10 reasons why the Ryder Cup is the best event in golf

There is no event in golf like the Ryder Cup. It’s the closest golf comes to establishing the kind of competition and atmosphere you get at other sporting events. Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee even said it’s the nearest the sport gets to an Alabama-Auburn game. That’s pushing it a bit, but there’s no doubt an entirely different dynamic takes over the sport at the Ryder Cup.

The major championships may have the history, tradition, and career-defining glory, but none are more fun or unique than the Ryder Cup. David Duval, a major winner and former No. 1 in the world, called the 1999 Ryder Cup the “greatest golfing experience of my life.” Forget the Masters, this is the best event in golf. Here are some reasons why.

The best players in the world rarely get to play match play anymore, the format they grow up playing and what regular common hacks play on the weekends. This is one of two weekends all year where stroke play is cast aside, and the player can play an opponent instead of himself and the course.

The format ratchets up the intensity and the confrontational nature of the event. There’s gamesmanship all around, stuff you never get in normal tournament play. Paul Azinger calls Seve Ballesteros the master of gamesmanship at this event, and the two often clashed when matched up in the Ryder Cup. Azinger still talks about how Ballesteros was “clearing his throat” loudly during their swings at Kiawah in 1991. Ballesteros and partner Jose Maria Olazabal then confronted Azigner and Chip Beck for cheating and using the wrong ball during the alternate shot format. It brought the match to a screeching halt as the pairs confronted each other face-to-face with a rules official off to the side of the fairway.

Ballesteros, a heroic European Ryder Cup symbol, summed up the match play format thusly:

“I look into their eyes, shake their hand, pat their back, and wish them luck, but I am thinking, ‘I am going to bury you’.”

That Seve spirit persists on the European side, which has owned the competition for the past two decades now. The team is loaded with players -- Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Ian Poulter, Rory McIlroy -- grinding to crush American hopes and dreams. We don’t get that background animosity and confrontational aspect in any other week.

Nick Faldo said it didn’t really hit him that he was in the Ryder Cup until the American fans cheered wildly when he missed a putt. That doesn’t happen in any other setting in golf. These are the most frenzied and whipped up crowds in the sport, and while the occasional heckle might cause a bit of a controversy, it’s pretty common to cheer, point, and laugh at the dunce who just duff’d it.

Some stuffy traditionalists might get upset at the fans stepping outside the norms of only applauding every shot, but laughing at and cheering the opposition’s misfortune is what makes this so fun -- even when the line gets crossed. Just look at this hostile sequence between Olazabal and the Boston fans in 1999.

It’s not quite up to World Cup levels, but the Ryder Cup features the most absurdly clothed galleries in golf. There’s nationalistic pride and also just whatever odd costumes some of these people can dredge up.

We’re not getting fans dressed in anything other than golf shirts and pleats at the John Deere Classic or the BMW PGA Championship.

The consensus among those who have played, or even captained, is that this is the most pressurized golf setting of their lives. Nick Faldo said the Ryder Cup was the only time his stomach churned for an entire 18 holes on the golf course. After blowing what was thought to be the crucial match in 1991, Mark Calcavecchia wandered off at Kiawah in tears and in full panic before settling down over an hour later. Some of his teammates thought he’d have to be taken away by a medic.

Captain Tom Watson, a five-time winner of the British Open, said before his 2014 trip to Scotland that it was the most pressure he’s ever felt in a golf setting, eclipsing the pressure he felt as a player in the Ryder Cup. It’s probably because your success or failure affects 11 others and the press on both sides is ready to pounce on your shortcomings. If you choke in a normal tournament, it doesn’t deflate the hopes of an entire team, country, or continent. Every single player says this is the most nervous, must cutting pressure they have ever felt on a golf course. The blood and oxygen run out and it can be suffocating. As a viewer, that’s palpable too.

It’s extremely rare to have a group of millionaires, many middle-aged, wearing the same dopey sweater vest or oversized golf shirt. Some of the uniforms for both sides have been disastrous -- both in form and function (remember the malfunctioning rain suits in 2010 when US was over in Europe?) So, yes, this is another aspect of the Ryder Cup that can make you point and laugh.

