Ryder Cup regret
Pete Willett, the Masters champion’s brother, found out the hard way how satire can miss the mark,
No less than 24 of the world’s finest golfers played in the Ryder Cup this month. Tiger Woods stalked the course as a U.S. team vice captain. Michael Jordan held court from a hospitality balcony. Bill Murray fired up the crowd with nationalistic chants. Hazeltine National heaved under the weight of celebrity, both on the fairways and greens and among the galleries.
Yet the biggest story of the event became a man with a laptop thousands of miles away. Pete Willett, brother of Masters champion Danny, unwittingly sparked a frenzy of controversy with a pre-tournament column for a British golf industry magazine in which he referenced the antics of some American fans.
The article used plenty of juicy language, saying that elements of the crowd expected to attend the Ryder Cup would resemble a “baying mob of imbeciles” filled with “pudgy, basement-dwelling irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer.”
Cue anger, outrage, defensive nationalism, apologies from Team Europe and hostility aimed at Danny Willett.
“At no point did I intend to upset the entire American golf nation,” Pete Willett said, shaking his head and smiling as he talked to USA TODAY Sports at a pub near his home this week. “It became completely surreal how it played out.”
The thing that was missed amid the furor was the intention. Pete Willett is a high school drama teacher for whom writing about sports is a sideline, and his style is one of sarcastic humor. Taken in its full form, the content was meant as satire. However, once the snappiest sound bites were parsed and reprinted, Willett, whose audience is typically around 10,000 readers, was suddenly cast as the biggest villain of the American golf community.
“(Americans) are different to us,” said Pete Willett, four years older than his brother at 33. “The humor is different, the patriotism is different. I knew that, but that didn’t prepare me for what happened. My writing makes fun of others, but I make sure that I also make fun of myself.”
The seeds for his writing career were planted in April, when Danny won the Masters. During the closing stages, Pete posted a series of humorous Twitter messages that were repeated around the world.
Pete’s writing had sparked the interest of some golf publications.
National Club Golfer signed him to a deal for five columns, on the understanding that they would feature the same kind of scathing humor. The Ryder Cup story was his third.
“If I was given the opportunity to have never have written it, I would take that opportunity,” Pete said. “What it caused, I would rather hadn’t happened.
“However, I will always maintain it was a good article.”
The brothers hashed out their differences before play had begun in a telephone conversation hours after the story blew up.
“I am still proud of the article,” Pete said. “In a roundabout way I mean every word. I do take the piss out of those who scream out at shots because they are idiots. And I do love the Ryder Cup and go completely over the top in my excitement for it.”