Important thing is to preserve showpiece

While the desperate scramble continued last weekend to recover bodies from the rubble of the World Trade Centre, New York mayor Rudy Giuliani urged the citizens of his stricken city to go out for a meal and, perhaps, take in a Broadway show. But it would be fanciful to imagine the Ryder Cup offering a comparable distraction to a grieving nation.

Its very nature as an international, even inter-continental event, places it in an entirely different context. One has to think no further than the transatlantic travel which American players, officials and spectators would have faced for the planned match at The Belfry next week.

Having travelled home to Dublin last weekend from Cincinnati, via Gatwick Airport in London, I can testify that such an experience is not to be recommended. And unlike many of their players, not all Americans own private aircraft.

More importantly, the organising bodies were acutely aware that the US government would not be giving advance notice of whatever form of retaliatory action they decide to take. So, this is clearly not a time for Americans to be travelling overseas.

The situation would have been entirely different were the matches being staged on their soil, as was the case at Kiawah Island in 1991, when the Ryder Cup coincided with the Gulf War. For, as I discovered while in the US last week, they are an extraordinarily resilient people.

As television screens relayed horror upon unimaginable horror, it was impossible not to admire the irrepressible optimism of the Americans I met. In the darkest hour they had known as a people, they were determined to get on with living, in the frontier spirit which shaped their great nation.

Last Tuesday evening, while I was in the company of Ned Ruffin, a Pittsburgh lawyer, in the quiet splendour of the Ohio Valley, he remarked: "I will find it hard to believe that I was out here, surrounded by so much beauty, when this terrible thing happened."

Then he added: "Sure, we are all hurting, but we'll get through this. It's in our nature to get on with things. We have to look forward to a new day."

And as if to endorse those sentiments, the Delta Queen luxury paddle-boat, which had stopped at a lock on the Ohio River, maintained the delightful custom of playing traditional American airs such as Dixie and Camptown Races on its steam organ. And people waved enthusiastically from the shore, while behind them, flags stood at half-mast.

It is understood that Jim Awtrey, chief executive of the PGA of America, sought advice from President Bush before deciding to postpone the matches until next year. If so, the approach was not without irony, given it was the same George W, then governor of Texas, who borrowed a famous "death or victory" speech from the Alamo, to inspire the American team the night before the vital singles at Brookline two years ago.

Against that background, it has also been suggested the passage of a further year will finally rid both sides and their supporters of any residual bitterness from the last battle. This is to presume the Ryder Cup is normally a genteel affair, redolent with all that is good and desirable in spectator behaviour.

"Losing the Ryder Cup did not bother me as much as the behaviour of the galleries. All that cheering when we missed putts. I've never known anything like it before." A European comment after Brookline in 1999? Far from it. This was the reaction of America's Peter Jacobsen to the defeat at the Belfry in 1985.

So, we shouldn't look for too much good to emerge from so much evil. The important thing is that a golfing showpiece, which is due to be staged in this country in 2005, is preserved.

Meanwhile, it is fascinating to recall the words of Charles Roe, the then secretary of the British PGA, who, back in 1939, sent a cable to the PGA of America at their Chicago headquarters after the outbreak of the second World War. It read: "When we have settled our differences and peace reigns, we will see that our team comes across to remove the Ryder Cup from your safekeeping."

The matches, due to be played at Ponte Vedra CC, Florida, in November of that year, were cancelled, and by way of consolation to the American players the would-be host club presented each of them with honorary life membership.

Whereupon Gene Sarazen, still angry at being left out of that side, declared in a Toledo locker-room that he could name 10 players capable of beating the official team. Skipper Walter Hagen picked up the gauntlet and defeated Sarazen's "Challengers" 7-5 in Detroit on July 16th and 17th 1940. he match raised $15,000 (dollars) for the American Red Cross.

And typical of the optimism to which I have referred, the Americans later picked their team for the 1941 matches. This time, Pearl Harbour, the last, great one-day disaster to befall their nation, intervened.

Footnote: As a consequence of last weekend's decision, the Junior Ryder Cup, which was scheduled for the K Club next Tuesday and Wednesday, has been cancelled. Instituted at Brookline in 1999, when GUI official Jimmy Greene led Europe to victory over the US, the event was between 12-member teams of six boys and six girls.