One year on from Brookline, the qualification process for another Ryder Cup is in full swing. And one year before The Belfry, the word from the European Tour is that the uptake of corporate hospitality is "tremendous", with targets certain to be met.
The latter observation will come as a bitter disappointment to the distinguished writer and broadcaster Alistair Cooke. After events in Boston 12 months ago, Cooke blamed much of the mayhem on the excesses of corporate hospitality.
On listening again to a tape of his Letter from America for the BBC, broadcast on October 1st 1999, I found myself thinking how much greater his disappointment would have been had he known what was to transpire several months later. In his darkest moments, Cooke could not have imagined the tacky outpourings of Mark James in his book Into the Bear Pit.
Still, Brookline was bad enough. This is how he started his broadcast: "I never thought the day would come when I would be reluctant to talk about golf." Then, in his gentle, compelling way, he described how "a splendid international golfing event last weekend turned into a disaster for the goodwill that such events are intended to promote."
At a time when etiquette is gradually being lost to the game, Cooke reminded us that: "For about four centuries, golf etiquette has controlled and civilised the behaviour of golfers inclined to let their temper erupt in physical ways." And at the same time it preserved the game as "an oasis in a desert of gold and scruffy manners".
That was until Sunday September 26th 1999 - "a date that will live in infamy". He claimed that from a note of rowdyism in the previous two or three stagings, "the excessive jollity has now passed over into a soccer fans' brawl . . . we saw the arrival of the golf hooligan.
"The crowd seemed unlike any group of spectators who normally watch golf. There is a new breed which goes to watch golf now as it does tennis. And why? Because more and more, the big events in golf have turned into trade fairs. That is the essence of the transformation of golf tournaments.
"Twenty odd years ago I arrived in Scotland to watch the Open, the British Open, and didn't recognise the course. Tents selling shirts, souvenirs and flags and other, fancier tents called, I learned, hospitality tents, dispensing various products both edible and drinkable where chief executive officers and friends could slake an early thirst, early or late.
"`What is this?'," I asked a friend, a Scot, `a golf tournament or a circus?'
"`Well', he said, "it's somewhere in the middle."
"As for discouraging the hooligans, I suggest that the CEOs be compelled to banish their champagne and that in humbler tents, alcohol be not served as it is banned from other juveniles who attend American college football."
Alas, the news from European Tour headquarters would suggest that the broadcaster's words have fallen on deaf ears. Which should hardly surprise us, as officials continue to serve golf and mammon.
Quote: "I do it for the principle. I think it should be your goal, your ambition, to play your country's championship."
American citizen, golfer and former tennis star Ivan Lendl on why, after five failed attempts, he is determined to continue trying to qualify for the US Open.
