Tommy Martin: You don’t have to be mad to think Europe can win Ryder Cup. But it helps

Team Europe captain Padraig Harrington during the second preview day of the 43rd Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits. Picture: Anthony Behar/PA 

There should be no way Europe can win this Ryder Cup, but thankfully Pádraig Harrington is mad enough to try.

We know that when the European captain surveys the scene at Whistling Straits, he sees things we cannot see. We see a team hopelessly outgunned. The US could not be more of crack commando unit were they captained by a cigar-chomping George Peppard.

They are always bigger, stronger, longer, better. But this time, more so. Their average world ranking is 8.9. The Europeans are a flabby 30.8. They are young, muscular, big-swinging studs. To a man.

The Europeans, in contrast, are the Dirty Dozen (apart from Viktor Hovland). A team of grizzled, battle-scarred veterans (apart from Viktor Hovland) on an impossible mission behind enemy lines. They’ve seen things. Some of them are certifiable maniacs (not you, Viktor). No-one cares if they don’t come back alive. They’re on their own in there.

They might just make it.

“If this was run by computer, the US are winning,” Harrington said last week. Why is he doing this? Harrington has admitted there are few things in golf that could change his legacy, but this is one. What if this is a washout? What if he turns out to be a Faldoesque car crash? What if Rory has one of those funny weeks and age creeps up on his four fortysomethings? What if all those American stallions go ballistic?

Good Lord, look at the top of the world rankings, it’s got more stars and stripes than a MAGA rally.

Thrice a vice-captain, it was his turn. But away Ryder Cups are a mug’s game. If it wasn’t for the Miracle of Medinah in 2012 the US would be looking to make it eight consecutive contests going the way of the home side.

And Medinah was properly nuts, lest ye forget. Since then the home team has romped home every time and the losing captain has come out looking a bit of a chump. Tom Watson, Darren Clarke, Jim Furyk — they all found that success has many fathers, but failure is a single dad. For a man who could talk about golf until the day coastal erosion claims the Old Head of Kinsale, Harrington is agreeably succinct on this: “A successful team is a successful captain. A losing team is a failed captain.”

His legacy? He is arguably Ireland’s greatest sportsperson, how much could that change even if he partnered John Rahm with Jimmy Tarbuck and poisoned all the blue and yellow goldfish?

But it matters to him. “My ego is attached to my golf,” he told The Guardian, “and there is no question the Ryder Cup will have an effect on that. Being a losing captain could definitely have an effect on who I feel I am.” Aw, Pádraig.

Could he not have sent a hospital pass the way of Robert Karlsson or even G-Mac (who better to lead Europe on American soil than the good ole boy from Portrush)? Because we all know what should happen. The home team dickies up the course to suit themselves and the home fans holler and jeer like medieval peasants at a beheading in the town square. And that should be that.

But he sees things we cannot see. You know what he’s like. Maybe he looks at Whistling Straits and remembers — because he knows everything about golf — that, yes, it is very long, but it is not really a typical PGA playground, rather more like an Irish links course.

No, it is an Irish links course. The other course at Whistling Straits is actually called the ‘Irish Course’ and the Straits Course itself was built because Herb Kohler, the Wisconsin plumbing magnate, wanted to recreate memories of golfing trips to the likes of Royal Portrush and Ballybunion. He even put a flock of sheep on it for authenticity. You won’t get a bag of chips and a 99 or the salt sea in your face, but it’s not too bad. Nothing to fear.

And then there’s the fact that the Ryder Cup is not golf. It’s Not Golf in the way the Olympics is Not Sport and Eurovision is Not Music. That is to say it’s same, same, but very different and so much fun for that. In fact, the Ryder Cup is the most fun you can have with bad clothes on.

Partly this is to do with a loss of the stuffed shirt proprieties that suffocate the game outside its biennial freak-out. You can whoop and sing and boo and hiss. You can pump fists and bump chests and cry uncontrollably and jump in a lake. You can be Tony Jacklin bombing around on a golf buggy like General Patton or Sam Torrance hovering approvingly like an Obi Wan Kenobi force ghost. It is golf’s pagan bacchanal — look, there go Monty and Zinger dancing naked around the bonfire!

Harrington has found himself drenched in European celebration enough to know that if it’s Golf, America wins every time, but Not Golf? That’s different. The team thing. It’s American rugged individualism against the European collective. It’s red-blooded frontiersmen against sweater-clad solidarity. Capitalism against, well, more capitalism, to be fair.

On one hand you had Brooks Koepka moaning last week about how he had to worry about all these other chumps screwing things up for him; on the other, you have Shane Lowry, who loves team sports so much he’d probably hand over his claret jug for the chance to run out at Croke Park in the Offaly colours.

And there is Harrington, a man so mad that, upon winning three majors decided to totally change his swing, as if Gustav Eiffel had built his famous tower, paused for a moment, then had it dismantled and reconstructed upside-down. But this is also a man mad enough to believe that an accountant could become a pro golfer, then somehow become a tour winner, then somehow become a major champion.

Ryder Cup winning captain? Why not? He’s been outgunned before, remember. You don’t have to be mad to think that Europe can win this Ryder Cup.

But it helps.