INTRO:
I was out for a round today at the currently-being-redesigned Holiday Valley Golf Club in Ellicottville, New York (a trendy little ski town in southwestern New York state.) The course is undergoing a three-year renovation with Paul Albanese, who split from Ray Hearn after completing Mill Creek Golf Club near Rochester, New York. A thought wafted downward on the wind, settling into my placid brain: why must the USA be expected to win at everything?

BODY:
Recently the USA lost in hoops at the World Championships? USA hockey hasn’t won big since 1980, and that was a stunner. Why? Well, “back in the day,” the USA (NHL, NBA, PGA Tour) was the cauldron of competition, and very few non-americans ventured over to participate (and certainly not enought to form a viable Ryder Cup team.) Nowadays, the NBA and NHL are populated with Latin American, European and Asian players of tremendous skill and desire (remember that word, desire.) These are athletes clawing ever upward, in their attempt to reach the top, where the USA has resided for decades. We have reached a level where parity reigns, although the number one target in everyone’s sites is always the big guy, good old Uncle Sam.

CONCLUSION:
Great foreign policy lesson to be learned here. We can defeat every individual European country, hands down. Together, we cannot win. In golf or life? (I forget.) Something about the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Before long, our national golf team will get hammered time and again by the World team at the President’s Cup. It’s time for a NAFTA of sorts for world golf, wherein we grab the Americas (give us Ames, Weir, Moe Norman…wait, he’s dead…Carlos Franco, and Angel Cabrera) and we’ll take on the rest of the world. You think Phil wouldn’t be scared into performing by Carlos’ moustache, or Angel’s biceps? Damned straight he would.

The USA will rebound on Sunday to claim the Ryder Cup, on the strength of nine great individual performances. Sadly, the pathetic lack of team unity will be forgotten in the wake of a victory whose whole truly will be less than the sum of its parts.

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