Of course the standard for awful American uniforms also came in the USA’s most notable moment in Ryder Cup history -- those garish picture-frame shirts they wore during the 1999 comeback in Boston.

Fortunately, Team USA’s uniforms have entered a relative safe era confined to the red, white, and blue motif. There’s an official partner that keeps making these things and the styling has been taken out of the hands of the captains, which was often the cause for some of the fashion disasters in the past.

It’s always more interesting when the USA is not an overwhelming favorite. It’s why the most thrilling USA team events are the World Cup and Olympic hockey. The PGA Tour is far and away the best Tour in the world and the US has the deepest golf talent pool in the world. But the era of American dominance in the Ryder Cup is long gone, and it’s actually shifted the other way over the past 20 years. This is a real competition, and you know the USA is not going to crush the other side with their talent advantage at the start of the week.

This roster is absolutely loaded, but Europe isn’t some FCS opponent. They’re loaded too, with up-and-comers and Ryder Cup legends. Also, it has been 25 years since the Americans won on European soil. That’s a long run of Euro dominance. Winning in blowout fashion every year can get boring. Backing a team that wants to end a losing streak is exhilarating.

This is the greatest concentration of awkward buttslaps and missed high-fives on a golf course.

Just as it’s humorous to watch these millionaires have to wear the same dopey golf clothes, the Cup events force these players to emote and celebrate with a teammate in ways they never do every other week of the season. That leads to some awfully awkward encounters, some premeditated and some impromptu. There was the “Fresh Prince” bit that Matt Kuchar and Tiger Woods teed up at the Presidents Cup.

There was Boo Weekley, as country-ass a golfer as one can find, putting his mark on this sporting competition when he rode his driver down off the tee box back in 2008, the USA’s last win. His antics got under the European side’s skin but it remains one of the better American highlights. We’ve set it to Pony, naturally.

And of course, the caddies always get in the mix and celebrate with their loops. The most recent and notorious caddie celebration was Keegan Bradley’s bagman whipping the flagstick around his head as the Chicago crowd at Medinah lost it in 2012.

Tiger Woods is the most accomplished golfer of his generation. He’s an intimidating force in almost every golf setting, and has been the perennial world No. 1 during his Ryder Cups. But his Ryder Cup record is 13-17-3. Your world ranking and all your other accomplishments don’t matter in this match play format, particualrly when you have to rely on a partner.

In these two-man games, especially the Four Ball format, the score to par doesn’t matter at all. You just need a lower number than the other guy. So you often get one of the two players on a team attempting some otherwise crazy shots that they would never try during a regular week on the Tour. So let your partner play it conservatively, Bubba, and go ahead and rip it.

The Ryder Cup requires more strategy than any other golf event. The impact a captain can have on their team can be overstated, but they do have control over who makes the final three or four spots on the roster, who gets paired together, and what order he wants to send the players out in each session. Finding chemistry for the two-man games and then setting the correct order -- do your best guys, your most emotional guys, anchor or lead off? -- are two legitimate areas where the captain can have an impact during the competition. We saw last go-round in Europe how a Captain can impact the proceedings in a negative way, with Tom Watson’s Scotland disaster that ended with that incredible Phil Mickelson press conference skewering.

Course setup and pin placements have also been a strategy question and advantage for the home team’s captain. This is a course the European Tour plays every year at the French Open and you can bet Thomas Bjorn will have pins and conditions that his team prefers and might make the USA feel more uncomfortable.

In addition to the captain’s strategizing, the players also face more golf course management and match strategy than what they’re used to. The alternate-shot format requires the big hitters to start the odd/even holes that the par-5s fall on, and the best iron players to hit the tees for the odd/even holes that the par-3s fall on. In the four ball format, all sorts of strategy goes in to who should play or putt first depending on the score your partner has going on each particular hole. You may see one guy putt a five footer before his partner chips up from the green. And when do you decide to give your opponent a putt?

This definitely appeals more to the golf fans who are already all in on the Cup, but both the captain’s work and the on-course strategy add another level of intrigue.

Brian Spurlock-USA TODAY Sports

The wait between cups only builds the anticipation and hype, especially with that USA drought in Europe and given the way the American roster continues to turn over with a new generation of talent. It’s a long wait, but not holding this annually only makes it that much more fun when it finally does roll around.