So America wins the Ryder Cup, and Anthony Kim emerges as a star.  That gives me a .500 batting average for the week (though admittedly I missed on the more important half…) which, for an event I don’t particularly embrace, isn’t too bad.
 
I must confess to having watched precious little of the hype-fest, so there are surely more cogent observations than mine floating around in cyberspace, but I did manage to wander by precisely as Paul Azinger was doing his singularly tasteless imitation of a college cheerleader, exhorting galleries seldom in need of bad-etiquette coaching to make more noise.  Of course, I also saw an impressive amount of first-class shotmaking in an impressively small amount of time, so perhaps all that noise – non-sporting though it may be – indeed served to jack up players on both sides.
 
And on the subject of confessions, I continue to find myself rooting for the European side, mostly because in general (i.e. not necessarily the specific 12 players on this week’s rosters) I find foreign players to be considerably more interesting, engaging and fan-friendly than our American stars.  And I know I’m not alone in holding that impression – but not a lot of mainstream writers (who make their living dealing with these guys on a daily basis) are likely to share such an opinion publicly.  And especially not this week, when 12 of our best 13 stepped up, played their tails off and stemmed what appeared to be a one-way European tide.
 
Impressive stuff.
 
One match where I was unabashedly rooting for the home side, however, was Sunday’s Anthony Kim-Sergio Garcia singles tilt.  Actually, this is a tough rooting interest for me to back up because I have it from a trustworthy PGA Tour source that Sergio is, in fact, a very nice guy, while Kim’s egging on of the crowd is precisely the sort of silliness that turns Samuel Ryder over in his grave.  But memories of Sergio’s past Ryder Cup antics (leading Davis Love III to once memorably quip: “They’ve got eleven gentlemen and one little boy”) made watching him flounder feel like a certain sort of payback – and how’s that for sporting spirit?
 
[Aside: Garcia now holds a career Ryder Cup ledger of 14-6-4, but only 1-4 in singles – so perhaps Europe’s next four or five captains may consider picking Jose Maria Olazabal into perpetuity…]
 
I also enjoyed Robert Karlsson’s 5&3 route of Justin Leonard, not because of any negatives associated with Leonard but simply because, as readers of this site are aware, Karlsson was likely the most underrated player in the world in 2008.  Indeed, prior to John Huggan’s engaging profile in GolfWorld last week, I doubt that 5% of American fans even knew who Karlsson was – except, perhaps, those few who recall his now largely forgotten attempts at making volcanic sand a staple of his fitness-oriented diet.
 
Anyway, if nothing else, the Ryder Cup certainly reminded me of two important points.
 
First, if the quality of the golf and the excitement of the occasion are high enough, even a mediocre venue like Valhalla (or, for that matter, Torrey Pines) can come out smelling like a rose.  And second, golf must be the single most difficult sport to handicap (save, perhaps, yacht racing?) in the universe.  Because in the end, results are generally determined by who happens to hit their groove at a given moment, who may suddenly collapse under pressure (often players who have succeeded admirably in the past) or who holes a 60’ bomb at just the right moment.  Further, there is a reason why professional tournaments are contested over 72 holes: because even that may not always be enough to fully expose the often minuscule differences in talent that separate the great from the near-great.  Thus how ably can anyone predict an outcome of an even made up of five separate 18-hole matches, four of which are contested in formats virtually no contestant has meaningful experience with?
 
But attempt to pick ‘em we still do.  
 
So it goes.