Ode To Golf’s Greatest 72 Hours

For 39 years I have spent one week each April at The Masters so arithmetic indicates that I have devoted almost exactly nine months of my life to being in that speck of a place in Georgia. Using the same arithmetical process, if I have covered 20 Ryder Cups, the first in 1973, the next in 1981 and every one since, it follows that I have spent 20 weeks during the past 40 years at venues such as The Country Club, Brookline, in the U.S., Walton Heath, Surrey, England, Kiawah Island, South Carolina, Muirfield, Gullane, Scotland, Oak Hill, Rochester, New York, The Belfry, Birmingham, England, Valhalla, Louisville, Kentucky, and Valderrama, Costa del Sol, Spain. And I have been paid to do so, what’s more. Not a bad gig, eh?

The Friday, Saturday and Sunday of a Ryder Cup are in my opinion the best three days in golf, a biennial battle against our oldest allies. Shorter than the Masters or the Open, two of my favourites, a Ryder Cup is an intensive 72-hour examination that will test a player’s mental resolve as much as their physical skill...