Golf should place its faith in a brand new rivalry

Over the last thirty years, Europe has turned the Ryder Cup into its own private fiefdom. Seve lit the torch, Faldo kept it burning and a parade of names from McGinley to McIlroy have walked across American chests like it was their ancestral right. And yet, in golf’s theatre of nations, the United States remains the star actor – centre stage, top billing, the spotlight fixed even as the plot keeps turning against them.

It is a paradox golf has never quite resolved. For all the talk of equality, the sport still orbits the red, white and blue. The calendar bends to America. The sponsors write cheques with America in mind. That's the harsh reality even as Europe are triumphantly hoisting the cup for the ninth time in twelve editions.

The Ryder Cup was never supposed to work out like this. It began in 1927 as a genteel dust-up between Britain and the United States, a ceremonial joust across the Atlantic. It was Britain’s cup in name only: the Yanks won and then kept on winning, until the whole affair threatened to collapse under its own predictability.

So, the borders widened. Ireland was folded into the cause in 1973, a reluctant acknowledgement that Britain’s cupboard was too bare on its own. Then came the great leap in 1979, when the continent was invited to join Great Britain & Ireland at the party. Spain, with its fiery new prince, Seve Ballesteros, transformed the competition from a faded exhibition into a blood sport. By the mid-80s, the Ryder Cup was no longer a British indulgence. It was Europe’s war.

That expansion saved the event and, to an extent, redefined it. Suddenly the Americans were no longer patron saints of inevitability, but generals under siege. The Ryder Cup became a spectacle of parity, venom and theatre – everything the Presidents Cup, created in 1994 to give the rest of the world a turn, has never quite managed to achieve.

The United States nevertheless remains golf’s immovable axis. The networks, the majors, the money – all roads still lead to America. Augusta is more than a course; it is a cathedral. The PGA Tour is more than a circuit; it is the empire.

And yet, the empire keeps losing its wars. The last time America won a Ryder Cup on European soil, Bill Clinton was less than a year in office and Tiger Woods was still two years away from participating in his first major. Three decades of pilgrimage without plunder.

For all their wealth, resources and golfing depth, America’s problem is no longer talent but temperament. Every defeat feels less like a shock and more like a pattern, a sporting déjà vu that gnaws at the mythology of American invincibility. Somewhere along the way, Europe stopped fearing the flag.

There is, of course, a reason no ‘Europe versus the World’ exists. The calendar is already buckling at the seams and it is America who dictates the calendar – Ryder Cup one year, Presidents Cup the next – with everyone else squeezed in around their orbit. Sponsors pay for America. Broadcasters schedule for America.

But imagine a three-year cycle, each event growing in stature because it comes around less often. Imagine, too, a winner-stays-on format: the reigning holders sit out, the pretenders fight for the right to face them. Suddenly, the Gordian knot that is golf’s calendar isn’t a chokehold, but a plot twist. The current structure doesn't have to be sacred.

The great irony is that golf has never been short of players outside America and Europe – it has only ever been short of imagination. Think of who the International side could field right now: Cameron Smith, a man with a mullet and the nerve to stare down at Andrews. Hideki Matsuyama, a player who carried the weight of Japan to a Masters win and barely raised his pulse. Joaquin Niemann, the Chilean with the whipcrack swing. A South African contingent that could fill half a team sheet on its own. Adam Scott, a veteran still carrying himself like a man born for Sundays.

And that’s only today. Cast your mind back and you realise how much the game has missed. Ernie Els, the Big Easy, never had a Ryder Cup to call his own. Vijay Singh, one of the most relentless ball-strikers of the modern era, was consigned to the margins. Greg Norman, for all his nerve, never got the kind of stage that might have magnified him beyond the majors. An International team across eras would have been formidable – not a backdrop, but a headline act.

The Ryder Cup has always proved something bigger than itself: that golf, a sport built on lonely walks and private reckonings, has the capacity to suddenly burst into collective theatre. For three days, men who spend the year guarding their own brands bleed for a flag. The drama crackles because the balance is real. You don’t know who will win, and so you care.

Els, Singh, Norman and many more should have been remembered not just as solitary hunters, but as leaders in a duel with Europe’s finest. The fact that they weren’t remains one of golf’s squandered opportunities.

Now the game is more global than ever, fractured and scattered across tours and continents. And yet its great team competitions remain trapped in the same old binary: America versus the rest, with Europe invited to play the villain. It is a story that no longer matches reality.

While the United States remains golf’s commercial empire, in the theatre of victory they have become a fading power. They are no longer the king, even if they're still cast in his costume. Europe keeps stealing the crown, yet the spotlight still follows the wrong throne. Perhaps it is time to widen the map again, to finally let the International side step into the light, not as America’s consolation prize, but as Europe’s equal.

The Ryder Cup was saved once by expansion. Its future may depend on it once more.