Is It April Yet?

We’ve reached that time of the year when professional golf’s entertainment value hibernates. While the PGA tour continues to make a valiant effort at refining the Fed Ex Cup, the truth of the matter is that most of us stop racing to the TV for a Sunday shootout once the final round of the PGA championship is played; that’s why it’s referred to as “glory’s last shot.” With Autumn each year, the majors are over and we all check our scorecard to see who won how many so that we can argue over whether or not Tiger Woods is at the peak of his sport or looking in his rearview mirror for his best days. And then we watch a lot of football.

The professional golf season has always been painfully too long. But unlike the NBA, which seems to end in June and begin anew in July each year, professional golf has always had a built in off-season within the season. For all intents and purposes, the reason to watch professional golf has always begun in early April at the Master’s and ended with the Wannamaker trophy. Outside of those five months of seemingly never ending fields made up of 99 of the top 100 players in the world (there’s always one missing it seems), there are plenty of March and October weekends when pulling weeds is a more entertaining way to spend the day; as opposed to watching a bunch of guys with multi-syllabic last names that you’ve never heard of battle it out at the Pep Boys Classic in beautiful Bismarck.

With one exception; golf fans have always had an unspoken understanding with the greats of the sport; every other year we will set aside an entire week to watch the players who come from the birthplace of the great game stare down America’s finest. Since 1927, we have allowed a bi-annual reservation to be made in our autumnal schedules for the Ryder Cup; a long standing tradition of provincialism. America versus Europe, with each continent rotating the hosting duties, has provided endless memories and varying degrees of high and low lights throughout its storied history; many of those great memories coming in the last decade. From Justin Leonard’s brilliant 1999 putt to win the cup to last year’s unimaginable thrashing by America over a far more talented European team, there have been plenty of highlights for modern day golf fans.

Now, name a great President’s Cup moment.

Still waiting.

That’s not to say, of course, that there isn’t fine golf played when America takes on “the rest of world, except Europe” a dopey and labored premise to begin with; it’s just that nobody cares. I’m not even sure the players and coaches care. Look no further than the biggest story of the 2009 President’s Cup; Coach Greg Norman picked the fledgling Adam Scott to play on the team and the world shrugged. Try as it did to make the story interesting and controversy filled, the golf world could not make the real world care. Beyond “what’s up with that,” nary a thought was given nor a disparaging word heard.

The President’s Cup was born in 1994 when the world was flourishing with a renewed and powerful sense of political correctness and banished hurt feelings. Across the globe we had stopped keeping score at kids’ sporting events so that no one would feel bad and we had begun to refer to garbage men as refuse collectors to improve their self-esteem. The world was becoming more perfect by the second. And then someone realized that the golf world was leaving people out. For more than six previous decades America and Europe got to battle one another for the globe’s bragging rights, but no one from any other corner of the world was ever invited to play. Boo-Hoo cried out the world and the President’s Cup was born. And the rest of us yawned.

Even in a nation as proud and patriotic as America, the President’s Cup has never taken hold. We golf fans will generally watch, because we always want to see the best players in the world play; it’s the entire theory behind the Fed Ex Cup; we watch longer into the calendar year because the big named best of the best are still showing up. But just like with the Fed Ex Cup, we really don’t care much about the outcome of the President’s Cup. We never have. The President’s Cup is contrived and forced and most importantly, lacks a true villain. The Ryder Cup is basic: America, who has hijacked Europe’s game, against Europe. What could be more perfect? When it comes to the President’s Cup, it just doesn’t have the same panache to scream out “we really stuck it to those guys from everywhere else in the world except Europe!”

Call me when it’s April.

Rob Williams is the owner and host of the Rob, Arnie and Dawn morning talk radio show heard each weekday morning 5-10A.M. on Sacramento's 98.5FM KRXQ, Reno's 104.5FM, KDOT, and www.robarnieanddawn.com. To reach Rob, e-mail rad@robarnieanddawn.com