So we won the Ryder Cup. At what cost?

When beer flies and etiquette dies, maybe we’ve mistaken sport for something else

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

A video still shows a beer can thrown at a golf amid a crows

The beer flies towards Rory McIlroy.

Phew. The Ryder Cup was an epic. After a couple of days of European dominance, fans on this side of the pond looked forward to the Sunday one-on-one single matches as a formality, only needing a few more points to wrap up the Cup, only for the American team to suddenly discover they could play a bit after all. It turns out Europeans play better together (the matches on Friday and Saturday all involved teams of two playing against each other) but the Americans excel when they're on their own. The latter nearly pulled off a famous comeback but finally fell short as the gritty Europeans stumbled across the line, Shane Lowry holding his nerve to sink an eight-footer on the 18th, and Tyrell Hatton sealing the win with a nerveless par on the last.

Much of the talk afterwards however was not about the match but the behaviour of the American fans. The European golfers, especially their talisman Rory McIlroy, were subject to some pretty vile abuse throughout the three days. His wife was drenched by a beer thrown in her direction, insults were shouted as he prepared to play a shot (you just don’t do that in golf) and some idiots seemed more keen to abuse their opponents than support their own players. It seemed strange that Keegan Bradley, the American Captain made no effort to call out his own errant supporters. Yet it was perhaps not surprising in a country where public models of leadership hardly encourage moderation and restraint.

Of course, we are used to this kind of thing in football stadiums in the UK, but golf has somehow always felt different. Football is a fast-paced, hectic game with players running full tilt for just 90 minutes and so it’s understandable that emotions get high and passions flare. Golf is more measured. It takes time, has always laid a great stress on etiquette, following the rules and respecting your opponent. Yet none of that seemed to matter in the bearpit of Bethpage.

To be fair, European fans get pretty partisan when the Americans come here - yet they do seem to stop short of personal vitriol. It seems every time the Ryder Cup is played, the rivalry just gets a notch higher. You just have to hope they rein it in in Adare in Ireland in two years’ time. As the match reached its climax, players (on both sides) leapt about like wild things, thumping their chests like cavemen on winning a point. The crowd hollered their lungs out, or continued hurling insults at the opposition.

I found myself wondering why all this seemed to matter so much? Why were grown (mostly) men reduced to appalling behaviour or breaking down in tears over hitting a small white ball around a field?

Maybe I’m just getting old and nostalgic, but Ryder Cups in the early days were different, with those grainy black and white photos of players in baggy plus-fours and tartan socks. It was the same with Wimbledon before the Open era, Wembley Cup finals back in the day, cricket matches with baggy flannels and thin bats. At the end of titanic struggles there would be a gentle skip towards the opposition, a polite shaking of hands, a wave to the cheering crowds and the presentation of the cup, which was held aloft briefly, before everyone went home. Yes, of course, people got steamed up about sport back then. The 'bodyline' cricket series in Australia in 1932 got the blood boiling between Aussies & Poms, but it was precisely because the English team were playing unfair. There were street parties and public joy when England won the World Cup in 1966, yet there is the famous story of Geoff Hurst after scoring a hat-trick in the Final going home and mowing his lawn the day after. Hard to imagine that today.

Nowadays, the presentation ceremony goes on forever, with microphones thrust into players’ faces with the most boringly predictable question: “how do you feel having won (or lost)?” asked every single time. Emotion pours out everywhere. Superlatives are expected and duly uttered.

My mind went back to something the theologian James K. A. Smith said to me in a conversation some time ago. “When there is no longer any Ultimate”, he said, “the Penultimate seems to matter so much more.” His point was that in the absence of a general social belief in God, or a divine order above us, with little sense of any social or divine sanction for, frankly, atrocious behaviour, then things like politics or sport become more and more charged with meaning.

When there is nothing higher than politics, electoral victory becomes all-important. And anything goes in silencing the opposition. When the most significant thing in life is a sporting achievement - even vicariously as a fan - then winning is everything. Where there is a more pervasive sense of belief in God, or an afterlife, where the death of friends or neighbours is a more common occurrence throughout life, or even the task of putting food on the table is a daily struggle, such things matter less. Activities such sport, which were once seen as mildly significant, a pleasant diversion from more onerous tasks, found their true place as something important, but not that important.

Blaise Pascal once wrote: “People are bored stiff with their normal lives and so they need perils and excitement.” He thought that we crave distraction to stop us looking into the abyss, or up into the heavens, to contemplate the ultimate meaning of our lives, the reason why we are here in the first place, and our final destiny. It is classic displacement activity. It is why we pay entertainers more than doctors, vicars or philosophers - because we need the distraction.

The Penultimate begins to matter too much when we no longer have an Ultimate to relate to. Sinking a clutch putt to win a game is satisfying. Yet it is not the reason why we exist. Sport is a great diversion. But it is just that, and realising that might make us behave a bit better towards our opponents and help us to focus on the things that really matter – the questions of meaning and purpose that humans have always asked since the dawn of our race.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free.
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?

Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief

Pledge a gift now

Article

Assisted dying

Comment

Culture

Politics

3 December 2024

5 min read

The assisted dying debate revealed the real role of Parliament

MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers.

