Bragging rights at stake in upcoming Ryder Cup tournament

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The Scottish referendum is dead and buried – the pro-independence mob lost – and that means Scotland and the rest of Europe can focus on the important things again. Like golf, as in Ryder Cup golf, in windy, cool and probably wet Scotland, the birthplace of that ridiculous but utterly compelling little exercise in masochism.

The big question this year: Will the Europeans punish the Americans again?

It's not surprising that Europe is the odds-on favourite to win the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles after scoring the biggest upset in Ryder history in 2012. More than a few of the players on Tom Watson's U.S. team – the team that seeks redemption – used plodding performances in the FedEx Cup playoffs to underwhelm their fans and put a smile on the European team's faces.

Even worse for the Americans, the FedEx Cup's two hotshots – Billy Horschel and Chris Kirk – did not make it onto captain Watson's Ryder boat. Horschel won the FedEx Cup, earning him $13-million (U.S.) after placing second in the Deutsche Bank Championship and first in the BMW and Tour championships. Kirk ranked second in the FedEx Cup.

If Watson were making his wildcard picks now instead of the start of September, you can bet that Horschel would have made the cut (Watson would not admit that, of course, apparently for fear of upsetting his trio of captain's picks).

You can equally bet that Watson is worried about the FedEx Cup performances of some of his so-called Ryder stars, who do not include the injured Tiger Woods. Zach Johnson, Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson and Hunter Mahan were dazzle-free competitors in the cup playoffs and Keegan Bradley had such a disappointing run in the BMW Championship that he withdrew before the third round, on Sept. 6. To be sure, there were flashes of brilliance among the U.S. players; Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler and Jim Furyk, each of whom is going to Gleneagles, played well, sometimes exceedingly well.

But the overall recent performance of the Ryder-bound Americans did not inspire confidence. No wonder the Europeans are favoured to take their third Ryder Cup running. "The Europeans definitely have the edge," said Steve Eubanks, the bestselling golf book author who writes for GlobalGolfPost.

"But anything can happen on the last day."

The big question is whether the Americans can use sheer determination to overcome the apparent talent deficit to beat the European team, whose roster includes four of the five top-ranked players on the planet – Rory McIlroy, Sergio Garcia, Henrik Stenson and Justin Rose. At a news conference in early September, Watson made it clear that he was gambling on pluck and bulldog spirit alone to haul the Ryder Cup back across the Atlantic.

"All the players that I talked to, every one of them, had one thing to say about the Ryder Cup," he said. "They want it back to make amends for what happened at Medinah. Our team has that one focus."

Ah, Medinah.

For the Americans, "Medinah" is now firmly embedded in the lexicon of failure. At the Medinah Country Club, just outside of Chicago, the Americans were well on course to destroy the Europeans, who had won two years before. Team USA had the hometown advantage and wildly enthusiastic, flag-waving fans behaved as if they were at a football match.

At the end of the second day, after the foursomes (two pairs of players competing with one ball per pair) and the four ball (two pairs with each competitor playing his own ball), the Americans were up 10-6. The lead was considered unassailable and jingoistic American fans were already celebrating the apparent rout. The odds of a European win at the start of the third and last day were 25-to-1 against.

But everything changed on that last day – singles day. The European men, inspired by captain Jose Maria Olazabal, refused to concede defeat and rolled back the U.S. tide with what British golf writer Oliver Hold called "miraculous putts." Martin Kaymer of Germany sank the winning putt on the 18th green, sending millions of fans into either ecstasy or despair, depending on which side of the Atlantic they occupied (Kaymer is going to Gleneagles).

Of course, the tide could turn against the Europeans in the Ryder Cup's 2014 edition. John Feinstein's classic account of the 1990s PGA Tour, A Good Walk Spoiled, which delved into the psychology of the top players, left no doubt with the reader that past wins do not automatically translate into future success. Back then, top players such as Curtis Strange could go from nailing successive Open wins to complete oblivion, with no one to blame but themselves, for this is the most solitary of sports. The same thing could happen to the Europeans this month. But the Americans would be foolish to gamble that luck alone will reverse their fortunes.

That's because the European team has another quality besides sheer talent – its members are cohesive. The Europeans know one another better, in part because the European Tour is smaller. The European Ryder Cup team is more democratic and open. It is the European players who pick their captain (this time around, it's Paul McGinley, 47, the Irishman who made three victorious Ryder appearances, in 2002, 2004 and 2006). In the United States, the players have no such power; it is the PGA that selects the captain.

It is well known that the 2014 U.S. squad is not an oasis of calm and harmony. Eubanks, the GlobalGolfPost writer, said "Chemistry is so important at the Ryder Cup. The Europeans will pair up better with each other than the Americans on their side. There are some petty squabbles among the American players.… Some of the players on the American team don't like each other."

Eubanks won't name names, but anyone who has seen Bubba Watson and Patrick Reed in action knows that each man, once equipped with a putter, can be difficult to get along with (the Bleacher Report calls Watson "fidgety and irritable").

Another factor that potentially working against the Americans is the absence of Woods, who has played seven Ryder Cups since 1997. While Woods has lost more than he has won at the cups, his mere crowd-pleasing presence brought a morale boost to the U.S. team. He insisted the other day that he would greatly miss the Ryder Cup. "We beat each other's brains [out] in 51 weeks of the year and then we all of a sudden come together and make friendships for a lifetime," he said. "It's pretty cool."

The Europeans have another quality, it appears, and that's the sheer desire to beat the Americans just because, apparently, they are American. Call it the perennial geopolitical underdogs relishing in the defeat of the overdogs. For the Europeans, the Ryder Cup is the top tournament, even though it pays its winners nothing. For the Americans, the Ryder Cup generally ranks after the Masters and the U.S. Open. But if the Americans win at Gleneagles, there is no doubt the victory, after the Medinah debacle, will feel better than a win at any major.