Ryder Cup: When Golf Beats the UN at Global Diplomacy (and Other Delusions)

Rome, Saturday 22:30 CEST – Somewhere between the 18th green and the 19th hole, the Ryder Cup is doing what NATO summits, G7 communiqués and Davos panels only dream of: forcing sworn adversaries to sit in the same golf cart and pretend they like each other. Every two years, the United States and Europe pause their trade wars, espionage indictments and TikTok bans just long enough to argue about tee times. If that isn’t global diplomacy in microcosm, then I’ve been filing from the wrong cocktail circuit for twenty years.

The tournament began in 1927 as a trans-Atlantic grudge match so genteel it made afternoon tea look like a prison riot. Ninety-six years later it has metastasized into a four-day television melodrama watched by every insomniac on five continents. Bookies from Macau to Malta now take wagers on whether Rory McIlroy will weep on camera (over/under set at 1.5 tears). Meanwhile, American broadcasters splice fighter-jet flyovers with slow-motion shots of Brooks Koepka’s protein shake, just in case anyone forgot which empire’s credit card is picking up the bar tab.

Europe’s side is nominally captained by a stoic Swede named Henrik Stenson, but the real leadership rotates among whichever continentals are least hung-over. The U.S. squad, by contrast, arrives like a Silicon Valley IPO: six rookies who’ve never seen a European breakfast buffet, plus veterans who still call the host city “Rome, Italy” so their constituents back home don’t confuse it with Rome, Georgia. This cultural asymmetry explains why the Europeans celebrate victories with restrained claret, while the Americans spray champagne that costs more per bottle than the annual GDP of Moldova.

Yet the Ryder Cup’s geopolitical utility is surprisingly durable. During Friday’s fourballs, a Scottish spectator in a kilt heckled Justin Thomas about his MAGA hat; by Saturday’s foursomes the same Scot was offering Thomas tactical advice on how to read Roman greens. That is more détente than the UN achieved in Bosnia during the entire 1990s. Credit the sport’s unique etiquette: players call penalties on themselves, a concept so alien to most governments that the State Department once sent observers to take notes.

Corporate sponsors have noticed the planetary reach. Emirates paints the sky with A380-shaped clouds, BMW parks an armada of EVs nobody can afford, and Rolex counts down the seconds until someone mentions “legacy” on air. The cumulative branding budget could fund universal primary education, but that would be less photogenic than drone shots of the Colosseum superimposed with Jordan Spieth’s swing arc. Viewers in Singapore, São Paulo and Saskatoon dutifully absorb the message: buy this watch, lease this car, and maybe one day you too can lose a three-footer in front of a billion people.

Of course, the Cup also showcases the West’s talent for weaponized nostalgia. European fans dress like Edwardian tax exiles; Americans sport varsity stripes last seen on a 1950s cereal box. Everyone pretends the stakes are still “honor,” ignoring the fact that the winning team’s continent will receive precisely zero additional semiconductor factories. Still, the illusion persists that trans-Atlantic solidarity can be restored by a well-struck 7-iron, probably because the alternative is admitting we’re all hostages to supply chains and surveillance algorithms.

Sunday singles begin at dawn, or what the networks call “prime time in the Pacific Rim.” By dusk, one anthem will blare, one captain will speak of “the greater good,” and one continent will pretend not to check its phone for missile alerts. The trophy itself—a golden chalice that looks like Liberace’s sugar bowl—will spend the next two years traveling economy class from airport lounge to airport lounge, reminding us that even our most sacred silverware must pass through security like everyone else.

And then, mercifully, we’ll all go back to despising each other—until 2025, when the circus reconvenes in New York and we discover whether the dollar’s reserve-currency status can be salvaged by Scottie Scheffler’s short game. Until then, dear reader, keep your passports ready and your expectations low; the world may burn, but at least the bunkers are raked.