Other than the Superbowl and the Olympics, this is, IN MY OPINION*, the most important sporting/athletic event in the world:
Presidents Cup organizers are billing this week’s event in Virginia as “Unfinished Business,” a reference to the dramatic tie in the 2003 event in South Africa. When the event begins today with a starry opening pairing featuring Tiger Woods, 24 players and two captains will be hoping not only for victory but also the kind of theater that will elevate the team match-play competition to the status enjoyed by the Ryder Cup.
With eight of the top 10 players in the world here this week, there will be plenty of talent all over the 7,335-yard, par-72 course, and today’s alternate shot competition will open in a big way.
And as further proof that there is no God, the Yankees are in first place again in the AL East.
*Post edited for pedants.
I am a blithering idiot and don’t know why any of you even read me. In my rush to post before class, I confused the Ryder Cup and the President’s Cup.
What a maroon. The Ryder Cup IS important.
Another Jeff
Let me say right off the bat that i would rather have raw steaks strapped to my naked body and then walk through a room full of rabid Rottweilers than watch a soccer game, but wouldn’t the World Cup be considered, on a worldwide scale, more important than that?
Geek, Esq.
How can “golf” and “important” be used in the same sentence?
John S.
That’s not proof that there is no God, that’s proof that there is a devil.
Steinbrenner cut a deal with Mephistopholes years ago.
Brad R.
Steinbrenner cut a deal with Mephistopholes years ago.
Didn’t help him much last year when his team suffered the worst choke in the history of sports, did it?
Halffasthero
I have watch my Minnesota Twins crash and burn. I watch the Vikings not even get off the ground. Barry Bonds is on his way to a steroid-enhanced butchering of the home run record and baseball in general. Right now, I don’t care much about what is going on in the sports world.
ape
MOST IMPORTANT EVENT IN THE WORLD!
im here to tell you that noone in ‘the world’ gives a damn about the preposterous 20hr borefest of the Superbowl. here’s 10 more important events:
1) the football world cup
2) the rugby world cup
3) the cricket world cup
4) the ashes
5) the six nations (rugby)
6) the european cup (football).
7) the champions league
8) India v Pakistan at cricket (1170m people’s national sport)
9)Manchester City v Everton (football): just in case anyone tries to claim ‘the superbowl’s bigger because more people watch it’ – 360m (more than twice the highest superbowl audience, 3 times the average) tuned in to watch this meaningless encounter between two mid-table premier league football clubs in 2003.
10) the FA Cup: absurd claims are made for the tv audience of this and other finals: 2.5b for this. and it’s always rubbish. although not because the game stops every 2 seconds for an advert.
and golf is neither a ‘sport’ nor an ‘athletic event’. noone breaks sweat. it’s the same as darts except the target is further from the oche, so that it has the disadvantage of lasting longer.
so there.
Nathan Lanier
My Red Sox are in typical late season form.
Tim F
You left out F1 and Grand Prix racing.
sean
i know it’s your opinion, John, but how can a sporting event that started in 1994 be more important than one in the same sport that started in 1927 (Ryder Cup)? even the article you linked to disagrees with you:
Slartibartfast
I don’t give a damn about any of ape’s more important list. And my opinion is really the only one that carries any weight with me, as far as personal preferences go.
John S.
How many championships have the Yankees won in the last decade? Only four?
Yeah, they really suck ass.
ape
Putting sport in perspective:
“when Tendulkar is batting against Pakistan, the television audience in India exceeds the population of Europe”
smh.com.au/articles/2003/12/10/1070732290906.html?from=storyrhs
just pointing out that the US is not the world.
the biggest sports event in Switzerland is the “Schwingen” festival, in which the aim is to clutch your opponents shorts. good luck to ’em.
jg
Yankees suck!
Since the Sox won last year I’m not even that bothered by whats happening this year. Last year I’d have killed someone by now.
Vladi G
The President’s Cup is a nice little diversion between Ryder Cups. Nothing more.
Brad R.
How many championships have the Yankees won in the last decade? Only four?
Yeah, but I’m just sayin’ that if Steinbrenner had made a pact with Satan, his team probably wouldn’t have suffered such a humiliating defeat at the hands of his worst nemesis.
Lines
Bush is too busy trying to figure out if he should wear it or drink out of it
docG
My favorite sports moment of this summer was watching our Kansas City Royals sweep the Yankees and beat the Big Unit like a cheap drum. Not often the farm team humiliates the major league team.
