Ryder worth its wait in gold

IT’S OVER, done and dusted, Ryder Cup 2006 come and gone. Did it live up to the hype? Was it the unique occasion long promised?

Going on my own experience of the last week or so, yes, yes and yes, I would say.

When it was announced that the Ryder Cup was finally coming to Ireland, I was delighted. For those with no particular interest in a specific sport, there are certain marquee events that grab the interest. Nationally, we have the All-Ireland final weekends, hurling and football, then spreading our wings a bit, we have the Six Nations in rugby; the Heineken Cup final and the Champions League final.

Internationally, there’s the Olympics, the World Cup finals and the rugby World Cup finals to a lesser extent. All of those generate huge interest, grabbing the attention of people who wouldn’t normally have anything to do with sport. The Ryder Cup, in recent years especially, is very much a part of that list.

Long before I ever swung a golf club I was aware of the Ryder Cup, followed the fortunes — and misfortunes — of the Great Britain and Ireland team, as it was up to 1977 and the European team thereafter. Now that I have joined the ranks of the golf converted, my interest is even greater, as is my appreciation for what these guys are doing. So naturally I was delighted that Ireland would have the honour of hosting such a global event.

We’ll never get the Olympics, the World Cup, so this was going to be as big as it ever got, for us.

As the date approached, however, I began to get sceptical. Too much fuss being made of it all. It was big, yes, but this big? All those billions it was going to be worth to the economy? I don’t think so! As for the players themselves, even before I started doing this job I was unimpressed by the notion of sports star as idol.

Muhammad Ali yes, because he went way beyond sport, risked everything he had worked so hard to gain, for a just cause. But golfers? Even the great Tiger Woods? I remember his late father making the statement that Tiger would do what Ali did, transcend his sport, make a difference in what is often a rotten world.

Tiger? Far from even attempting to live up to his father’s dreams for him, it seems to me his ambition is narrowed to putting a small ball in a slightly bigger hole more efficiently than anyone has ever done, while collecting as much dosh as he can.

All this hype about his coming to the K Club, about the event itself, began to grate. It’s big, but get a grip.

I knew for some time I would be covering it, doing something on a daily basis, and I can’t say I was overjoyed. I would be just coming off the All-Ireland finals, a tough time for any GAA journalist; I would have preferred to have sat at home and followed the highlights on RTÉ (no Sky Sports in our house, I’m afraid).

But it was a job, and off I went to the K Club, arriving for the Thursday morning practice sessions. And yes, it was a very positive experience.

For the four days that the K Club was open, all I could do was stand back and admire. Everything about it was fantastic, memorable!

The organisation was ultra-professional — the logistics of setting up the course, the grandstands, the challenge of getting the tens of thousands to and from the course each day all went off almost without a hitch.

Most impressive of all, the indelible memory — the crowds. It was a buzz unlike any I’ve felt at any event I ever attended. People speak of Munster’s European Cup win in Cardiff last May with awe. This was that kind of event. Different setting, but same emotions.

The noise levels on the first tee on the first morning, as Darren Clarke came to drive off, repeated on the Sunday as Monty led out off the Europeans, was spine-tingling. The buzz around the course was electric; the contrast between the respectful silence for shots, then the explosion of noise after something spectacular happened amazing.

Mind you, the sight of basketball legend Michael Jordan, standing less than his full 6’6” away from me, lighting up a cigar so big any ordinary mortal would have needed a counterbalance on his back, kind of sticks out as well!

Will it deliver all those millions of euro talked of by our tourism and sports minister? Who gives a damn. The important thing is that the Ryder Cup came, we saw, we enjoyed, and we won. Ultimately, that’s what sport is about, isn’t it, having a bit of craic?

The millions? Give them to Michael Smurfit, to Tiger.