Losing Gracelessly

More than eight months have passed since the U.S. handed Europe a bitter defeat at the Ryder Cup with a furious Sunday finish. No one disputes that it was wrong for members of the U.S. team, along with some of their wives and caddies, to run onto the 17th green to celebrate Justin Leonard's dramatic putt before Jos� Mar�a Olaz�bal had a chance to halve the hole. Notes of apology have been sent from captain to captain, player to player, wife to wife, caddie to caddie and every combination thereof. Publicly and privately, the Americans are sorry, sorry, SORRY!

But it still ain't over. Many Europeans remain indignant over the events at Brookline. A respected British golf writer recently told me that what he referred to as "the invasion" of the 17th green was the most despicable thing he had ever seen in golf.

Enough is enough. I'm sick of all the post- Ryder Cup complaining. In fact, it's time to bring the high-minded back down to earth. Whatever happened to accepting a loss with dignity? That has definitely become a foreign concept to Mark James, who was Europe's captain in Boston. James's new book, Into the Bear Pit: The Hard Hitting Inside Story of the Brookline Ryder Cup, is petty, smug and whiny.

With apologies to Roy Firestone, I haven't read the book, just the serialized excerpts featured last week in London's Daily Mail. There, James tells why, after receiving Nick Faldo's good-luck letter to the European team, he "binned" it (because Faldo had publicly criticized team member Colin Montgomerie). Then James rips open still-healing wounds by sniping at Tom Lehman, a vocal leader on the U.S. team and a 17th-green invader. "Calls himself a man of God?" writes James. "That was the most disgraceful thing I've ever seen. I will never be able to look on him in the same light again."

The blindsided Lehman, who had written James an apology ( James called it "a waste of ink"), is angry over the violation of pro golf's custom of settling disputes man-to-man. "I hope he feels good about making money off taking shots at other people's character and integrity," says Lehman. "He's dragging the Ryder Cup through the muck."

It doesn't take a genius to see that what happened at Brookline had its seeds in earlier Ryder Cups, but James, despite having participated in nine of them (and having himself been a bad boy in 1979 by blowing off team meetings and refusing to wear the team uniform), still doesn't get it. U.S. players remember Olaz�bal doing a joyful rumba during the closing ceremony at the 1987 matches and European team members celebrating on the side of the 18th green after a final-day comeback at Oak Hill in 1995.

Those two upsets and another in 1997 had put the U.S. team under extreme pressure to win at Brookline. If the Americans lost, they would be chokers, soft millionaires without guts. So when they entered the last day trailing 10-6, desperation drove them to dig as deep emotionally as they ever had. When Leonard's putt dropped, some U.S. players may have had celebratory payback in mind, but surely their overriding emotion was relief.

Conversely, the Europeans had blown it, and the finger pointed right at James. It was he who passed over Ryder Cup icons Faldo and Bernhard Langer as captain's picks, taking rookie Andrew Coltart as one choice. It was James who kept the rookies idle the first two days and then threw them out early in Sunday's singles, during which their lopsided losses fueled the U.S. steamroller.

What rankles most about James is that he turned out to be so two-faced. For almost the entire week at Brookline, he was the coolest of the principals, his dry wit seeming to put him above the fray. He went out of his way to praise the fans for their appreciation of the Europeans' golf. Even when he had a chance to add to Olaz�bal's balanced comment that "next time I think we can all act a little bit better," James passed. But when he got to the Boston airport and started to feel the heat from the roasting he was about to take in Europe, James caved and played the Ugly Americans card that has deflected focus from his mistakes.

Those actions and James's carping, shallow book have cheapened the Ryder Cup and done nothing to alleviate bona fide concerns about the future of the competition. The current European captain, Sam Torrance—who says he made James a vice captain before learning of the book's contents-should do the right thing and bin his friend's appointment.