It's a small world, but not quite as small as the PGA of America thinks. For Ryder Cup purposes, there is the United States and Europe and th-th-that's all, folks. The rest of the universe doesn't exist.

That was fine in the 1920s when seed czar Samuel Ryder invented the Ryder Cup, and golf was popular in Great Britain and in the U.S. but nowhere else. It is now more than 80 years later and golf is now global. Korea is turning out tour pros -- men and women -- almost as fast as it turns out Hyundais. The same goes for Australia, minus the part about the Hyundais, thanks to young potential superstars such as Aaron Baddeley, Adam Scott and new U.S. Amateur champion Nick Flanagan. Japan has long been a hotbed of professional golf. We have a majors winner from Fiji (Vijay Singh), great players from Africa (Ernie Els, Nick Price, Retief Goosen), a Masters champion from Canada (Mike Weir), star players from South America (Angel Cabrera, Eduardo Romero, Carlos Franco) and others.

These great players share something in common: They're never going to play in a Ryder Cup. While golf has truly become a world game (you can now play in China and Russia), the Ryder Cup has remained an exercise in small-minded parochialism. The thought of Els or Greg Norman going an entire career without being included in a Ryder Cup is not only absurd, it smacks of the kind of exclusionary practices (fill in your own Hootie Johnson joke here) that golf has unfortunately always been known for. What if Tiger Woods, the best player of his era (some have already called him the best ever) and of Thai descent had actually been born in Thailand? What if the game's biggest megastar and No. 1 television ratings attraction was a Thai citizen and ineligible for the Ryder Cup? Even the PGA might've awakened to smell the coffee and altered the rules. (Women's golf has a similar situation; Karrie Webb and Se Ri Pak, two of the LPGA's top players, are ineligible for its Solheim Cup team event because they are not U.S- or European-born. (Webb hails from Australia, Pak from South Korea.)

The late Gene Sarazen, an ardent proponent of expanding the sport in Japan, preached global golf for years but no one listened. He said that if Samuel Ryder was still alive and could see how the game had grown, Ryder would've included Japan and the rest of the world in his event.

Well, now is the time to correct this oversight and and it can be done more easily than you can imagine. The way to turn the Ryder Cup into a world event is to incorporate the struggling, buzz-less President's Cup into its fold.

Here's how it would work: The President's Cup would basically be the first round of the Ryder Cup. It would pit the loser of the last Ryder Cup versus the loser of the last President's Cup. Applied to the present tense, that would mean the United States (Ryder Cup loser) would play the International team (President's Cup loser) this year in South Africa. The winner of that event would advance to next year's Ryder Cup, which will be played in Europe. The loser advances to the next President's Cup in two years.

This format solves several problems at once. It includes players from the rest of the world. (Imagine the frenzy the first time an International team makes the Ryder Cup.) It turns the President's Cup from a ho-hum event for the Americans (Woods recently announced testily, "I'm going -- happy now?") to a do-or-die battle because if they don't win in South Africa, they're out of the Ryder Cup next year. It makes winning the Ryder Cup even more important because otherwise, it could be four years or more before a team can get back in. And it silences the tour pros who whine about having to give up an entire week every year to play in one of these intense events without pay. Here's your incentive, boys: Win the Ryder Cup and you get to skip the President's Cup the following year. As Tiger might say -- happy now?

A few logistics would have to be ironed out to make this possible. You'd have to disregard the fact that Ryder Cup sites have already been awarded through 2020. Let's face it, having the International team play Europe at Oakland Hills would be absurd. The winning Ryder Cup team would have to host the next Ryder Cup at the site of its choice. That would give the host club a two-year window of preparation -- that's not a lot, but it's enough. That would also give the defending Ryder Cup champion the home-course advantage but hey, that's just another incentive to win the event. Another problem is that the International team is a bit of a hodgepodge. I'd recommend including Canada and Mexico with the U.S. to form a North America team. It seems like Weir, as a Canadian, has more in common with American tour players than with his Japanese, Korean and South Africans counterparts, but I'd leave it up to Weir and his other countrymen to decide at the outset to which side they would prefer to permanently be assigned. Ryder Cups will eventually be hosted by the Internationals in Japan or Australia or South Africa in a time zone that will not be well-suited for live TV in the U.S. Tough break. The networks solve that problem at the Olympics, so they can overcome it here.

The reason why all this could happen? The Ryder Cup rakes in an estimated $60 million for the PGA of America and the European PGA and, trust me, this event is all about the money. A global Ryder Cup, however, might clear $200 million. (All right, I made that number up just to impress you, but a globally marketed event, including TV rights, would net an enormous increase. The first time a Japanese player competed in a Ryder Cup there would be a would be a frenzy of publicity, marketing and selling in Japan. Merging the competitions is a no-brainer. Gentlemen of the PGA, you're going to make more money than you can imagine!)

