People who think that life is always about money will have a hard job explaining the Ryder Cup. Top golfers earn serious cash these days, and fairly so-so golfers do too. But once every two years they play for nothing; nothing, that is, beyond the honour of winning. If you think that all sportsmen care about is the cheque, just ask Paul Casey how he feels about being left out of the European team.
The Ryder Cup also lies at the heart of the mysterious career of Colin Montgomerie, Europe’s captain this year. It’s his ninth biennial biff at the Americans, but his first when he’s not been playing. Make no mistake, Mrs Doubtfire has a phenomenal playing record: he’s never lost a singles match, not one. And yet Monty routinely stumbled at the final hurdle in his attempts to win a ‘major’. How could magnificent Monty, the serial Ryder Cup champion, co-exist alongside moody, mean and miserable Monty, the man who could never get his hands on the Open claret jug or Masters green jacket?
Montgomerie opened up about that conundrum this week in an interview with my Times colleague Ed Smith, the former England cricketer, in a gem of a BBC documentary, Is Professionalism Killing Sport?
Montgomerie said that playing as part of a Ryder Cup team helped him to be fearless and carefree. ‘People have said to me many times that if I had played the way I had in the Ryder Cup, I would have won a few majors. But I am a more hesitant player playing for myself. I am not as positive.’ That’s a double whammy for us romantics: first, the idea that a team adds up to more than the sum of its individual parts; second, that enjoying your job makes you better at it.
As Smith talks to Usain Bolt, Roger Federer, A.P. McCoy, Mark Ramprakash and Ryan Giggs, we hear how great sportsmen play at their best when they are instinctive. ‘I wasn’t thinking about anything, it just happened,’ Giggs says about his wonder-goal against Arsenal.
Two pleasingly counterintuitive themes emerge. First, there is a kernel of truth in the amateur ideal. Doing something for the sake of it remains a surprisingly effective winning strategy. While others are tied in knots by the size of the prize, the winner is often the man who can relax and trust himself. There is a pragmatic, not just a sentimental case to be made for the amateur spirit: just enjoy yourself.
Smith’s second theme takes us to an even more topical sportsman: Tiger Woods. Tiger has always been the pin-up boy of ultra-professionalism. Abandon everything else; forget even a hint of hinterland; turn yourself into a machine; and eliminate human weakness like a flaw in a faulty backswing.
But there’s a danger that if you narrow your life too far — as Woods did — you will eventually snap. Conventional wisdom has it the wrong way round. It wasn’t the rest of Tiger’s life that ruined his golf; it was too much golf that ruined the rest of his life. As Montgomerie says, it was an unsustainable way to live. It’s not redemption Tiger needs, it’s a life.
Look at the recent scandals involving boxers Joe Calzaghe and Ricky Hatton. After being discovered using drugs, Calzaghe issued a poignant statement apologising to his fans. The days since he had retired, he said, were long and difficult to fill. Even the adorable David ‘Bumble’ Lloyd — now a hugely successful and much loved broadcaster — tells this wonderful story about himself. After retiring in 1983, he pitched up in April the following year at the Old Trafford dressing rooms. He had nowhere else to go. He had to be told gently, ‘You have to leave, David. You haven’t got a job here any more.’
Roger Alton is an executive editor at the Times.
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