Staffan, Ireland – In the aftermath of another resounding European Ryder Cup victory over the United States, an announcer for Sky Sports intoned that the next event broadcast on the network would be NFL football.
A loud cheer erupted from the Yanks in the press room. While their international counterparts wondered why the futbol derivation would cause the horde to go completely bonkers, the answer was pretty obvious to anyone who has followed the nation’s athletic fortunes on the world stage lately.
It wasn’t so much an overwhelming desire to see the Bengals and Steelers as much as being able to witness a contest in which America had a reasonable chance of succeeding.
If you’ve watched the basketball world championships, soccer’s World Cup, Wimbledon or the Davis Cup – even the World Baseball Classic – there’s only one conclusion to be drawn.
We stink.
Now, for the fifth time in the past six meetings, you can add men’s golf to the list. And, as Colin Montgomerie so accurately put it Sunday, the only thing keeping the U.S. from a total Ryder Cup bagel was the out-of- body experience at Brookline, Mass., in 1999.
While Coach K may be able to turn around the U.S. hoops fortunes by the time the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games conclude, don’t look for any dramatic rebounds out on the links. The team wielding the paddle to America’s collective heinie is composed of relative kiddies.
At 43, Montgomerie was the Euros’ oldest player, and while he might or might not have another Cup in him, everyone else who starred at the K Club – Paul Casey, Sergio Garcia and Luke Donald – might well be back another two, three or four times at least. If anyone else from the current cast doesn’t make future teams, it will be because the likes of Carl Pettersson, Ian Leggett or Thomas Bjorn, no slouches themselves, knocked them out of a spot.
Two years hence, at Valhalla in Louisville, Ky., chances are there will be a lot more questions along the line of one asked Sunday of U.S. captain Tom Lehman: Are we getting to the point where the Cup’s rules of engagement need to be tweaked to give America more of a chance?
Lehman responded that he was “kind of insulted” at the question – Tom’s insulted and we’re disgusted. If a half-point is all Phil Mickelson and Chris DiMarco can come up with in nine chances, then maybe the answer is to indeed go to the bullpen and bring in South Africa to help put out the fire. There are probably a couple of Aussie blokes who would look smashing teeing it up beside Tiger in red, white and blue.
While Woods more than lived up to his promise to be a bigger part of a team than in years past, the Great One still took a big hit over the weekend. Even if he were to win the World Golf Championships event in London this week to run his consecutive stroke-play victory streak to six, and that string was stacked alongside his British Open and PGA Championship victories, one still could be justified in feeling that those individual accomplishments weren’t quite so illustrious given his spotty play in Ireland.
Of course, where there’s Tiger, there usually Mickelson – most times somewhere in arrears. After his latest debacle, the left-hander now officially has replaced Montgomerie as the biggest, easiest target in the game.
Apparently Mickelson didn’t spend much of the month he took off between his last tournament and the Cup working on his game. Then again, there are those who insist he mentally checked out of the 2006 season in June after finishing the 72nd hole at the U.S. Open.
That wayward 450 yards took Mickelson from the stuff of legends to, as the Brits would say, total rubbish.
That’s about as good a way as any to describe all the Farm Bureau Classics that remain on the 2006 tour schedule. With the Cup serving as the last big- deal event of the year, as the season limps to a close – and good luck hyping that Tour Championship, Tim Finchem – the lingering taste isn’t one of history being made or even the touching sentiment that came from watching Woods and DiMarco overcome the loss of parents to grab the spotlight.
Instead, there’s the sense that young American golfers eager to test their mettle against the game’s best players might want to consider logging on to BA.com, the website for British Airways.
What can be done about it? Well, the NFL season is only three weeks old – let’s just hope that Richard Branson or some other international billionaire isn’t sitting back and gauging which way the wind is blowing.
And then deciding he’s ready for some football.
Staff writer Anthony Cotton can be reached at 303-954-1292 or acotton@denverpost.com.
