The Ryder Cup Doughnut-Monster

Added on 28 September 2010

This is the week of the Ryder Cup, the most bloated, over-hyped sporting competition on the calendar, which is some achievement given all the others; the only event on Planet Earth where it is demanded of us that we get excited about Europe as a sporting entity.

Here at Long Midnight Publishing we are in a quandary, and here's why:

This is how Colin Montgomerie got to be captain of the European team. Before the captaincy for this event was decided, golfing legend, and officially The Greatest Golfer Never To Win 3 Majors, Sandy Lyle had expressed his desire to be in charge of the European team.

As the most senior golfer regularly playing on the European tour at the time, Colin Montgomerie's opinion was obviously going to be important, and he publicly stated that he backed Lyle for the post. 'Sandy's the man for the job,' he said. 'Yep, has to be Sandy, there's no one else even in the running. Give it to Sandy, that's what I say.'

Then the executive players committee for the European Tour sat down around a buffet table of lobsters and doughnuts, to thrash out who should be their next Ryder Cup captain. It was approximately one minute and fifteen seconds into this meeting that Colin Montgomerie - the man who had publicly backed Sandy Lyle - leapt up into the air, the crumbs from his fourth doughnut still on his lips, and started shouting, 'Pick me! Pick me! I can do it, really I can! Pick me!'

When the meeting turned against him, and said that he couldn't do the job until he grew up and stopped throwing tantrums, he threw a tantrum and stormed out the room. In his absence, the remaining fourteen players capitulated and, like abject parents giving in to their bleating and obnoxious three year-old, handed him the captaincy so that he would no longer be in a bad mood.

Mr Montgomerie then left the meeting, and since then has more or less denied ever having met, talked to or even having heard of Sandy Lyle.

This week, when he ought to be captain of the European Ryder Cup Team, Sandy Lyle will be keeping well out of the way while playing in the Ensure Classic At Rock Barn, Conover, North Carolina on the US Old Man's Tour. Meanwhile, Colin Montgomerie will be larging it over the media, the centre of attention, which is where he demands to be.

So, on the one hand it would be nice to see him fall flat on his face and lose. But that would mean the Americans would win... Tricky. I suppose a draw would leave everyone disastisfied. 

Perhaps there will be some new way in which they could both lose. An earthquake in south Wales perhaps. Or one of those invasions of Wales from space that happens every second week on Dr Who. After all, a Slitheen would fit quite nicely into a Colin Montgomerie costume.