Forget about sportsmanship (Ryder Cup)

SportsCenter's Christy Simson previews the Ryder Cup and believes both teams will do absolutely anything to win.






After
winning the Presidents Cup in 2005 Tiger Woods told the media that the
"Presidents" was much more fun than the Ryder Cup because "there's more
sportsmanship - We're all good friends - That's how the Ryder Cup used
to be"

It's difficult to know what period of time Tiger's
harking back to. Maybe he's talking about "ye olde days" when everyone
was a gentleman and it was all about taking part and not winning.

Well
not really - Apparently in 1929 (the 2nd Ryder Cup) at Moortown, just
outside Leeds about 10,000 people turned out and, while most were
enthusiastic and vocal in supporting Britain, some of them, and this
was unheard of, some of them cheered the bad shots of the visitors.

Fast
forward to 1969 - made famous when Jack Nicklaus, after holing his
four-foot par putt at the last, famously picked up Tony Jacklin's ball
rather than make him hole a two-footer to tie the Ryder Cup.

But there were other moments that people don't like to talk about. Listen to this!

On
the first day, American Ken Still was asked by Maurice Bembridge not to
stand in his eyeline, but instead of moving back the few paces
required, Still took several minutes to ostentatiously move everyone
back by several yards.

On the next hole Still played a bunker
shot and his ball rebounded onto his shoulder (a one shot penalty). His
playing partner Lee Trevino asked if he'd been hit and Still refused to
reply, so Trevino picked up their ball and conceded the hole.

In
the first afternoon foursomes, Ken Still and Dave Hill were playing
Bernard Gallacher and Brian Huggett and early in the match, long after
Gallacher had settled over his putt, Still (whose caddy was tending the
flag) shouted: 'Get your own caddy to hold it.'

I could go on,
but you get the drift - By the 7th hole tempers had flared so much,
with the gallery also getting involved, that eventually the police, two
captains and the president of the PGA, had to be called to restore
order.

None of this was well publicised partly because there was limited media interest.

So
maybe Tiger's talking about those feisty, fun days between 1985 and
1999 when the Europeans came on board and the Ryder Cup had become a
genuine competition (between 1929 and 1983 it was USA 21.5 - GBR (&
Ire after 1973) 3.5).

The answer is 'no' again. In 1985 at The
Belfry, the likeable American Peter Jacobson complained that the
British supporters "behaved abominably towards him and his team-mates".
He said "they had lost all sight of the fact that the Ryder Cup
was created to foster a spirit of warmth and friendship between
sporting nations."

For the next six Ryder Cups, the crowds on
both sides of the Atlantic got progressively more aggressive, and
healthy competition slowly turned into barely concealed hatred.

In
1999, it all came to a head at Brookline, Massachusetts when the US
players, their wives and the caddies charged across the 17th green to
celebrate Justin Leonard's 45 foot birdie putt which they thought had
secured the Ryder Cup.

But no one had noticed, or everyone had
forgotten, or maybe they hadn't, that Jose Maria Olazabal had yet to
take his putt. It was a much shorter one and if he'd holed it, the pair
would have gone down the 18th all square and the overall result could
have been very different.

That was Tiger Woods' second Ryder
Cup and there hasn't been a whole lot of love ever since. Yes there
have been moments of "sportsmanship and fun" but really the last 20
years have been about plucky little Europe outshining their superiors
from the US. Nationalism, Patriotism, and crowd noise are ratcheted up
- and the weekend is about one thing - winning.

And that, by the way is what Tiger enjoys most - or maybe he enjoys it more when it's all about him.