Troon Golf & Travel - November/December 2010

Below: Captain Colin Montgomerie holds the Ryder Cup following a dramatic and somewhat over-zealous European victory. What is your opinion?

MALCOLM CAMPBELL By

...the Ryder Cup
has become an
obsession with
victory an the
unacceptability
of defeat.

maybe I’m a front-runner for curmudgeon of the
Year but frankly I don’t care.
and I’m sorry if I offend any-
one’s sensibilities here, but I
really do have a big struggle
with this ryder cup brouhaha.
Having spent four days trying
to keep track of what was not
going on while Wales sank like
the titanic and the Welsh tour-
ist board watched its zillion-
dollar publicity budget wash
into the river Usk, I strangely
felt rather sad.
from a non-american per-
spective (I refuse to sail under
a european flag of convenience
for this event), I suppose
I should have been elated,
buoyed by the euphoria of put-
ting the Yanks to the sword and
bringing the ryder cup “back to
european soil,” as monty put it.
but to be honest I wasn’t. I real-
ized I didn’t really care one way
or the other.
for me, the ryder cup isn’t
about the royal and ancient
game of golf anymore. It hasn’t
been since 1983 when tony
Jacklin was appointed captain
and declared his intention to
do what was needed “to win.”
Sadly that’s what it’s been
about ever since; that and of
course money. the vision of old
Samuel ryder back in 1927 of a
social get together between the
professional golfers of great
britain and Ireland and their
fellow professionals from the
United States has long since
been sacrificed on the alter of
mammon.

then,” he said, “and two years later we did. the two years after that, when Jack nicklaus was captain, we beat them again at Jack’s own course at muirfield village on their own soil.

“It was a sweet moment for
me and I knew then the ryder
cup would never be the same
again.”
Well, he was right. It hasn’t;
and Jacklin’s personal obsession
with victory over the americans
has been at the heart of the
european effort ever since. and
of course it hasn’t been one-sid-
ed. the seeds that were sown
back then grew and eventually
blossomed into the War on the
Shore and the terrible scenes at
brookline that are still painful
to the memory of anyone who
loves the game of golf.

thankfully we haven’t had any repeat of those black days and hopefully we never will. Still, you can’t help but feel the current running just below the surface. the need to win at just about any cost still hangs in the air over the ryder cup like the mists in the Welsh valleys.