Last month saw the most inexplicable of events; a golf tournament promoted with a Public Enemy song. The tournament in question was the Ryder Cup, a bi-annual competition where the USA and “Team Europe” compete to see which Western continent is the golfiest. The motivation from an American point of view is reasonably clear. They can draw on Uncle Sam’s extra strong brand of patriotism to help fire them to a glorious victory, but what about the disparate members of Team Europe? How can you believe in a concept as manufactured and abstract as “Team Europe” in an era when most people don’t even feel patriotic towards their country let alone their continent? Thankfully a combination of the maverick European golfers and Sky Sports (creators of the Public Enemy-sampling ad and its complementary hashtag #BringTheNoise) went about creating a false sense of rivalry and European pride to promote their tournament. The setting also helped lessen the sense of unease towards Team Europe; this year, rather handily, it was held in Scotland, a country much happier existing within a large imperial body than separately as its own autonomous nation.
Self-promotion in golf is reminiscent of the loud, empty grandeur that characterises English football and so the European golfers began to speak of their rivalry by turning to football’s favourite word: “banter”. Sky meanwhile actually interviewed football managers about the Ryder Cup, giving a sense that the whole tournament is one big boys club designed to let wealthy middle-aged men live out their Premier League dreams. European team captain and noted “Big West Ham fan” (according to Harry Redknapp) Paul McGinley even drafted in Alex Ferguson to speak to his recruits, presumably to get them suitably pumped up. This seemed to be an especially unusual tactic given the slow, cold, methodical nature of golf (or as a golfer might put it: how is fire in your belly going to help when you need to sink a twelve foot left-to-right breaker). Football-style chanting also became part of the build-up; both the fans and the golfers attempting this with various degrees of coherence until one was settled on: “can we play you, can we play you, can we play you every week” — which doesn’t even make sense, since the Ryder Cup is the only team event in golf. All this meant that by the time the first notes of the European anthem (yes, there is a European anthem) started playing, the golfers and maybe some fans were able to blare it out triumphantly — before remembering it has no words — though nobody else was so sure.
If you can’t get behind concepts maybe you can get behind people, and what a bunch of people? The European team’s talisman is Ian Poulter. Known variously as “Mr Ryder Cup” and “The Postman” (because he always delivers), Poulter is a confirmed character of the golf world, as his fondness for wacky trousers and open mouthed perfect-for-slow-mo celebrations will attest.
There were even two (Northern) Irishmen on the team for those fans who find European-ness a bit of a stretch but are comfortable with Irish-ness. Firstly there was Graeme McDowell or, as he likes to be known, G-Mac. Who is G-Mac? Well he’ll tell you himself: “Eh I dunno, he’s Irish, he plays a little golf, he drinks the odd beer from time to time, he likes to hang out and be himself really.” This thrilling content all comes from a Cribs-style interview from the Pro Golfers Association (below) where he also excitingly reveals one of his favourite pastimes is “going to the events”, whatever that means. This is captured from his home in America where he, like most of the European Team, lives, adding further confusion to the already flimsy concept.
The second Irishman was world number one Rory McIlroy, who at the time of the tournament was involved in a legal dispute with G-Mac, but they’re great friends, honestly. McIlroy had recently broken up with his girlfriend, tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, claiming she was affecting his game and damaging his performances. Thankfully for McIlroy he cast her off early enough to get into form before the Ryder Cup so he wouldn’t let down his European buddies. Bros before hoes and all that.
This sort of attitude reflects a general conservatism in golf that is perhaps most sharply seen in the sport’s approach to gender equality. The St. Andrews golf club in Scotland only voted to accept female members for the first time last month and there are plenty of other golf clubs that still do not accept women. In Ireland, the Portmarnock golf club has battled through court cases to uphold its no-women policy. Neither are small insignificant golf clubs. St. Andrews held the 2013 British Open while Portmarnock hosted the 2013 Irish Open, making it blatantly obvious that these sorts of standards are not only accepted but rewarded in the world of golf.
