after the lamentable “War on the Shore” at Kiawah Island in 1991.)
We’ve had to put up with them since they were named captains of their respective teams, watch them blather through news conferences and then, a new low point for this esteemed competition, the Golf Channel makes them into a televised circus act. I watched in stunned disbelief the other night as the two of them fished for trout in a stocked stream, stumbled their way through Texas Hold ‘Em, and slashed around 18 holes. How the mighty are fallen.
Anyhow, there’s been lots of talk about Tiger not being there, and the Americans are probably better off without him. Certainly Phil Mickelson is, and the next three days will be a true test of his mettle. My colleague Brad Fay thinks Phil will rise to the occasion while I believe he will deflate like the overbaked soufflé he resembles.
Valhalla is a nice course, though nothing out of this world as the name might suggest, and the Nicklaus-designed layout has been set up to suit the longer hitters like J.B. Holmes and Anthony Kim. But the fairways had better be runways and the rough an inch short because while Watson is first on Tour in driving distance and Holmes is T2, the former is 185th in accuracy and the latter 198th. Nice foursomes pairing, wouldn’t it be?
The first Ryder Cup I covered was at Ohio’s Muirfield Village when the Euros won for the first time on this side of the pond. I got to know sports-writing icon Dan Jenkins a bit while there, and so I’ll leave it to him to sum up why most of us eagerly anticipate this event. He wrote this at the 1997 tournament:
“Let’s face it, if the Europeans didn’t keep winning or retaining the Ryder Cup, it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun for those of us who derive perverse pleasure out of seeing some of our spoiled, pampered American millionaires get dusted every two years by a bunch of guys whose names are hard to spell, harder to pronounce, and no doubt grew up learning the best use for something as curious as a golf club was to herd goats.”
Come on, Friday!