It's not like football, baseball, hockey, basketball or soccer. Golfers aren't atuned to mentalities of team sports. No mate to line up alongside. Nobody sitting on a bench. Theirs is a solo, not a chorus.
So, every two years, for Ryder Cup matches, accomplished pros from Europe and the United States are prone to get shakier than Jell-O and, for Sunday's windup theatrics, more emotional than teens on prom night.
High-fives, chest bumps and victorious guffaws aren't enough. In most sports, we can't be sure it's not just about them; gifted jocks in pursuit of optimum success (including money), or dealing with devastating near-misses in Super Bowls, World Series and other major competitions.
This one is unique.
"Ryder Cups are tougher than anything in golf, including when you go into climactic Sunday holes with a chance to win - or lose - a U.S. Open, Masters, British Open or PGA Championship," said the late Payne Stewart, who knew glory and anguish on all fronts. "In any of our four majors, a golfer looks into his soul, hoping his talent can hold up when it counts most.
"In the Ryder Cup, you look into eyes of 11 teammates. You want so badly to deliver for peers, guys who are usually your tournament rivals. You also think about your entire country and all the people who are pulling so hard."
About us?
That is why, next weekend at Oakland Hills, a treasure of a course in suburban Detroit where memorable U.S. Opens have been played, it's worth massive attention.
Predictably, it will be a close finish. Usually coming to the last of singles combat. Players from both sides, their rounds finished, sit on mounds beside the 18th green. Eyes focused. Hearts thumping. Nothing like a windup at Augusta, St. Andrews, Pebble Beach or Muirfield.
If it's Tiger Woods against Sergio Garcia or Phil Mickelson slugging it out with Colin Montgomerie, passions will be extreme among those swinging clubs as well as teammates pulling with all their hearts, as well as millions across continents involved in an extraordinary biennial occurance.
No game has sportsmanship or gentlemanly aplomb equal to that of golf, so we'll hear no taunting voices like at North Carolina-Duke basketball or clanging bells, deafening whistles or thundering shouts like at FSU-Florida football.
Johnny Miller, a U.S. Open champion who evolved into America's most piercing, interesting TV golf commentator, calls the Ryder Cup "hard, face-to-face stuff," adding that "even the best golf pros are not used to this kind of confrontations. They feel the heat."
It can melt.
Mark Calcavecchia, a tough veteran, blew a 1991 match against Montgomerie. He suddenly went lame. Hopeless. Hitting elementary shots into water at Kiawah Island. After blowing a 4-up lead, Calcavecchia called Ryder Cup pressure "ruthless."
Has there been a more iron-willed golfer than Hale Irwin, three-time U.S. Open winner and a Champions Tour force into his late 50s? In that same '91 adventure, the Cup came down to the last singles, Irwin against Europe's captain for 2005, Bernhard Langer, a German grinder with a reputation not a bit softer than Hale's.
Irwin admits, "My knees were like Silly Putty." This is a former all-conference football safety at Colorado, known for his killer instincts. Hale had a simple chip at the 18th green. Muffed it like a 30-handicapper. Langer could make a 5-foot putt and Euros would erupt in glee.
We've seen the video a thousand times. Bernhard misses. Americans celebrated at greenside and across 50 states. It's that kind of moment that will put football on my TV back burner next weekend, secondary for a few days to sports competition even more magnetic.
Did I say that? I love football.
TAP-INS, TAP OUTS: Who's designing Serena Williams tennis costumes, Nike or Hell's Angels? ... Since ESPN is using Rocket Ismail as an analyst, can't the old Notre Dame hero be sent to a deep-voice radio school, aim to sound less like a squeaky teen? ... Speaking of the Irish, there was much e-mail complaining, all of it deserved, when I reversed a score and wrote that N.D. lost to BYU last season; but can I get away with saying it was really a prediction of what happened last weekend in Provo? I didn't think so. ... Thousands of pros in all sports could use Andy Roddick as a deportment model; a millionaire who opted not to live in an elegant hotel but amid athletic masses in the Athens Olympic Village, and who warmly embraces every chance to be a real human being in interviews as well as in brushes with an admiring public.
