Foul-weather Friend

I like warm beer and hairy-legged women. I drive a car so small, you could park it in the glove compartment of a Hummer. I enjoy funny brown cigarettes in the loo.

That's because, as of now, I am officially a European.

I have turned European because I'm bloody sick of the U.S. getting the haggis stomped out of it by the Euros in these Ryder Cup golf matches.

Every two years the Euros dye their hair and smoke their cigars and get drunk and wave their blue Euro flags and beat us like Dickens' orphans, then sing songs shoulder-to-shoulder and laugh and dance on the clubhouse roof and wave their private parts in our general direction.

No more. I'm a Euro now. Changed my passport and everything. I like real football now, not fat guys in helmets. I no longer see the point in regular dental checkups. I tan by 40-watt bulbs. I eat tatties and neeps in my flat and see what's on the telly. Ooh, brilliant! It's Bean!

I'd been considering turning Euro for a few years now, but on Monday, when the American team was announced for next month's Ryder Cup in Ireland, it ripped me knittin', as we say down at the pub.

Have you seen the U.S. team? It has all the intimidation power of the Liechtenstein navy. It would have a hard time beating the Winnetka Country Club ladies' B team. It's the single worst squad we've ever taken to a Ryder Cup, and that's saying something, considering the last batch got pummeled 18 1/2 -9 1/2.

"We'll definitely be the underdog," Phil Mickelson says. "You lose four of the last five Cups, you're the underdog."

This outfit would be the underdog to a stiff breeze. Or do Brett Wetterich, Zach Johnson, J.J. Henry and Vaughn Taylor make your timbers shiver? It sounds like somebody's Webelos troop. None of those four have ever played in a Ryder Cup before. Three of them missed the cut at last week's PGA, and Henry finished 41st.

Wetterich has missed five cuts in his last eight starts. You look at him and think, Was he my waiter at Olive Garden last night? If he wasn't, he will be soon.