The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Have been back in the the Burg for about 12 days and the game just continues to motor along at about the same level. Despite having a slight cold and some windy weather I shot the last four rounds 76, 83, 77 and 78. This has been a generally frustrating season but I think I have learned some things, which I will pass along during the off season and discuss some of my futile attempts to connect the mind and the body.

But tonight’s blog will be focused on the big bad Ryder Cup. I think this Ryder Cup has been more controversial after the matches, than during, thanks to Phil Michelson’s ridiculous and inappropriate remarks at the post Cup press conference. The Americans have not won a Ryder Cup in Europe since 1993. The Europeans have won the last 6 out of 7. The reason they have dominated the Cup for the last 20 years is they are simply better. Thanks to the PGA, and them coming up with the Presidents Cup, here is living proof. The Presidents Cup has been around for almost 20 years, and who has dominated those matches, the American team, by retaining the cup all but once. It has nothing to do with who the captain is, or using some pod method, or whatever the hell Phil was talking about. The American team is simply better than the International  team. So the question should not be who to pick for a captain or how we pick our team, the question should be, why is the European team better and they have been better for a long time. They rode the underdog role, thanks to the American press, about 2 cups too long. I think there are 2 reasons that the Europeans are now better. One happened awhile back when the smaller British ball was taken out of play. In the 1960’s when Jack and Arnie came over to play in the British Open they changed over to the smaller ball. In 1974 the British ball was not allowed in the British Open but it wasn’t until around 1990 that the ball was banned from all European events and so now everybody plays with the same size ball and this made the European players better ball strikers. The second reason the Europeans are better players is that they play in tougher weather conditions and on courses that are not in the pristine condition that the United States courses are in. They also seem to play on courses that have more terrain and slopes. Therefore the Europeans have to manufacture more shots. In fact when the AT&T tournament had a pretty bad run of weather over some years, there was talk of even changing the date of the tournament to improve the conditions for our poor PGA players.

I think the only way the Americans are going to get competitive in the Ryder Cup is they are going to have to play in more overseas events or the PGA is going to have to  play a little riskier venues where the weather is not always going to be perfect. I hate to even have to put this down in print, but by the way Phil when you lose 16.5 to 11.5, its not the captain. See you next week.