America immune to Ryder fever

The US PGA was widely criticised last month for staging the fourth major of the year just as London and most of the rest of the world were enjoying the final weekend of the Olympics.

It was a clumsy oversight, considering the struggles of golf to consistently attract a mainstream audience.

Any other winner would have fallen by the wayside in the sports news cycle but Rory McIlroy managed to receive some fanfare for his victory, not just for the manner of how he achieved it but also because of his popularity in American golfing circles.

But there’s nothing the US Ryder Cup organising committee could have done about the unfortunate clash of this weekend’s event in Medinah with the most volatile week in recent memory for the NFL.

On Monday night, the Green Bay Packers were the victims of a questionable refereeing call by inexperienced officials who have been called in to replace the locked out referees who would normally take charge of games.

It was the nadir for a dispute turning into one of the biggest sporting stories of the year in the US and almost every sports section in the Wednesday papers led with the fallout. It was even front page news in New York tabloids.

As a result, the build-up to the Ryder Cup has been almost non-existent. If you’re not a fan of golf or a Chicago resident, you will be alarmed to wake up Friday morning to see wall-to-wall coverage of the foursomes.

The New York Times may not be revered for its sports coverage but still it was unusual for them to opt for Michael Phelps and his round at Medinah as their lead golf story inside.

A random sample on Wednesday of the main ESPN channel’s morning headlines went from player of the season candidates in US College Football to Tuesday’s Top Plays onto the upcoming anniversary of New York Yankees legend Roger Maris’s 61st home run in the 1961 season back to another airing of the Packers controversy and finally to an update on Melky Cabrera, the San Francisco Giants baseball player handed a 50-game ban for performance enhancing last month.

Normally ESPN coverage would be biased against events they themselves don’t have the rights to but in this case, it is they who will have the Friday foursomes and fourballs before NBC take over on Saturday and Sunday.

It’s not a stretch to suggest that more people in the US know Golden Tate is a mediocre wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks than are aware that Davis Love III is the captain of their Ryder Cup team.

When the action really gets going on Saturday, the focus might switch from normal routines but there will need to be a climax of historic proportions on Sunday if the two teams are to have any chance of drawing attention away from another NFL Sunday.