The Ryder Cup column: we couldn't let it lie

LOCKERROOM:There is a dawning of wisdom in the media world as to the reality of the tournament and its betrayal of the Corinthian spirit in which it was founded

THE MEAN little voice in the back of my head is speaking. You couldn't, it says, as Reeves used to say to Mortimer, you couldn't let it lie, could you? You just couldn't let it lie.

True that. This year the Sports Editor and myself did our usual minuet. We applied for accreditation to the Ryder Cup hollapaloozla and then agreed that not going would be the wisest course of action.

Short conversation.

- You don't really want to go to the Ryder Cup, do you?

- No

- You'd only (uses coarse and vulgar term which describes the act of urination) on it anyway.

- Well, maybe I should go?

- Eh, no.

Anyway, it was agreed that all that Ryder Cup cosiness was spared the presence of your bumbling, grumbling, rodent-like reporter showing up as welcome as a caterpillar in a canape.

Meanwhile, a mental note was made that the Ryder Cup would pass without mention in this column. But, but, but . . .

Listen, the only thing worse than the usual quotient of Ryder Cup hype is the addition of an extra day of Ryder Cup hype. If the competition is going to go on and on and on I claim the right to do the same. Couldn't let it lie.

First of all, is anybody else laughing about the fate of the big greedy-guts Pringle-wearers who brought the entire Waterworldproduction to "Celtic Manor". Like the big K Club "City of Atlantis" tourney a few years back, the bug-eyed greed of the usual bandits has been repaid with something as elemental and unavoidable as buckets of dirty rain.

Now that we have escaped the national madness which accompanied our little window of vulgar "Tiger" wealth, you will recall the great bowing and scraping festival which preceded the Ryder Cup's visit to Ireland not long ago. Roads closed and rebuilt, martial law imposed in the entire province of Leinster, peasantry gaping at the sight of helicopters and our own gentry hopping about in them like nobs, dissenters interned.

Everything done in the name of the almighty dollar which we were told would come to us in direct cash to the tune of $175 million for that weekend alone. So shaddup ya face and put these leprechaun suits on, we were told.

Of course we got nowhere near to a third of the proposed take (and how pitiful it seems now anyway in the era of zombie hotels), but there was enough for the usual highwaymen to get dizzy.

The rest of the earth, watching intently from the Urals to the sheep plains of New Zealand, from Baghdad to Lillehammer to the Carpathians to the pampas, were greeted by the not unusual sight of Irish rain and wind.

And then the finale of Darren Clarke downing pints in an exhibition which, had it occurred on the steps of the Hogan Stand, would have had the country convulsed by moral outrage. But for the tourists? Chug! Chug! Chug!

So with all that nonsense still fresh in our minds and with the usual nuclear detonation of unmerciful and smug hype going off just across the water, why would we let it lie? Not when we can throw together a simple paragraph like the following list of names who can't even play in the Ryder Cup.

Robert Allenby, Stuart Appleby, Ángel Cabrera, Michael Campbell, KJ Choi, Tim Clark, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman, Ryo Ishikawa, Nick O'Hern, Geoff Ogilvy, Rory Sabbatini, Adam Scott, Vijay Singh, Camilo Villegas, Yang Yong-eun.

Maybe the list is part of the reason why there is a dawning of wisdom in the media world as to the reality of the Ryder Cup and its betrayal of the Corinthian spirit in which it was founded. All that was good about the Ryder Cup got ditched long ago in favour of a sort of militarised nationalism totally at odds with the game of golf.

This time around there was some embarrassed coughing among those who have been earnestly feeding us the outrageous hokum for a while that the Ryder Cup is the SECOND BIGGEST SPORTS EVENT IN THE WORLD! when NBC announced they wouldn't be showing any of the war live on Saturday. Even the coma-inducing closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games attract better audiences.

It may be that unless the fury of the War on the Shore and the following episodes is revived the Ryder Cup will return to the status from which it came. No harm either.

The Ryder Cup, as recently as 1989, was floating around in the rights pool and got picked out by NBC for a bargain $200,000. In 2004, NBC paid just $18 million for the rights and were disappointed when audiences were just a fraction of what they had been for the previous US edition, in Brookline in 1999. Brookline was a success and NBC reckoned 55 million Americans saw all or some of it on TV. This figure was halved for 2004, however.

As things stand, US networks are a little wary about golf. If Tiger were to decline to the point where he is no longer a form of Viagra for limp ratings and if the Ryder Cup were to become the friendly biennial jolly which it once was, the tournament could become a casualty of reality. As it is, with the overlong season in reality just one eternal season, it fights below its weight given the demographic which it delivers.

On this side of the Atlantic, of course, many and shiny-suited were the politicians who were ready to throw their bodies before tanks in 2006 to get the Ryder Cup taken away from the clutches of the pay-per-view mob. The same pols were victims of the mute button four years previously when the Government decided in 2002 not to bother pursuing the option of making the Ryder Cup a terrestrial-TV fest. And four years later they have vanished altogether.

The Ryder Cup is slightly Celtic Tigerish in its recent history. Its modern history is a crock, a bust, the greatest symbol of the triumph of marketing hokum over sporting content in the entire universe of modern sport. An exhibition, as Samuel Ryder planned it and as Rory McIlroy described it, which somehow got turned into something smaller but more lucrative.

The sweethearted old seed merchant called Samuel Ryder was so taken with the genial nature of the thing back in 1927 that he put up a cup for the event, noting dreamily that: "I trust that the effect of this match will be to influence a cordial, friendly and peaceful feeling throughout the whole civilised world".

(By "civilised world" we have come to understand those parts of the world from which Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Adam Scott, Mike Weir, Retief Goosen, Nick Price, Greg Norman, David Frost, Mark McNulty and many others don't come!)

It's subsiding, though, all this Euroweenies versus American Jackasses nonsense. All these bidding wars and Monty-baiting and the pretence of it being a matter of life and death whether the European jumpers beat the American jumpers.

Back in the early days the Ryder Cup was run along the lines set out in the deeds of trust for the tournament. Those deeds and their intent have long since been forgotten, but as golf changes and the competition becomes less and less of a shop window for young millionaire golfers we may unintentionally float back towards a time when the competition was something more likeable than two land masses going mano a mano for no very good reason other than getting some stuff off their chests.

" Its modern history is a crock, a bust, the greatest symbol of the triumph of marketing hokum over sporting content in the entire universe of modern sport