GOLF
David Davies
The Ryder Cup looks increasingly likely to be cancelled as leading American golfers openly questioned whether one of the year’s most eagerly awaited sporting events could go ahead in the light of Tuesday’s atrocities in the United States.
The event is scheduled for the Belfry in England from September 28 to 30 and although no decision had been made at the time of going to press on a possible rescheduling or postponement several US team members indicated they would have difficulty focusing on the event so soon after the tragedy.
Most of the world’s top golfers had gathered in St Louis, Missouri, for the $5m American Express World Golf Championship which has been cancelled while the officials who will decide the fate of this year’s Ryder Cup matches are scattered around the world.
Some of the US team had doubts as to their participation even if the matches go ahead. David Duval, the Open champion, for instance, said: ”Even if they are on, I don’t know if I’ll go. It’s not the matches, of course, it’s the travelling that we’d be worried about.”
Mark Calcavecchia said: ”I think you can forget the Ryder Cup for a few months. We are due to be having dinner with the president on Saturday week and that’s not going to happen and we are due to fly out the day after and my guess is that that’s too soon.”
Tiger Woods said his participation in the Lancme Trophy next week was also in doubt. He is supposed to fly to Paris on Monday but said: ”I wonder if I can even go.”
If the Ryder Cup is postponed, the problem then arises of when and where to play it.
Already the date is late for a major outdoor occasion in Britain and if there were a significant postponement of, say, a month, it would take the event to late October which in turn would mean transferring it from The Belfry to somewhere like Valderrama in Spain.
Although the Spanish course was host to the Ryder Cup in 1997 the logistics of moving one of the world’s largest sporting events within such a short time-scale probably rules out the idea of postponement, meaning that the cup either gets played on its present dates, or is cancelled and left to 2003.
Most of the European team would prefer the matches to go on. Padraig Harrington, who as an Irishman probably has more experience of terrorism than any American, said: ”You are only giving in by stopping. There’s a very difficult line between saying ‘Yes we’re stopping to show some respect to those that have been killed and what has happened’ and saying ‘No, by stopping we’re only giving in even more to these terrible acts.’ ”
The Swede Jesper Parnevik, another member of the Europe team, had a different perspective on the affair. He was a kilometre from the World Trade Centre when the two planes ploughed into it.
Parnevik, in Manhattan for a meeting with the golf clothing designer Johan Lindeberg, said: ”It was absolutely terrible. Of course you are afraid. I was thinking about my family and what might happen next.”