THE ancient Greeks were an erudite old crew. While most slack-jawed simpletons of ye day were shuffling about trying to fathom out the purpose of a turnip, the more intelligent crowd were inventing democracy, trigonometry and philosophy and putting it to immediate use by taking a vote on which bit of the triangle to think about.
When they weren’t sitting in quiet, chin-stroking reflection they could often be found watching folk in the scuddy dashing around in primitive Olympic Games and delving into the deepest recesses of their intellect to come to the conclusion that Acanthus of Sparta really needed to cover his particulars with a loin cloth.
Plato, for instance, often havered on about the ethical dimension of
sport and recommended such pursuits as a means of teaching good character in The Republic, that Socratic dialogue that was a forerunner of the Tuesday column.
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Here in 2016, of course, we live in a world where a win-at-all-cost mentality is so rampant, great swathes of the general public would be quite happy
to shove their granny off a bus if it led to an X-Factor audition.
In just over a week, the biennial bun fight between Europe and the USA in the Ryder Cup will get underway amid the kind of sound and fury that would make a roaring, bawling Donald Trump look as timorous as a Trappist Monk with laryngitis.
It’s been dubbed a battle and a war down the years but Jack Nicklaus, that decorated, celebrated campaigner, has decided that it is, effectively, an exhibition match.
“To me the competition is incidental,” Nicklaus said at the weekend. “Who wins bragging rights – and I know everyone wants to win – but that’s not the important thing. The important thing is the game of golf and people having good relations and goodwill.”
Sound familiar? A few years ago, Rory McIlroy, who hadn’t played in
a Ryder Cup at that point, said this: “The Ryder Cup is a great spectacle
but an exhibition at the end of the day and it should be there to be enjoyed.
In the big scheme of things it’s not that important to me.”
McIlroy was hung, drawn and quartered for that observation and was almost forced to kneel before Samuel Ryder’s little gold chalice and beg for forgiveness. The reaction to Nicklaus’s assertion will, no doubt, be much less hysterical. McIlroy’s statement was viewed as disrespectful, youthful impetuosity by the frantic fist-shakers. Nicklaus will probably be held up as a gentleman and an ambassador who is preserving the good honest values that are at the game’s core. It’s a generation game, of course.
Back in Nicklaus’s day, the Ryder Cup was as lopsided as Long John Silver after a heavy session on the rum and winkles. In six appearances in the event, he was never on a losing side as the US doled out some dreadful tankings
to GB&I.
His famous concession to Tony Jacklin in 1969, when he gave the Englishman an eminently missable putt to ensure the match finished in a tie, was hailed as the greatest show of sportsmanship on earth although there were plenty who disagreed with Nicklaus’s grand golfing gesture. “All the boys thought it was ridiculous to give him that putt,” said the US team captain, Sam Snead. “We went over there to win, not to be good ol’ boys.”
When GB&I was later expanded to embrace continental Europe in 1979, Nicklaus himself was one of the main drivers for change in an effort to make the tussle more competitive. Now, as he says, the “competition is incidental”. Perhaps Nicklaus, arguably the game’s greatest competitor, is mellowing
with age?
Either that, or Team USA’s wretched recent run in the transatlantic
tussle has filed down those old competitive instincts. “It’s a goodwill event,” suggested Nicklaus. Ah yes, the mating call of the losers.
The Ryder Cup in the modern era is big, bold and brash with a level of patriotism and passion that sees golf burst out of its often strait-laced, po-faced norm. It makes for spellbinding sporting theatre where the thrills seem to be much grander, the anguish of defeat seems much more severe and the involvement of the galleries is unique. It’s a different animal to when Nicklaus was involved.
“Nobody ever remembers who finished second at anything,” said
a certain golfer back in 1960. It was Nicklaus himself. Winning, it seems, does matter.
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