Sound of silence par for the course

YOU may have noticed that the Ryder Cup golf competition is arriving on these shores. You haven’t? No phone signal in your cave? If you are living under the ground then you’re getting off lightly.

There hasn’t been an advertising push like this since the Millennium Bug, or the eircom share flotation, and those comparisons are deliberately chosen. In the interests of disclosure, however, this column should confess a long-held view: that golf isn’t really a sport.

Look at the evidence. It’s possible in golf to be a top competitor well into your forties, even if you’re clearly out of shape, not to mention dressing in a powder-lemon v-neck with lovely grey slacks. What kind of . . . activity can be dominated by participants like that? Golf has its defenders, of course, who can no doubt recite great encounters and battles between the stars. The only problem is, if you’re at a tournament, what do you watch? The play is spread over a couple of hundred acres: there’re two players over there, another pair 300 yards away, and the duo finishing up are somewhere in the distance. But don’t worry if you think you’re missing anything: you’ll be forewarned by the deafening silence all around you.