Postponement has diminished Ryder Cup

The truth is that the Americans were scared stiff. There is no shame in that; we were all scared stiff

In the Warballs section of the current edition of Private Eye, there is an entry from a publication called Golfing Las Vegas. It reads: "Just as the political and spiritual landscape of the world was forever altered last September, so too has every golfer we know reassessed the importance of the sport in his or her life. And most we've spoken with say that they've come to appreciate the game even more now than before our universe was rocked on that late-summer morning."

Several thoughts occur on reading this nonsense, not least that if the members of the US Ryder Cup team had had their appreciation of golf reaffirmed by the events of 11 September last year, as did the hardy amateurs of Las Vegas, then they would not have declined to travel to The Belfry, and the contest would not have been postponed.

I found myself in a distinct minority 11 months or so ago when I devoted this space to criticising the postponement. I even received some abusive letters, which is always fun. Those letters accused me of being heartless.

How could a mere golf competition matter in the dark shadow of 11 September, especially one in which nationalism looms so large? Sport was rendered irrelevant, etc, etc. It was a time for fostering kinship with America, not competitiveness.

Well, my own view was that the Ryder Cup would have struck a small blow for continuity and normality, of which we were all in urgent need. I did not advance the melodramatic argument that to postpone would be to give in to terrorism; whether or not Darren Clarke beat Jim Furyk 3&2 in the singles was probably neither here nor there to Osama bin Laden.

But I did think that, in a modest way, the Ryder Cup would have amplified the important old cliché that life goes on. And the contest itself would undoubtedly have benefited, sympathy for the Americans keeping a tight lid on the nationalistic fervour which has all too often boiled over. The principles of fair, honest, good-spirited play and support, which Sam Ryder had in mind 75 years ago, would have been rediscovered.

They may yet be. But the Cup has been manifestly diminished by the decision to postpone, mainly because there are players on both sides who, having lost form, are no longer even in the top 30 on their continent, let alone the top 12. It is also unfair to those enjoying a fabulous season, such as Justin Rose, who by now would have staked a major claim for inclusion in 2003.

Of course, it was, in some ways, pointless to criticise the postponement, since the Ryder Cup committee was offered Hobson's Choice. The American players refused point-blank to travel, some of them disingenuously protesting that golf suddenly did not seem to matter enough. Disingenuous, because, by the last week of September in the United States, a full sporting programme had resumed.

The truth of it is that they were scared stiff. There is no shame in that; we were all scared stiff. And it is easy now to forget how uncertain everything seemed then. But Americans have traditionally responded to terrorist outrages elsewhere in the world, whether targeting Americans or not, by declining to leave their borders. The fact that the worst one of all happened within their borders actually strengthened their desire to stay at home, and the Ryder Cup was a casualty of that mindset.

All of which has led me away from the more jocular tone I meant to strike in this column when I woke up. I intended to use the above extract from Golfing Las Vegas to lampoon the sanctimoniousness that golf, a game I love, seems to engender.

There is a bit of it in cricket, too, the quasi-religious belief that one's immersion in sport offers moral guidelines in life. If you play a straight bat to everything life can throw at you, my boy, you will be OK. Of which the golfing equivalent is: play it as it lies, and repair your pitchmarks.

The ultimate manifestation of these pieties is a book at which I have scoffed before in this space, although no amount of scoffing is too much. In His Grip: Foundations for Life and Golf, by Jim Sheard and Wally Armstrong, is full of excruciatingly contrived links between golf and the Almighty.

"God is offering you the greatest gimme of your life," it states. "Will you say 'yes' to his generous offer and let him bear the burden of your sin? To say 'yes' is a lot like getting a gimme from the tee box on a long par five... unbelievable but true'."

Mmm. The book has a foreword by Tom Lehman, whose stature as a man of God was angrily questioned by Sam Torrance in the wake of the last Ryder Cup, at Brookline. The question is: will this year's match be conducted in the spirit of Sheard and Armstrong's acronym, God Offers Love and Forgiveness? There would have been more chance of it a year ago.

b.viner@independent.co.uk