2006-09-26
The one really nice gesture of the weekend’s Ryder Cup that I haven’t see commented on anywhere was American Zach Johnson’s decision not to make the already emotional recently widowed Darren Clarke play his six foot put on the sixteenth green. OK, Zach couldn’t win from there but a ruthless heartless player would have seen the possibility that he might easily miss as the Irish crowd waited for the inevitable flood of tears, and having lost it, gone on to make a mess of the final two holes. Twenty minutes later after all, Westwood was made to wait until he reached his ball before his opponent, who had just played straight into the river, finally conceded the game.Clarke’s bereavement made for a fairy-tale ending (although the part of the plot where he struck the winning stroke was just denied him), and Hollywood will be looking at the possibilities. But it seemed to me it wasn’t that moment when the match was lost, nor the storming cuddly bear act of Montgomerie, nor the impish behaviour of Garcia as he coaxed every stroke he’d made through the air.
And I can’t make too much of the theory that only one side played as a team. It was more as though one team turned up with the expectation of doing no more than losing gracefully, in a good spirit, to be congratulated for their manners and behaviour. Maybe then Zac was acting in keeping. But perhaps (with one exception) that’s what they’ve got used to: Tiger Woods is so far out in front of the rest of his tour that the rest of his team always expect to compete only for second place – and make a very good living out of doing that.
Except on Sunday afternoon there was nothing to play for – and worse than that there was nothing identifiable to play against. It must have been easier to play against something like ‘America’ than a collection of individuals all claiming temporary allegiance to a flag no-one really cares much about.
So I’m delighted ‘we’ won, but not so sure who ‘we’ are, nor whether the opposition really believed, expected they would win. If they had won of course then they would have identified, bonded, been a national team. Without the win, they melted.
No – applying hindsight of course – the moment they lost was on Thursday when they decided not to practise. There are two things about that. Firstly it seemed (certainly not intended but shouldn’t they have been sensitive to it?) a snub to the Irish public – especially those who’d paid to watch a practice round. Secondly, and this is more interesting, it seemed like they didn’t understand the need to practice, as though there was an expectation that the weather and the conditions would ‘come right’ before the match started. A team brought up to play in perfect conditions on tightly manicured grass, with settings fashioned rather than grown from nature (coloured water, plastic plants and all) seemed not to get the concept of playing in real weather on a real course that was going to get rather wet and windy over the following three days.
I know I’m being simplistic (isn’t that a trait of mine?) but that seems to be one of the American ways – strive for perfection, create the best that’s possible, settle what’s the ideal and go for it. With the result that the image of beauty from women to golf course knows little diversity. If grass has bumps in it we’ll play on astroturf, if breasts are too flat we’ll insert silicon, and if we’ve made the perfect film, hell we’ll make it again and put a number after the title and sell it to the public again. It’s what they want, why would they want anything less than perfection? And we know democracy and freedom are the best – so all the world has got to have that, whether they want it or not.
Isn’t a little odd that a culture that seemingly thrives on the power of individualism actually does what it can to enforce uniformity? Isn’t there a paradox in believing in the pioneer spirit, but continually championing mass production? Wouldn’t it to be more ‘American’ or ‘free’ to encourage, say, a chain of individual bistros, than spawn more and more Macdonalds and Starbucks across the planet? How did we all get so image focused, so brand-loyal?
OK I’ve strayed way away from golf and delivered truisms on a banal scale, but these thoughts went through my head on Sunday afternoon as I watched a team of men from diverse cultures and nations pretend that they were loyal to a branded flag that hardly has any recognition, and saw them beat a collection of men who seemed uniformly the same in their lack of expectation, but who had plead allegiance to their own flag from the time they were able to speak. Collected diversity bonded together. And bonded uniformity couldn’t find anything to identify with, apart from their inability to do more than come second.
Now that really is, in microcosm, a cross-over point. If only Bush and Blair would understand that being different is a winning combination, and that when we’re all the same, we’ll all have lost.