At all your better competitions for cups — the Solheim Cup, the Walker Cup, the Presidents Cup, the Ryder Cup — there are sessions devoted to alternate-shot play. What the Scots call foursomes. The Ryder Cup, in its formal accounting, still uses that word. All square and dormie, as golfing terms, have fallen out of favor.
But foursomes survives and sometimes thrives. It’s a wee nod to a deep truth about the game: All that’s great about it has Scottish roots.
Have you ever played foursomes? If you haven’t, I recommend it. It’s not a good workout for your driver, or even your putter. But it will test your ability to step up and in when the moment demands it of you. In that, it resembles life. It will get you connected to your playing partner in a way few others in sports can. And in that, too, it resembles life. It’s a regular game in very few places, most of them are in Scotland. At Prestwick, for instance, where the Open Championship got its start.
At Bethpage Black, and on every other occasion when the Europeans have won a Ryder Cup, it’s because Europe has been dominant in the foursomes sessions. That is, the format by which each player takes turns. The format by which you are rooting for your playing partner when he or she plays with every fiber of your being, matched only by your desire to lift up the other player when it’s your turn. It eliminates all of golf’s inherent self-absorption.
At Bethpage, the Europeans won the Friday and Saturday foursomes sessions by the same margin, 3-1. Six points, on their way to the 14 they needed. There have been similar results through the years. The European players are better at foursomes than the American players. There’s a reason for that. They come out of cultures that are more communal. In Europe, they love public transportation. We are a nation of cowboys. Not judging a thing here, just trying to make an observation.
The Europeans wore brown shirts on Saturday, and nobody complained. My colleague Claire Rogers was making this point the other day: The European players are much more comfortable being physical with one another — hugging, draping an arm over a shoulder — than their American equivalents.
Agatha McNaughton, wiserools, why they’re the proper rools of affection — and all the waitin’ and oohin’ and ahineternity at a well-soaked meal somewhere in Scotland:
“All those gentlemanly rools, why they’re the proper rools of affection — and all the waitin’ and oohin’ and ahin’ o’er yer shots, all the talk o’ this one’s drive and that one’s putt and the other one’s gorgeous swing — what is it all but love?”
Yep. Foursomes golf most particularly. I’m not saying the Americans don’t understand what Mrs. McNaughton is saying there. I am saying that for the Europeans, her words are a way of life.
