Gentlemen, choose your weapons - wisely

Sideline Cut: Although we are used to the sight of expensive, lightweight and deadly accurate weaponry at golf tournaments, the Ryder Cup is taking it a bit too far, writes Keith Duggan

Is there any need to flaunt the heavy-duty fire-arms dudes walking around The Belfry looking like so many extras from a Jackie Chan flick? Their presence is ominous, not to say mystifying.

Sure, it will make all players think twice before charging the greens if things get exciting tomorrow, but still. Do they know something we don't? Is Saddam Hussein planning to pierce the very heart of American democracy with a direct strike on Scott Verplank's golf bag?

Has a missive been sent to Sutton Coldfield from Dubya himself warning in no uncertain terms that the very future of civilisation is dependent on the welfare of Stewart Cink? Or are all the guns just to stop Monty from taking consolation in the clubhouse larder if he has a bad round?

Unless Team USA has secreted Puff Daddy into their ranks for the singles competition, the presence of all this hardcore weaponry is beyond comprehension and looks ridiculous. John Gotti himself has hit the fairways flanked by less artillery.

Symbolically, it serves to seriously undermine the atmosphere of genteel sportsmanship that both teams claim to crave for this year's competition.

September 11th, 2001, hammered home the poor taste of using wartime analogies for describing sports events and the gung-ho, supercharged antics at Brookline in 1999 is regarded by the cognoscenti of golf as a permanent stain on the white satin history of the game.

(Personally, I thought it was no end of value and fun and would become instantly addicted to golf if green-invasions, funky putt celebrations and bitter postscripts were guaranteed, but then, I ain't big on clubhouse etiquette).

Of course, alarm bells should have rung the world over during that 1999 Ryder Cup when it became known that presidential candidate Dubya sat the American team down for a good ole Texan history lesson, regaling them with tales of the Alamo. As a pep talk, it worked and got the golf team fired up to kick some Old World ass.

But little did the world's political analysts and historians realise that the moment also provided the first glimpse into the rhetoric and theory that President Dubya would employ in relation to actual foreign policy. The Alamo did fine for the golfers; bring out the spirit of the Wild West in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden.

It is a pity that sense and taste has restrained Dubya from sitting this year's American team down for another soundbite from history - the Civil War, say, in 500 words or less. Because no nation swallows cheesy soundbites (hands off, Monty) as readily and gullibly as Americans who have been called to do honour for the Stars and Stripes.

The thing about the Ryder Cup is that both teams do not share the same motivation.

For Europe, the goal is simple. To beat the superpower, the place with all the movies, the best buildings and the best Disneyland. To beat the loveable monster.

For Americans, the proposition is not so straightforward. It is hard enough for Irish, English, Scandinavians and Germans to get a sense of what being a "European" is without trying to understand it as an American.

They are less motivated by subduing their European opponents as they are obsessed by doing well for Uncle Sam. The Americans would probably prefer it if the European Ryder Cup side were extended to include the best of players from the other continents.

USA versus The Rest of the World. There is a concept they could get their teeth stuck into. Because of the scale of the domestic trinity of US sports - baseball, basketball and federation wrestling - it is rare that its competitors actually get to represent the States in sporting events that register highly on the popularity scale.

Experience shows us Americans like their sports events to be hyper-inflated, hence the pageantry of the Superbowl.

The most obvious path to take in terms of the Ryder Cup is corny hands-on-heart patriotism, with Irving Berlin conducting. Twelve men, imbued with the Huck Finn spirit and all raised on Mom's home cooking, marching through the fairways of the world in pursuit of glory in America.

It is an easy sell.

Hence, the astonishing but heartfelt spectacle of Team USA dressed in camouflage shirts during the Gulf War.

What happened in Brookline was just a further manifestation of that sentiment. Americans are testosterone driven and unapologetically brazen when it comes to team sports and while the boozy antics of the spectators might have been crass, spurring on the home team for what was an incredible comeback, it was not against the American nature.

And, behind all the contrition that was offered in the aftermath, the good bet is that every American player and supporter loved and valued that win.

Americans expect their fellow citizens to go all General McArthur when it comes to representing the country at sports. Hence, the lukewarm anticipation of Tiger Woods when asked about the Ryder Cup at Mount Juliet threw many of the visiting US media into a tizzy last week.

While the dollar is sacred in the States, it doesn't do to put it above the Stars 'n' Stripes, even in jest.

The fact that the Tiger went down in both his matches yesterday adds to his already meagre Ryder Cup record and enhances the growing theory that the best player in the game does not care for the whole continent-on-continent match-up.

In theory, a polite and Quixotian Ryder Cup is all very well. But it flies in the face of the American approach to team sports. Being the USA is not about being muted.

It is about being noisy and happy in victory and noisy and unhappy in defeat while being never less than fair. Perhaps they lost sight of the element of fair play at Brookline.

But if this year's competition goes down to the wire tomorrow, the USA will really have to fight instinct and tradition in order to not bang the drum slowly tomorrow and work things into a fever pitch again.