I hate golf. It’s the sport of Donald Trump. It’s the sport of environment trashing. It’s the sport of rightwing suburbia (Fidel Castro’s affection for the game was, I’m sure, just a case of knowing the enemy). And it’s a sport that’s really a leisure industry (though some of the outfits are rather dishy).
But there is one too often neglected aspect of the game that even I have to admit deserves total respect – particularly today, as the Ryder Cup trundles to its final hole. Sports fans, whether we love golf or hate it, should recognise the huge service this tournament has done for English, and British, sport – a service that gives the lie to all those who, jumping on the back of the Sam Allardyce affair, have accused our national games of still being imbued with, or even governed by, the Rule Britannia spirit.
Talking of Big Sam is a reminder of golf’s strange attraction to pro footballers. Indeed, golf often seems to be football in disguise, with the papers appearing to have more photos of footballers on the fairway than in the penalty area. (What do golfers do in their downtime? Play football.) And when I was growing up, in the 70s, acquiring a rudimentary sense of history, it was our footballers who gave me the belief that we – that is, England – were the best in the world.
After all, we invented the game. We had recently won the World Cup (1966). We had more recently been stopped from winning the World Cup by having our ace goalkeeper poisoned (1970). And so on the evening of 29 April 1972, as England faced West Germany at Wembley (in an excitingly rare televised game) I recall to this day being 100% certain that the result would be a royally enjoyable England win, especially as our ace goalkeeper was now safe from dodgy foreign grub.
Like I said, my grasp of history was rudimentary. Forget the grub: England were gubbed. As Hugh McIlvanney wrote in the following day’s Observer: “No Englishman can ever again warm himself with the old assumption that, on the football field if nowhere else, the Germans are an inferior race.”
Still, a sport-mad patriotic teenager had other sports to warm him in that decade. Cricket: regular drubbings at the hands of Lillee, Thompson and any number of fabulous West Indies players. The Olympics: a world-beating 13th place in the 1976 medal table. Rugby union: just ask any Welsh supporter (or Scottish, or Irish, or French).
So the notion that the mother country was a paragon of sporting virtue was crumbling long before the Tories had sold off one school playing field. But what gave it the coup de grace was good old golf and its three-day leisure convention we call the Ryder Cup.
The tournament, set up by the St Albans seed merchant Sam Ryder in the 1920s, had not been going well for the Britain and Ireland team. By 1979, our sorry record read: won three, lost 22 (one tie). The Americans were losing interest.
So how did the sport of rightwing suburbia react in the era of Europe-bashing Thatcherism? It invited Europe on board. Out with lose Britannia, in with rule Europa.
Since the golfers started looking outwards, things have looked up: the European record since 1979 reads: won eight, lost seven (one tied).
But it’s not just this achievement for which I doff my cap to the game of golf. It’s also the example it has set to our other great sports. From Arsenal to Liverpool – and Huddersfield – our football clubs have opened themselves up to foreign expertise; the era when the British game shunned the World Cup is another country. British rugby union has embraced the southern hemisphere, and even France. Perhaps most extraordinary, the national cricket team has – gasp – an Australian coach.
Yes, this afternoon the golfers may need a repeat of 2012’s Miracle at Medinah to retain the Ryder Cup. But there’s one victory that can never be taken from them: giving the nationalists a good old-fashioned clubbing.