The reason why it won't happen? The Ryder Cup is jointly owned by the PGA of America and European PGA. The President's Cup is owned solely by the PGA Tour. Both organizations, despite their many good deeds, are all about control and money, especially money. Remember how slow the PGA of America was to confront the issue of giving cash to players' charities as a way to pay them for their Ryder Cup efforts? It was the right thing to do, and the funds were going to a worthy cause, but because it was coming out of PGA leader Jim Awtrey's pocket (not literally), the PGA took its time in picking up the check. The PGA Tour, meanwhile, has taken greed and control to the next level. Ask any current PGA Tour tournament director. While the thought of big money in a worldwide Ryder Cup would be attractive, sharing the dough isn't something either organization would do willingly. And the PGA Tour would pull the plug on the President's Cup before it let someone else take over and run it, run it, no matter how big of a cut the Tour might score.

This merger I'm proposing would save (and improve) the President's Cup (I've heard quiet rumors that this event is on the ropes and might not have happened this year if the foreign site wasn't South Africa, the home of Nelson Mandela. It would make the Ryder Cup better, too. I think we owe it to the international players to include them. It is, after all, a small world.

Now that I've solve the world's problems ... to the Mailbag:

I read with interest your take on the President's Cup team and the snub of Bob Estes. I have to agree with the picks that Jack Nicklaus made. While Fred Funk (like Estes) has no experience, I think it was his enthusiasm that got him picked over Estes. Jay Haas has been on these teams before, which gave him the nod over Estes. Given the three men in the running for the final spot, (Estes, Funk and Haas) which two would you have taken? --Tim Dzubak, Stafford, Va.

Well, Dr. Z, I'd have to go back and do complicated math but I believe Funk nosed past Estes into 11th on the points list simply by one stroke at the PGA Championship. They finished in a dead heat and I think I would've gone with Funk and Estes. All three are worthy candidates but if you look at the stats, Haas' ballstriking wasn't as good as the other two men. His putting, however, thanks to his work with Stan Utley (which I recently wrote about in Sports Illustrated's Golf Plus), and his short game have vastly improved.

I think you answered your own query about Bob Estes. If I were Nicklaus, and a guy skipped my tournament three years in a row, but then wanted me to name him to the President's Cup team, I'd do just as Nicklaus did. Estes is too good to come to the Memorial, but not good enough to get on the Cup team by himself. --August O'Meara, Minneapolis

Sorry, Mr. October, I missed the part where playing in the Memorial Tournament was a prerequisite for making the President's Cup team. I guess you probably support federal kickbacks and bribes, too.

How did Chad Campbell get passed over for the President's Cup? --Greg, Kamloops, British Columbia

Ask Mr. October. Apparently it was because he didn't play in Jack's tournament the last couple of years (on account of he was playing on the Buy.com Tour).

You failed to mention the one candidate more deserving than Haas, Funk, or Estes: Chad Campbell. He's ninth on the money list, has missed one cut all year (in his first Masters appearance), and has had his best finishes in big tournaments (Players, Memorial, PGA). Most impressively, though, he narrowly missed exemption to the U.S. Open and was forced to endure a 16-for-1 qualifier. He made it. He also had less time to accumulate points than the others, since he wasn't on Tour for most of 2001. --Matt Kavanaugh, San Jose, Calif.

	MAILBAG Gary Van Sickle will answer select questions from SI.com users each week in Underground Golfer. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

Thanks, Matt, we all wondered what you were up to since you retired from the NFL. Campbell (SI's Golf Plus cover boy) would be a shrewd pick but it would be awfully tough to take a player who hasn't yet won a tournament. Tom Kite passed on David Duval for the 1997 Ryder Cup at Valderrama for that reason, although he may have wished he hadn't after the U.S. was beaten.

If the USGA and the PGA want to protect par from the onslaught of technology, burn the rakes. Traps are no longer traps, they are prepared areas. The rub of the green vanishes when traps are as carefully tended to as greens. The value of hitting greens in regulation is diminished when there is no penalty or anxiety associated with trapping an approach. OK, I'm a lousy trap player and I'm inclined to use fancy verbiage. However, my position is: let traps be traps. --John Folan, Fredericksburg, Va.

You'd probably like to bring back those old, furrowed rakes that left deep troughs in the bunkers at Oakmont, too -- right, F-Man? I don't think your idea is a bad one, though. With 60-degree (even 64-degree) sand wedges and perfectly fluffed sand, bunker shots are way too easy for the pros. I'd like to hear them complain about bunker shots again. I think we all enjoy hearing millionaires whine.

I read recently an article that ranked Pine Valley in New Jersey as the best course, not only in the U.S. but in the world. If so, why aren't any of the major events -- U.S. Open, PGA, Ryder Cup -- played there? Is it another of the old-fashioned courses that don't stand up so well against the modern pro game? Are the members unwilling to put up with the intrusions associated with a major tournament? Inquiring minds want to know. --John Beukema, Minneapolis

The club doesn't want the intrusion. It's a very exclusive place, and tough to get in even as a guest. The main issue, however, is that Pine Valley simply can't hold a gallery. Many of the off-fairway areas are sandy. They're not raked and have a lot of brush growing. A gallery of 20,000 fans would not only have a difficult time walking around the course, it would destroy much of the delicate foliage. The course doesn't have room for fans, not to mention parking, corporate tents, concessions and all the other modern conveniences needed to host a tournament. And the tour pros would, indeed, find it too short.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to SI.com.