M. Ciftci

Mehmet Ciftci has a PhD in political theology from the University of Oxford. His research focuses on bioethics, faith and politics.

An MP stands and speaks in a parliamentary debate.

MP Diane Abbott speaks in the debate.

Parliament TV.

What would be the effect of allowing assisted suicide for those ‘people who lack agency, the people who know what it is to be excluded from power and to have decisions made for them’, asked Danny Kruger MP, as he wrapped up his speech? ‘What are the safeguards for them? Let me tell the House: we are the safeguard—this place; this Parliament; you and me. We are the people who protect the most vulnerable in society from harm, yet we stand on the brink of abandoning that role.’

His words capture an important aspect of Friday’s debate: what is the point of Parliament? Do MPs meet to turn public opinion polls into policies? If the majority are in favour of something, do MPs have nothing left to do but to follow the public and sort out the fine details? We might instinctively say ‘Yes!’ It seems right and democratic to treat those whom we elect as people we select and send to do our bidding. And the polls do seem to show the majority of people supporting assisted suicide, at least in principle – although there are good reasons to be sceptical about those figures and about the conclusions drawn from them.

But there are numerous times when the majority are known to be in favour of something but politicians refuse to endorse it. Polls repeatedly show that a majority are in favour of reintroducing the death penalty. Why might it be right for MPs sometimes to ignore what the purported majority thinks and to use their own judgement?

Because Parliament is not just a debating chamber.

An older way of referring to it was to call it the ‘High Court of Parliament’ because ‘parliament, classically, was where individuals could seek the redress of grievances through their representatives,’ as law lecturer Dr Robert Craig writes. It performed its function admirably in response to the Horizon scandal: a legitimate grievance was brought to its attention, and it responded to redress the wrongs done to the sub-postmasters by passing a law to ‘overturn a series of judgments that could only have been obtained, and were only obtained, by a toxic, captured and wilfully blind corporate culture’.

Friday’s debate featured many MPs who understood what they were there to do. They acknowledged the ‘terrible plight of the people who are begging us for this new law’ as Danny Kruger said. But they also spoke up for those who were in danger of being harmed and wronged by the bill: the disabled and the dying, and all the vulnerable who were not there to speak on their own behalf.

Many echoed the concerns expressed by Diane Abbott about coercion: ‘Robust safeguards for the sick and dying are vital to protect them from predatory relatives, to protect them from the state and, above all, to protect them from themselves. There will be those who say to themselves that they do not want to be a burden. … Others will worry about assets they had hoped to leave for their grandchildren being eroded by the cost of care. There will even be a handful who will think they should not be taking up a hospital bed.’ And evidence of coercion is hard to find and trace: ‘Coercion in the family context can be about not what you say but what you do not say—the long, meaningful pause.’

An analysis shared on X by law lecturer Philip Murray found an association between the level of deprivation in a constituency and how likely a Labour MP was to vote against the bill. He also shared figures showing that 2/3 of MPs from ethnic minorities voted against it. In other words, MPs from areas where people are vulnerable and at risk were more sensitive to the dangers of helping people to kill themselves.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm.

But it seems that many MPs did not appreciate what the debate was about or what they had gathered to do. Layla Moran MP said: ‘The media are asking all of us, “Are you for or against the Bill?”, but I urge hon. Members to think about the question differently. The question I will be answering today is, “Do I want to keep talking about the issues in the Bill?”’ But James Cleverly MP intervened: “she is misrepresenting what we are doing at this point. We are speaking about the specifics of this Bill: this is not a general debate or a theoretical discussion, but about the specifics of the Bill.” He was right to be impatient. Unlike the Oxford Union, the vote has consequences. Parliamentarians are not there merely to debate. As the term ‘High Court of Parliament’ suggests, when MPs (either on their own initiative or as a government) propose bills, what they are often doing is conveying a plea to redress some grievance, and their debates are to decide whether to respond by making laws to grant justice to the wronged.

The second reading of the bill on Friday was a crucial moment for them to decide whether the bill would fix an injustice or whether it would itself cause harm, because the scrutiny that the bill will undergo in the following stages is not likely to be as rigorous as with government bills. As a Private Member’s Bill, the assisted dying proposal is free to be scrutinised by a committee selected by the MP who has proposed the bill, i.e. Kim Leadbeater. When the bill reaches the stage for a final vote in the Commons at the third reading, no further amendments can be made and the time for debate is likely to be short.

It is rare but bills are sometimes defeated at the third reading. With eighteen abstentions on Friday and at least thirty-six MPs claiming they might change their minds later, there is still hope.

Each sitting of the Commons begins every day with a prayer by the Speaker’s Chaplain, who prays that MPs ‘may they never lead the nation wrongly through love of power, desire to please, or unworthy ideals but laying aside all private interests and prejudices, keep in mind their responsibility to seek to improve the condition of all mankind.’

We can only hope and pray that at their next opportunity, MP will consider this bill in light of their responsibilities as the country’s High Court, charged with protecting the most vulnerable in society from harm.