Twelve stars triumph at the K Club

No US team has ever made much of an impact in the team sports that the rest of the world plays - football (the proper version of the game), cricket, rugby, field hockey and so on. And even in golf the American team's record in the one team event that really matters, the "Ryder Cup", has been pretty woeful in the recent past.

The curious thing about the US failure to beat the European team more consistently is that you would think that pride and passion would be stronger in a team who are all citizens of one country than in the rather random combination of nationalities that represents Europe.

In fact the Ryder Cup is almost the only example of uncontentious and unifying European integration. Whilst there are sometimes bitter political divides within Europe these disappear when the common enemy of the United States golfing elite hovers into view. Anything that unites the English, Welsh, Scots, Irish, French, Germans, Spanish, Swedish and the rest has to be something exceptional.

So whilst for a few days every two years we are all passionate Europeans there is, in recent contests anyway, no similar inspiration for America. Sure there is the customary waving of the "Stars and Stripes" and the predictable grinning procession of the players shiningly white-toothed partners, but this slightly synthetic passion seems not to be transferred into playing success.

Quite why the rallying cry of successive American Ryder Cup captains has not produced the goods is difficult to explain. They are all fine players with fat bank accounts swelled by success on the PGA tour. Usually there are two or three Major winners in the US line up - and at least half a dozen players who are in the top ten or so of the world rankings.

But when they get into the cauldron of match play, faced with opponents who have only intermittently (if at all) appeared in the "Greater Gooseberry Open" in Milwaukee, the Yanks are found wanting.


On the European side there is a delicious opportunity every two years to bring golf home. For the game was not, as some Americans no doubt think, a creation of their nineteenth century forefathers (as Baseball and American Football had been) but one which owes its honourable origins to the Scots in a time well before the first North American plantations were colonised in the seventeenth century.

The rules of golf are one of Scotland's greatest gifts to the modern world. Over the years some of the centres of golfing power, and much of the money, have gravitated across the pond. The conceit is regrettably entrenched that three of the four golfing Majors are American institutions, with only "The Open Championship" holding up the dignity of golf's founding fathers.

But notwithstanding this history the growth of the game in continental Europe and the appearance of professional golfing stars from Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Scandinavia and elsewhere (and their happy incorporation into the previously exclusively "British Isles" Ryder Cup team) has served to remind the Americans that golf is now a world game.

So for three days every two years the dark blue European flag (with its circle of 12 stars - one for each member of the team) flies high and unites players whose common language is the game of golf - and who share a collective determination to put one over the Americans.

Last week (for the first time) Europe started as favourites - Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk and the rest notwithstanding. The Americans' yearning for success seemed to create a more unified team than before, and they certainly prepared thoroughly - but to no avail. Few, if any, outside of the United States will have begrudged Europe their third win in a row.