Europe unites over Ryder Cup, sort of
GLENEAGLES — Throw together some Englishmen with a Frenchman, a German and a Spaniard and you’ve got what sounds like the start of a joke.
Now toss in a Dane, a Swede, a Welshman, a Scot and a couple of Irishmen for what, over history, has been a recipe for countless misunderstandings and rivalries, and more than a few wars.
But at the Ryder Cup — perhaps only at the Ryder Cup — this stew of nationalities, cultures, languages and histories gels fantastically to put flesh and bones on an idea that otherwise can be a hard sell: that of a united Europe.
Americans are fortunate. There’s no ambiguity about who they are. U.S. captain Tom Watson and his 12 players represent a nation with a clear and well-defined identity, a rich common history, and shared values and truths that Americans hold to be self-evident. Watson’s players hail from Florida, Texas and other proud states, but are Americans first.
In Europe, it is the other way around: country first, continent second — a distant second, if that. The concept of what it means to be European is still a work in progress, hazy, even alien, to many.
Except, that is, for three days every two years, when European golf fans put nationality aside to rally behind the common cause of beating the Americans at golf. Thanks, they might say, for helping us defeat the Nazis, for everything you did to help build modern Europe, the Marshall Plan, staring down the Soviets and whatnot, but now watch our guys sink this birdie.
Which all makes golf ’s premier team event interesting and, at the same time, also feel somewhat bizarre.
Nowhere else will you see Ordinary Joes draping the European Union flag over their shoulders or cheering “Europe! Europe!” as they will from the very first tee Friday when captain Paul McGinley’s 12 men from nine nations begin their defence of the cup.
Ask around in the crowds and you quickly find people who say they feel little or no love for the European Union but who are decked out in the EU colours of yellow and blue. It’s all a bit perplexing.
Waiting with friends for Rory McIlroy, the world No. 1 from Northern Ireland, to thump what proved to be a wayward tee shot, Robert Boag said he would vote tomorrow for Britain to leave the EU, if given that option.
“I feel Scottish first, British second, European a distant last,” he said. “But I’d still support Europe in the Ryder Cup.”
Brian Downey, who travelled from Cork, Ireland, to cheer for Europe at his seventh Ryder Cup, said the European flag he tied around his neck would be packed away after this tournament and not be brought out again for another two years.
“It’s a Ryder Cup flag,” he said. “I have no real allegiance to it otherwise.”