It is not just in this sphere that golf expresses conservatism. It was not difficult to note that both Ryder Cup teams consisted entirely of white men, a fact probably more down to socio-economic factors than open and explicit racism but one which highlights another issue in golf: its elitism. Even if you can afford the vast sums of money needed to gain membership to one of the clubs, most will still have some sort of vetting system in place — presumably to catch those with new-wealth and minorities. It seems laughable that one of the golfers on the American team, Phil Mickelson, is known as “leftie”, but the nickname derives from his left-handedness rather than his politics. In fact, a politically left wing golfer probably wouldn’t have made it onto the US team, such is the staunchly conservative attitude of American captain Tom Watson who, in another stint in charge of the US team in 1993, refused an invitation to the White House from then president Bill Clinton due to his distaste for politics of the Democratic party.
Defenders of the golfing world will rightly point to Tiger Woods as a significant non-white representative but Woods, who didn’t make it onto the US team due to injury, is very much the exception. He is also someone who has largely ignored American racial issues, supposedly due to pressure from his sponsors, such as Nike, to conform rather than speak out. Woods enjoys enormous popularity in the golfing world in a way that is somewhat uncommon for black American athletes in other elitist, white-dominated sports. Serena Williams, for example, despite fitting in perfectly with the American rags to riches myth, has never been as popular, prompting her to ask for further support from her own home crowd ahead of this year’s US Open tournament. Williams has also encountered racial abuse during her career which she describes in her autobiography, comparing the crowd who booed her at the 2001 Tennis Masters Series tournament in California to “some kind of genteel lynch mob”, claiming to have heard the “n” word amongst the boos. Tiger Woods has not been on the receiving end of racist abuse from an angry mob of golf fans but he has twice had racial slurs directed towards him, firstly from his own ex-caddie Steve Williams and then from golfer Sergio Garcia. In this context, it is not hard to imagine what might happen to Woods should he choose to speak out on a subject like the killing of Mike Brown in Ferguson, something he has stayed silent upon.
It seems a little ironic then (and almost sarcastic or sinister) that Sky Sports chose to use Bring the Noise to promote the Ryder Cup. The original meaning behind the song, which opens with a clip from a Malcolm X speech and contains an endorsement for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, has been repackaged by the golfing world to promote a pointless and meaningless tournament. Tiger Woods, for all his political inaction, has at least made it clear that he isn’t really interested in the Ryder Cup and it is a little farfetched to think that any other golfers would really care about the one tournament that doesn’t offer prize money. Looking at the Public Enemy album that Bring the Noise appeared on, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, it seems satisfyingly appropriate that the very next track is Don’t Believe the Hype.
The Ryder Cup is a different type of golf tournament. Team-play is unique to it (despite the hollowness of what the teams might represent or compete for) and the lack of prize money is endearing. It should, by its nature, be a tournament that represents a more inclusive strand to golf but instead, the uncertainty of its existence leads to endless hyping as a means of justification. The chance to confront issues of gender, race and exclusivity is neglected in favour of a descent into jingoistic promotion and empty hashtags as promoters look to build an increasingly elaborate structure to cover a hollow centre. Oliver Brown, a sports writer at The Telegraph decided to tackle problems with the tournament but instead of confronting any real issues, he focused on US team member Rickie Fowler’s “thuggish […] GI Joe-style crewcut (with) the letters ‘USA’ shaved around his ear” as evidence that the Ryder Cup has diluted golf’s “conventional etiquette”. Brown suggests Fowler would be thrown out of a golf club “in a heartbeat” under “normal” circumstances, highlighting the shallow moral standards golf adheres to. The eyes of the golf world don’t care about serious alienating issues, they are distracted by the noise that Rickie Fowler’s haircut brings. In the end, the twelve white men from Europe were more successful than the twelve white men from America at dropping their white balls into cups. Yay Europe.
