Dylan Cleaver: The Presidents should be impeached

I begin by saying the Presidents Cup begins this week in Lake Manassas.

What? You say.

I know, I know. It's a bit obscure, I continue, before explaining that Lake Manassas is a gated community - ie out of bounds to poor people - in Virginia, home to the Stonewall Golf Club and...

Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows that. What I want to know is what is the Presidents Cup?.

Ah, I'm glad you asked, I say. It happens to be one of my pet subjects so bear with me and I'll explain.

The Presidents Cup is, among other things, a ghastly contrivance. Artiface masquerading as tradition. It is, on the surface, the best golfers in the world taking on the best golfers in the USA in a format remarkably similar to the Ryder Cup.

But wait. Because Europe already plays the USA at golf (in, you guessed it, a remarkably similar format to the Presidents Cup), its players are not included. So it is the World, minus Europe, against the USA.

So let me get this right [bristling with indignation]. The Presidents Cup is effectively a tasteless replica of the Ryder Cup, trading shamelessly off that competition's surprising success since switching in 1979 from a USA versus Great Britain & Ireland match to a Europe versus USA one?

That's exactly what it is. But it wasn't even meant to be like that. Looking on in envy at the frisson the Ryder Cup had created, prominent players, notably Australian Greg Norman, began to talk wistfully about getting an international team together to play the winners.

The winners?

Yes, the winners. But somehow USPGA tour director Tom Finchem...

Isn't it Tim Finchem?

... Tim, Tom, Bob, whatever. But anyway, somehow he managed to hijack the idea, get a bunch of golf-loving presidents to endorse it so he could sell yet another event dominated by Americans to US broadcasters who have an unquenchable thirst for the advertising dollars golf attracts.

Ah-ha, might this just be your anti-golfing establishment sentiments shining through?

No. Let's get this straight. Golf is a wonderful game and New Zealand's egalitarian attitude to the sport is something to be proud of and maintained.

Yes, I find professional golf to be a monumental bore outside the Masters, the US, the British and the New Zealand Opens, and believe that it takes up an insane amount of our television time but I like baseball so my taste in sport is hardly beyond reproach.

The Ryder Cup works, though, everyone loves it.

For a start it makes some sense as the US and European tours are the two strongest in the world so there is something to prove, but even still, nobody cared until the USA lost it in 1985. But the really ironic, or sad depending on which way you look at it, thing about it is it took a war to spark blanket interest in the event.

You've lost me.

The Americans, as tasteful as usual, decided to turn the 1991 Ryder Cup at Kiawah Island into a homage to the US soldiers of the first Gulf War. The media played their part by stupidly labelling the event the 'War by the Shore' and Steve Pate and Corey Pavin, two uber-geeks who'd run away from a fight in a playground, turned up to play in camouflage gear.

That's horrific.

It gets worse. After the Americans won when Germany's Bernhard Langer missed a six-foot putt on the last, the US' warmonger-in-chief Paul Azinger came up with the immortal (or immoral) line: "First we kicked the Iraqi's butt and now this."

It's clicking into place now. The Ryder Cup is as much a clash of European sensibilities against US jingoism as it is a golf match. It's the world's one remaining superpower taking on a once-mighty continent that has loosened its colonial chains.

That's about nailed it.

So really the only way the Presidents Cup is going to gain any traction is if the US happens to declare a dubious war on a rogue Middle East state and have its players turn up pretending they're Marines?

Hmmm.

Yeah, sorry. Anyway, who holds the cup?

Nobody really. The last time it was played for in South Africa, US and International captains Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player called it a tie when Tiger Woods and Ernie Els were locked in a playoff in gathering darkness. Even the captains didn't care enough to demand a winner.


- HERALD ON SUNDAY