To start off October this year, golf fans were treated to their closest version of a World Cup, the Ryder Cup, an event allowing the best golfers of the United States to fare against Europe's best. While golf is typically seen as a sport for individual accolades, with stars such as Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson owning most of the headlines, this tournament is a pleasant change of pace where players team up with each other, providing more than one sole winner at the end of the weekend. The Ryder Cup features 12 men from each team, in which golfers match up against one another over 3 days in both foursome and singles matches, while trying to earn points for either USA or Europe with every individual/team victory. This year, fans were treated to Team Europe regaining the Ryder Cup in a 1-point victory over Team USA and bringing the trophy home for the 9th time over the past 13 competitions.
There is much vested interest in this tournament for both the Americans and Europeans (mostly British), and for good reason. It seems golf fans love nothing more than history, and this tournament has a rich history since its inception in 1927 where it started as U.S.A. versus Great Britain. As the fans and players alike look forward to the next Ryder Cup to be held on U.S. soil in two years time, perhaps it's time fully expand on this tournament idea and let golf greats like Ernie Els, the 10th best golfer in the world according to World Golf Rankings, join this illustrious tournament. You see, the unfortunate Mr. Els is not permitted to partake in this tournament simply because his nation of South Africa, a nation with a rich golfing history in its own right, is not part of this highly exclusive tournament. Other continents, such as Asia and Australia, are also producing plenty of competitive talent on the PGA Tour (Professional Golfers' Association), but still find their nations absent from a highly publicized world tournament. It is time for the PGA to look past the exclusionary nature the tournament provides and instead flourish into a highly competitive worldwide tournament, where all nations and continents finally get to compete against one another as teams. Let's finally have a tournament where the main focus isn't "U.S.A. versus Golfing Conglomerate X".
The goal for advancing most sports, not only golf, to a brighter future seems true across the board: increase the fan base, improve future talent, and maintain a fair and competitive balance for all competitions. Expanding the Ryder Cup idea to the world could do just that. Sure, an actual World Cup of Golf tournament does exist, where every nation sends it's top two representatives for a 4-day competition. Sounds great in principle, but it's tough to take seriously when the Americans send relative no-name teams such as Nick Watney/John Merick (2009) and Ben Curtis/Brandt Snedeker (2008) because top American golfers choose to opt out of playing. Then there's the also biennial Presidents Cup, formatted much like the Ryder Cup, where it's 'U.S.A. versus The World' (note: this "World" doesn't allow Europeans to play for them, as Europeans have the Ryder Cup). The U.S.A. does dominate the individual golf rankings, 21 of the PGA's Top 50 are American, but that doesn't mean they should have the right to be the central focus of all major team golf tournaments. Let's have one where the Europeans can compete against a team combining Asia and Australia. Let's see if Americans can beat the Africans, primarily South Africans, with relative ease as they believe they would. Golf should have a Continental Cup.
The current format of U.S.A. versus Europe (or U.S.A. versus the World) just self-promotes American golf in their successes. A Continental Cup would have continents forced to have representatives from more than 1 country. No Team North America consisting solely of U.S. citizens. Team Africa would have to accommodate at least one non-South African player. This could help promote golf throughout multiple countries, instead of it being a one-nation per continent event. At first glance, it appears as though this style would be less competitive. Teams North America and Europe would surely dominate present tournaments while Africans and Asians would likely struggle. On second glance, South Africa does have 4 golfers that rank in the Top 35 on the World Golf Rankings, while Asia and Australia combine for 21 golfers ranked in the Top 100. These continents are not leaps and bounds behind Americans and Europeans. There's little doubt that it might be awhile before Africa or Asia came to win this tournament, but one should remember that the Ryder Cup was also fairly one-sided for the longest time. In fact, the British won only one single time, in 1957, over 52 years spanning 1933-1985. And since then, the British have developed considerably, thanks partly due to their embracing of the rest of Europe for this tournament, and have now won a majority of their tournaments against their American counterparts over the past 25 years.
At this point, we are so close to an actual world tournament. There's The Royal Trophy, awarded to the winner of a Europe versus Asia tournament. The Americans have plenty of team tournaments to choose from as mentioned above. It's time to amalgamate them all and make a real World Golf Tournament in which all fans and players from all continents can invest interest. Golf is a world sport and there's talented players touching all four corners of the map. Golf could hold a Continental Cup once every 4 years and invite the whole world for this massive event. Let's see the sport grow and see which continent produces the best golfers now and in the future. It's worth a try, and the fans would surely be appreciative. If anything, it sure trumps the "Beat the Americans" mentality the Ryder Cup seems to bring from the British.
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