New formats may still be golf, but not as we know it

Rivalries are nothing new in sport. They are on every corner but few have the importance or the commercial impact of the three-day match play tournament which biennially pits the best players from both the US and Europe against each other: the Ryder Cup.

Important because in the 90s, the successful campaigns of their Ryder Cup teams gave the European Tour much- needed credibility while also affording it a corporate lifeline, through sponsorship which it exploited in full to grow its schedule by way of keeping their superstars like Ballesteros, Lyle, Faldo, Langer, and Woosnam at home — despite the many efforts of USPGA Tour to lure them away.

And yet the European Tour may never have been in this position, had it not been for the “bigger picture” vision of Jack Nicklaus to change a largely uncompetitive match between the US and Britain and Ireland to that of the US versus Europe from 1979 onwards.