THE RYDER CUP is the week in which golf briefly loosens its upper lip and makes a compromise with the more base instincts of the sports fan.
In this respect, the competition makes a good bedfellow for Donald Trump, America’s president but also America’s preening and boorish id.
At least golf suspends its normal terms of engagement for a week every two years. We’re into year six of the same in American politics.
Trump will become the first sitting president to attend a Ryder Cup on Friday, necessitating the kind of mass security organisation that explains why sitting presidents haven’t previously attended a Ryder Cup.
Trump has at least reportedly been convinced not to arrive for the very first tee shot, and so will likely arrive for the start of the fourball matches in the afternoon.
So beyond the usual security checks that will meet 40,000 fans at arrival, there will be airport-style scanners set up around the clubhouse and the enormous grandstand erected behind the first tee and the 18th green. Everyone passing through will have to be scanned as often as they pass, and given this is the primary access point to the rest of the course, we are expecting people to be moving around at a pace even Patrick Cantlay would find slow.
Justin Rose told the media on Wednesday that the European team have been told that Trump is not expected to roam about the course, which would cause the kind of disruption that would make it very difficult to actually stage the competition.
Trump, mind, has claimed credit for the whole thing going ahead in the first place, with the White House press secretary this week saying the president had signed an executive order to ensure a threatened Long Island rail strike did not go ahead. He is therefore limiting the mass logistical upheaval to his own attendance.
When asked about Trump, the Europeans have said that his presence reflects the status of the Ryder Cup nowadays, while Robert MacIntyre was thrown a curveball by a questioner who sang about Trump’s “proud” Scottish heritage.
“I’m not bright enough to be worrying about politics”, he said while insisting he was focused only on competing. Then asked if Trump would be a distraction, MacIntyre replied, “just another spectator.”
These are not the answers that will get you ahead in Trump’s America.
Hence the American players have generally lauded him when given the opportunity.
“I hope he will inspire us to victory”, said Bryson DeChambeau. “I think he’ll be a great force for us to get a lot of people on our side.”
Scottie Scheffler meanwhile praised Trump’s love of golf before paying his homage. “One of the things I noticed a lot with the little bit of time I spent with him, is he treats everybody the same and treats people with the utmost respect.
“Whether you’re the person serving us lunch or the caddie on the golf course or the guy who’s the president of the club that we’re at, he treats everybody like they’re the greatest person in the world.” No doubt the world leaders at the UN this week told by Trump that their countries are “going to hell” are nodding furiously in agreement.
But then again Scottie Scheffler spends most of his life on America’s private golf courses, which exist as wealthy silos from the real world.
Scheffler had earlier made an oblique but apparent reference to the murder of Charlie Kirk, in referencing “a tough few weeks for our country with some of the stuff that’s been going on”, but what ha s been notable this week is how lightly the atmosphere has worn the turmoil of America’s present political moment.
MAGA nationalism has been easily folded into the kitsch Americana we routinely see at Ryder Cups: there are fans roaming about wearing MAGA hats, while others are wearing mocked-up football and baseball jerseys bearing TRUMP 47 on the back. At Wednesday’s opening ceremony, host Kara Dixon thanked “all six branches of our military service”, including Space Force, the military arm inaugurated by Trump to be ready to defend American interests in outer space.
This went to underline how the Trump movement has now been as easily coded into displays of American pride and identity as the military, who continued a long tradition of superfluous appearances at sporting event by providing three army helicopters to fly across the golf course during the final bars of the American national anthem at yesterday’s opening ceremony.
That the New York governor Kathy Hocul was repeatedly jeered at said ceremony showed this a politically engaged crowd happy to voice their protest, so we await the reaction that greets Trump among the crowd.
But his mere presence here today is another reminder of how quickly America’s concientious Trump objectors have tossed away their morals at the first moment of trouble. The PGA of America, who organise this event, reacted to the 6 January insurrection by taking the 2022 PGA Championship away from Trump’s course in Bedminster.
Tomorrow, Trump will be the guest of honour at their marquee event and at their own invitation.
The PGA of America are far from the most consequential body in America suddenly yielding to Donald Trump, of course, but tomorrow they will be the most visible.
