In anything that's been written about golf in the past five years or so, there's one question that continually surfaces: Can anybody beat Tiger Woods?
With the Ryder Cup beginning today at The Belfry in Sutton Coldfield, England, the answer is -- "Yes!" Who? Those bloody Europeans!
Eldrick is 3-6-1 in Ryder Cup matches. He's been beaten by Constantino Rocca, who has a nifty short game but hits his driver about as far as Tiger hits his 3-iron. He and fishing pal Mark O'Meara lost 5-and-3 to Jesper Parnevik and Colin Montgomerie in 1997 in Valderrama. Losing 5-and-3 in a foursomes match is like losing a football game 42-0 and having your star quarterback carted off in a stretcher.
El Tigre wasn't much better two years later at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass., dropping three of his four team matches before defeating Andrew Coltart in singles.
This is the beauty of the Ryder Cup. All the rules of stroke play -- never make anything worse than a bogey, you can't beat Tiger, you can't pick up putts, you can't beat Tiger -- get thrown out the window. Phil Mickelson, who responds to pressure in majors about as well as nuns respond to Howard Stern, is undefeated in Ryder Cup singles play.
On paper, there's no reason to expect that the U.S. should ever lose a match. Of the 12 members of this year's squad, eight are in the top 20, compared to just four top-20 rankings on the European side. And of the last 13 majors, 10 have been won by Americans (the majority of those, of course, by Mr. Woods).
But David always gives Goliath a run for his money, if not completely chopping him down with a vicious pitching wedge to the shins. The combined record of Team Europe 2002 is 45-32-15, compared to the U.S.'s 36-38-5. The Europeans have won five of the last eight Ryder Cup competitions, and the U.S. needed eight wins in its last 12 matches in Brookline to nip Europe, 14 1/2 to 13 1/2, and finally wrest the Cup away from its transatlantic rivals for the first time since 1993 -- the last time the Cup was held at The Belfry.
This morning, Woods and Paul Azinger meet Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjorn in a fourball match. 'Zinger hasn't fared well in the Ryder Cup either, going just 1-4-1 in fourball. Not only that, but their opponents are two of the half dozen guys on the planet who have gazed into the belly of the beast and laughed. Clarke beat Tiger in a World Match Play Championship and Bjorn defeated him in last year's Dubai Desert Classic. A decisive win by Woods and Azinger could inject all the early confidence Curtis Strange's team needs, but a European victory could immediately send the momentum in the completely opposite direction.
This year's Ryder Cup should not want for drama. Team Europe patiently waited an extra year while America (and the rest of the world) recovered from the Sept. 11 attacks to get its chance at reclaiming the Cup. It's still smarting, no doubt, from the Justin-Leonard-makes-putt-the-whole-world-charges-onto-green incident. Europe always plays this event with a festering collective chip on its shoulder and, although the controversy surrounding Leonard's putt has died down, you can be sure Sam Torrance's troops would love to rub the Americans' faces into the spongy English turf.
Unlike the Davis Cup, where American teams perennially disappoint, and the World Basketball Championships (let's not even discuss that), the Ryder Cup is down-to-the-wire, nip-and-tuck drama, entertaining even if you loathe golf the way John Daly loathes vegetables. It shows that Tiger is mortal, that golfers can put their individual mindsets aside and play for the team, and that David can not only drop Goliath, he can make him look pretty silly in the process.
Sure, it's fun to watch Tiger rip off 12 consecutive birdies. But seeing him succumb to the likes of Niclas Fasth (hey, it could happen) makes the Ryder Cup worth watching.
