Ryder Cup: Golf? This is war!
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - I tremble.What was that “whoosh” overhead? A cruise missile?
No. Wow. Just a big semi rushing by on the freeway, not far from this spot, not far from where the Ryder Cup will be played.
The Ryder Cup is golf.
Pity Paul Azinger. A very nice man - intelligent, personable, answers readily to “Zinger,” and an excellent golfer, especially in his prime. He knew adversity, not so much in bouncing back after letting a British Open get away, and not so much in winning the PGA Championship while cancer was taking a good bite of him, but in beating that cancer and coming back from it. And for all of these qualities, and for having played in the Ryder Cup, he was appointed captain of the 2008 American Ryder Cup team.
It was golf. It used to be golf.
Did Zinger ever dream it would come to this? Zinger, Ryder Cup captain, is now the defender of the nation, defender of the American way of life. “Azinger embodies spirit of America,” said the headline in USA Today.
This is golf. But the weight of the nation has been settled upon him.
Another headline: “For gutsy captain, reclaiming Ryder is a patriotic duty.”
This is patriotism. The Ryder Cup. America's destiny.
We're at Defcom 1, now. Or whatever they call it in the movies. That alert thing, when all hell is about to break loose. Death and destruction are at hand. The Ryder Cup begins Friday. The Europeans are at the gates, swords banging against their shields.
How different.
Once, the Ryder Cup was a golf match that happened every two years. First U.S. vs. Great Britain, and when Great Britain was beaten nearly into extinction, the talent being so thin, Ireland was added, making it Great Britain and Ireland, or GB&I for short. Or Still Whipped, for short. In Great Britain, this was a national embarrassment, possibly worthy of a communiqué from No. 10 Downing Street.
In the United States, the raging question was, “What the hell's a Ryder Cup?”
An international golf competition, is what it was, founded by Samuel Ryder, an Englishman who had a seed company and who wanted to foster goodwill through golf, and if a few extra seeds happened to get sold as well, that would be OK, too.
The goodwill was one-sided. The American golfers loved it: A week or two off, paid-up golf, and go thrash the Brits again. Or the GBIs. Whatever.
But the Ryder Cup was a frat party that was running out of steam. Dawn was breaking, and reality along with it, and the Ryder Cup was getting last rites, the frazzled victim of American success. Nobody was interested in watching a puppy get whipped over and over again. And so in 1979, Jack Nicklaus prophesied that the Ryder Cup was doomed unless golfers from the European continent be admitted to the GB&I, the better to emerge from the coma. This meant Spain's Seve Ballesteros at the time. Others would follow, and now we're at Valhalla Golf Club, and the Americans are fighting for their lives.
Valhalla - legendary home of the gods, where reside those who fall in combat, borne up from the field of battle by the valkyries.
The Ryder Cup emerged as warfare.
It came to full flower in 1991, when some marketer, flush from the passion of Desert Storm, proclaimed that Ryder Cup to be the War by the Shore. It was a warped counterpoint.
Flashback to an earlier Ryder Cup: Two U.S. Marines, in full dress uniform, laden with combat ribbons, deliver the Ryder Cup in measured tread, place it gently on an altar - or maybe a table - then step back and salute it, solemnly. And Dan Brown spent many thousands of words searching for the Holy Grail.
Remember the America's Cup.
The America's Cup, the sailing race, won by Americans for over 100 years, and ignored by everyone until the Australians broke their hold. The nation rose as one. Win back our cup. Never mind that it was British.
And now the Ryder Cup. The Europeans invade again, seeking their fourth in succession, sixth of the last seven.
Paul Azinger, you have your mission. Halt the European horde. Come home carrying your golf bag -- or in it.
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