Admittedly don’t know anything about golf, but it televises like a high dollar version of tossing playing cards in a hat. Same skill set and only marginally more effort.
jg
Anyone who doesn’t play golf has issues. It ain’t just for country clubs Biffs and Todds. It is unbelievably frustrating but once you get it it does kick ass.
J. Michael Neal
I, too, believe that the President’s Cup is one of the most important trophies in all of sports. It’s a damned shame that people have allowed the pursuit of the Stanley Cup to completely eclipse it.
ape
‘people who don’t play golf have issues’
yes. the issue is that they don’t like Golf. Rush Limbaugh has a similar theory – ‘golf is the true test of a man’ etc..
The true test of a man who weighs 800 pounds, yes.
In England, men seem to take up golf when they get too old for cricket. They take up bowls when they’re too old for golf. I hope that ‘golf window’ is as small as possible for me. I’ve bought my cardigan and pipe and I’m ready to go.
an aussie friend of mine has an interesting theory: ‘I don’t like golf. it’s the only sport i don’t like (he’s a typcial aussie) because it’s the only sport where you can’t do better by trying harder.’
maybe this gives some legitimacy to the Limbaugh view. but also it could emphasise the point that golf is more a game than a sport.
and more a form of land-holding than a game. ‘no women in the clubhouse’. yup. ‘cos if there’s one thing you don’t want in a club.;/#
bill m
Anyone who watched the Solheim Cup knows where the power is now. Those American women make the robots on the PGA look more boring than ever.
John Cole
The Ryder Cup is up there, too.
John S.
Well, Satan had other pacts to fulfill last year…
jg
I do better by trying harder. He must be doing it wrong.
800 pounds? Why not say liberals play golf?
Slartibartfast
Depends on what “trying harder” is directed toward. If it’s in the direction of expending more effort, I agree. But that being the case, that’s a rule that applies to many other sports as well. It took me quite a while to realize that in swimming, you could improve your performance a LOT more quickly by improving technique than by simply training harder and racing harder. This probably applies to other sports as well: the quality and efficiency of movement is more important than the effort.
That said, I fully agree that golf isn’t a sport in the sense that it involves any athleticism. I put it in the same bin as bowling, car racing, and other things involving non-aerobic skill.
jg
There is some athleticism. Athletic people will get better at it faster than non athletic people IMO. Mostly a skill game though.
Tim F
I’ve known freep. They make Jonah Goldberg look positively svelte and well-groomwd.
Jim Allen
“How many championships have the Yankees won in the last decade? Only four?”
That’s true, and the ratio of 26-1 still holds. But forever and always, whenever a team (in any sport) is up three games to none in a best-of-seven series, someone will say, “But remember what happened to the 2004 Yankees — the WORST CHOKE EVER”.
This, my friend, is the Red Sox fan’s equivalent of “We’ll always have Paris”.
tBone
The President’s Cup? Does that have something to do with the “Mission Accomplished” landing on the aircraft carrier?
jg
26-1? The Sox have 6 championships. Doesn’t matter though, the Sox and MFY are division rivals, they play for the pennant. There I think the MFY have an even bigger lead.
stickler
Not to interrupt a perfectly fine baseball blabfest, but back to the golf for a second.
I suspect there’s a big class issue for a lot of people when they look at golf — and that is very much regional. Where I grew up, not far from Spokane, WA, every farmer golfed. Not only that, they built the damned course with volunteer labor (it was the late ’50s and I guess Ike had a lot of influence). Thus, golf wasn’t a rich man’s sport. Wasn’t Kevin Costner in a golf movie about ten years ago? Think that kind of blue-collar entertainment. 18 holes and a cart will run you about twenty bucks. Mind the rattlesnakes in the rough, though.
In college I ran into a lot of people from, say, Virginia or New Jersey, whose only contact with golf was as catering employees at some Vanderbilt Country Club or other. I can understand hating a sport played by millionaires who wear yellow pants. But that’s not golf. Or, at least, not all of golf.
Plus, regarding this:
Obviously this person has never golfed with me. If you take enough strokes you can get some mighty fine exercise. Plus, if you don’t use the fairway, they give you a discount on the greens fee at the end. I promise! Lots of hiking and whiffing really builds up the stamina.
Jim Allen
jg, the 26-1 is the post-Ruth trade record, if memory serves.