Right now it feels like being eight years old again, having just had the best Christmas Day ever, with the best presents ever, then wandering down on Boxing Day to find what could be an even better present lying still wrapped under the tree. We’ve had the Olympics, and the Paralympics; a Briton won the Tour de France; a Belfast boy won the PGA; and now a Scotsman has won Olympic gold at Wimbledon and then the US Open at Flushing Meadow. And meanwhile the Test cricket side was battling it out with the best team in the world for the No. 1 position. All extraordinary; taken together pretty mind-blowing. And next week, almost creeping under the radar, is the Ryder Cup at Medinah, outside Chicago.
Europe have won only three times on American soil, but with José Maria Olazábal as captain could there be a spirit of Seve in the first Ryder Cup since the death of the European team’s spiritual father? This is the strongest ever Ryder Cup, and should be the best. All 24 players are ranked in the world’s top 35. The only time there’s been a stronger US team would have been in 1981 at Walton Heath, with Nicklaus, Watson, Miller, Trevino, Kite, Irwin and Crenshaw among others — all Major champions — but the Europeans weren’t anything like as good as today and we were duly whipped.
Of today’s Europe team, Sergio Garcia is back in form, Rory McIlroy just can’t stop trousering enormous winner’s pay cheques, and Westwood and all the others are in decent nick. There do not seem to be any of those players you won’t be able to remember in a few years’ time — whatever happened to Philip Walton, who sank the match-winning putt in 1995? If it was measured purely in Majors, the US would be home by a mile, with 23 to Europe’s six, though our trans-atlantic cousins would look a damn sight feebler without Tiger Woods’s haul of 14.
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