Undiplomatic Acuity

The 33rd Ryder Cup was the gravest athletic event ever contested on American soil. We know this because golf commentators last week constantly used the phrase American soil. American soil is a media trump card, reserved for only the most solemn of stories: Terrorist attacks occur on American soil. War heroes return to American soil. And last week, divots were taken in American soil. "Nineteen eighty-seven was the first time," The Golf Channel's Peter Kessler somberly said of the home team last Thursday, "that the U.S. lost on American soil." Baseball, meanwhile, is still played on dirt.

Perhaps it was appropriate—what with the fate of nations at stake—that the Ryder Cup was broadcast in the language of international diplomacy. Still, it takes some getting used to. Previously, a six-hour round of golf was considered excruciatingly slow, a capital crime. But when Sergio Garcia and Jesper Parnevik played one on Friday, a disembodied fairway reporter on the USA Network hailed "the deliberate play" of the Europeans. Loudmouthed, Monty-baiting drunks in the gallery became, in the poetry of NBC's Dick Enberg, "those who enjoy a heckle."

For those who enjoy a heckle, Ryder Cup coverage provided much material. The Golf Channel set up club chairs and a cherry coffee table—complete with art books—outdoors at the Country Club, turning its lawn into the alfresco library of a tweedy men's club. The Golf Channel never airs a rerun of its coverage; rather, it brings you an Encore Presentation. In every one of its on-air references to Byron Nelson (and these references were manifold, believe me), the former American captain became " Lord Byron." TV seemed set on rendering the Ryder Cup more overwrought than anything by the actual Lord Byron, turning the tournament into a stifling costume drama, To Halve and Halve Not.

Thank heaven, then, for Johnny Miller. Miller steamed into our living rooms on Friday afternoon and began speaking like a man on sodium pentothal. Those of us who spent all weekend making what Homer Simpson calls an "ass groove" in our sofas craved Miller's candor. He didn't encrypt or euphemize. He was the viewer surrogate. On a blown putt by Phil Mickelson: "He just cannot make those super-key putts." On a blown putt by Justin Leonard: "That was nor a good first putt." On a blown putt by Davis Love III: "You can see that look [on his face] of, Wow, that wasn't any good." Exactly. He said everything you were thinking ("He's won a lot of PGA events," Miller declared of Mickelson, "but not the big ones") and many things that you weren't: Addressing a desperate golfer in deep rough, Miller suggested, "He's gotta basically play a controlled muffburger."

I have no idea what that meant—surely muffburger is one of the FCC's Seven Words You Can't Say on Television—but the line's very lack of blandness somehow crystallized what TV golf needs: More muffburger, less Musburger. Miller had won me over.

And so on Sunday, for the fourth consecutive day (counting the opening ceremonies), I settled into my ass groove, ate an Encore Presentation of yesterday's meat loaf and giddily gave in again to the addictive properties of the Ryder Cup. With every wailing bagpipe, every clogging windpipe, I thought of something Miller had said at one moment of this high television drama, even before America's stirring redemption on American soil. "Whoever thought you'd have to take a sedative," he laughed, "while watching golf?"

He sounded as surprised as I was.