BubbaCrusher007:
The Ryder Cup started as a competition between Great Brittain and U.S.. The United States won it most of the time for many years.
So they (Nicklaus and the Earl of Derby) decided to add these countrys to Great Brittain and Ireland, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden in 1979. This was to make it more competitive and less lop sided.
It looks like it worked! Although I suspect that if we had to face only Great Brittain and Ireland, we still would have gotten our asses handed to us. The way Justin Rose played? wow
So I propose we make the cup less lop sided and give us the Aussies for our team, how's that sound?
The idea came, basically, because of the amount of people playing golf being the US a geographically huge area having millions of people playing golf, compare to Great Britain with much less people playing the sport. The US has probably still more people playing golf than the hole Europe together.
Missing Tiger in this cup for the US, things were certainly a little balanced towards Europe although not significantly.
To see Patrick Reed being so involved in his match results and so resoluted on winning them, and seeing Walker playing superb golf (in my opinion the best player of the Ryder Cup) it was a probe that players skills were balanced in both sides...Europeans were simply better at getting the best out of the situation.
Somehow the biggest golf event in the world should involve ALL countries and not only the Us & Europe....but that is unfortunately not possible even tho there are other competitions already mentioned involving several continents. The Ryder Cup is still the most important golf competition in the world.
Eric