The golf fans among you may have heard about the kerfuffle involving the British golfer Danny Willett’s brother Peter, who made some disparaging remarks about American folk. He was widely criticised by the American media and golfing fraternity and the British captain Darren Clarke felt the need to disown the comments. Danny himself felt the need to to disown his brother.
I winced a little bit when BBC Radio Five Live employed a voiceover artist to read Willett’s comment, but having sat through two days of coverage, I now think that he was very generous to the Americans.
Here is what Willett said:
“Team USA have only won five of the last 16 Ryder Cups. Four of those five victories have come on home soil. For the Americans to stand a chance of winning, they need their baying mob of imbeciles to caress their egos every step of the way. Like one of those brainless bastards from your childhood, the one that pulled down your shorts during the school’s Christmas assembly (f**k you, Paul Jennings), they only have the courage to keg you if they’re backed up by a giggling group of reprobates. Team Europe needs to shut those groupies up.
They need to silence the pudgy, basement-dwelling, irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer, pausing between mouthfuls of hotdog so they can scream ‘Baba booey’ until their jelly faces turn red.
They need to stun the angry, unwashed, Make America Great Again swarm, desperately gripping their concealed-carry compensators and belting out a mini-erection inducing ‘mashed potato,’ hoping to impress their cousin.
They need to smash the obnoxious dads, with their shiny teeth, Lego man hair, medicated ex-wives, and resentful children. Squeezed into their cargo shorts and boating shoes, they’ll bellow ‘get in the hole’ whilst high-fiving all the other members of the Dentists’ Big Game Hunt Society. Team Europe need to silence these cretins quickly.
Whether it is the captain, the players, or the crowd, it is the influence they exert that will decide the outcome. During my 33 years as an avid sports watcher, I have never cared more about the result of a single event. I am desperate for a win. Such desperation can lead to puerile outbursts. A more immature mind than mine might resort to petty insults or unflattering generalisations. I’m realistic enough to admit that I will struggle to resist the occasional capitalised tweet (I’ll keep the syllable count low for the sake of the dim Yanks). But it will be far more effective if it is the European players that do all the talking.
Darren Clarke needs to pick his pairs carefully, they need to support each other intelligently, and the crowd needs to be dealt with swiftly.
If these things happen, Europe will win, and I’ll try to support gracefully by embracing the same sense of fair-mindedness that has permeated this unbiased article. If not, the Americans will claim their second victory this century… those fat, stupid, greedy, classless, bastards.”
Not a minute goes by without a tedious rendition of “USA, USA” and, of course, that old favourite “in the hole”. But they’re much worse than that. The Americans shout “in the water” at European players, as well as general sweary abuse, some of which comes across on the telly coverage. And nonsense like “Cheeseburger” (what???) at random moments. Look at the crowd when Europe sinks a vital putt and there is no applause from the home fans but wild cheers when Europe misses one. Part of me, unfortunately, would like to see the European fans pile into this “baying mob of imbeciles” and punch their collective lights out. I realise that this doesn’t only make me as bad as the American fans, it probably makes me worse. I just can’t help it.
Much of my anger, such as it is, exists because of my desire for Europe to win the Ryder Cup, which only just comes before my desire for the USA to lose it. Bizarrely, I feel more passionately about Europe in the Ryder Cup than I do about my own country, England, in just about anything else. I really want to see our boys spraying Champagne into the air in the faces of our American “friends” sometime tomorrow night, relishing their misery and chanting back to them all the crap they’ve been shouting at us.
I mean, golf. Staid old golf, which many don’t regard as a sport at all. “I like it, I like it a lot!” yells one cretin, as Rory McIlroy hits one wide of the green. Grr, I sit here thinking. Just wait. I’ll have you. Or Rory will later on.
