Read at Joe’s

I’ve been having a little conversation on Twitter this morning with a fellow golfer in the UK (@greenfee) about the upcoming Ryder Cup matches, which will be held this year at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, KY on September 16 to 21. To tell you the truth, I’d completely forgotten that the Ryder Cup was this month, until @greenfee mentioned it.

Our US teams have not been faring too well in the last few of these biennial events, and got their hats handed to them in 2006 at the K Club in Ireland, suffering an 18 1/2 to 9 1/2 drubbing at the hands of the GB/IR/Eu team. So, naturally the media hype machine is gearing up for a full-court press to see if Our Boys can salvage their self-respect on our soil in a couple of weeks. The fact that it is on American soil this round only further intensifies the pressure on the US team to win.

And it’s this very pressure that, it seems to me, is responsible for their poor performances of late. But it’s not that the US guys aren’t capable of handling pressure. They stand over 2 foot knee-knockers every week that can be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and potentially millions in endorsement deals. But that is an individual pressure. It affects them and their families, but doesn’t bring glory or shame upon a nation. That’s pressure!

Some have analyzed this pressure as something the Americans also bring upon themselves by taking the Ryder Cup way too seriously. Not that it isn’t important, but it’s certainly not the End of The World as the press would have us believe. The American teams are way too worried about losing, it seems to me, which is what causes them to clutch so much. They’re all furrowed brows and solemn concentration.

Contrast this with the UK/Euro teams. The night before matches, you’re more likely to find them out drinking together or watching sports or just relaxing. None of these Come To Jesus meetings and bed checks that characterize the Americans. Maybe it’s our long history of puritanical conservatism, but the American teams ought to emulate their opponents a little and just lighten up.

The spirit that should prevail at a Ryder Cup should be more like the atmosphere at the annual Men’s Invitational Tournament at my club, tucked away in rural Connecticut. It’s our big event of the year, and occurs on a Friday and Saturday in late July. Most every private club has some kind of event like this every year. It’s a member/guest tournament, meaning that the teams consist of a club member and a guest that they invite to participate. At our club, the competition consists of five nine hole matches within flights of six teams each. We play 27 holes on Friday and 18 on Saturday. The winning twosomes from each flight then have a shootout type of playoff to determine the overall winner. It’s a lot of fun and quite competitive but for the most part everyone maintains a sense of fun and the winners may get a few hundred dollars in pro shop credit and some other goodies. But mostly it’s played for fun and bragging rights. Sure every once in a while, someone gets bug up their nose about an alleged rules violation, but thankfully that is the exception. On Friday and Saturday there are big social events to which spouses are invited. There’s lots of eating, drinking, kibitzing and tall-tale telling. A Good Time Is Had By All, and with rare exceptions, people leave as friends and perhaps made a couple of new ones. But by the next year, only the winners remember who won and people look back on it with pleasure.

I think the GB/IR/Eu teams approach the Ryder Cup in much more of this amateur spirit of cammaraderie that you find at a member/guest tournament at a club. It’s not the prize, although that’s important, for sure. It’s the experience of competing and then, like Rugby teams, exchanging shirts at the end of the match and getting your drink on with new mates.

So, Paul Azinger, invite the other team over for some good Kentucky BBQ and a keg before the competition begins. Invite the wives, and enjoy yourselves. I’ll bet you do much better.