Chicago: America awoke on Monday morning, looked in the mirror and saw nothing especially ugly. Around their fabled water-coolers if Americans spoke about the Ryder Cup at all it was to reflect on the loud whining of the European visitors which had drowned out the sound of their Concorde as they pouted all the way back to the Old World.
Never have so few whinged so plaintively about so many. The behaviour of celebrating US golfers has been bracketed with the drunken boorishness of spectators, and to the unfortunate mongrel child of golf that is the Ryder Cup has been added the blemish of ungraciousness in defeat.
There is no doubt that on Sunday in the leafy opulence of Brookline, things got out of hand. No doubt either that the excess was an inevitable consequence of the way in which a mere golf match has been hyped and marketed as a substitute for war.
It is well recorded that after an unprecedented run of three American failures to win the Ryder Cup, NBC bought up the broadcast rights to the 1991 competition and called it The War On The Shore, nourishing ratings from Gulf War fever. The Americans finally cottoned on to the dubious pleasure of viewing golf as an exercise in global butt-kicking.
The truth is that the spirit of the modern Ryder Cup, the spirit which attracts the TV people and the corporate people, is incompatible with the gentle etiquette of golf. Golf is a game of cool, a game of hush. Golf is a contest with oneself, a game of manners and conscience. There is nothing sadder or more self-deluding than a golf cheat, we are told.
What happens to the aesthetic of golf, the whisper of mutual encouragement when golf becomes a team game? We saw it last weekend. Was Sergio Garcia's joyous sprint across the face of the 12th green after Jesper Parnevik chipped in on Saturday any more unforgivable than the delirious American celebrations 24 hours later?
Of course not. Yet the reflex on the continent which gave the world football hooliganism is to conjecture about the deficiencies of the race known as "Ugly Americans", by which we mean loud, wealthy, middle-aged whiteys in bad pants. This is the precise constituency which is corralled into fleecing pens everywhere from Brookline with its acreage of tents to Killarney with its grasping jarveys.
The problem is not ugly Americans. It is the Ryder Cup and what it has become. Golfers, we are told, play against the golf course, not against each other. It is a game of nuance. Golfers observe the antique rituals of the game out of respect for their common plight. Turning golf into a raucous high-fiving team sport makes it something other than golf. What we saw in Brookline was the borrowed pantomime theatrics of the World Wrestling Federation.
And the truth is that it wasn't the Americans who turned Ryder Cup play into something it shouldn't be. The genie was freed from the bottle a long time ago, and getting it back inside will be like reversing the flow of a river.
The pleasant, cordial, biennial golf match won through most of the century by the US has long since ceased to be played just for the sake of friendship. We couldn't stand it. The less the Americans cared about the Ryder Cup the more fevered the British (and later European) attitude to the thing became. David kept hitting Goliath with pebbles until Goliath lost his temper.
The pattern of British/Euro jingoism runs right through the affair, reflecting Europe's complex symbiotic but resentful attitude to America.
By 1983 Tony Jacklin had to suggest that what separated him from previous European captains was that he wasn't "hell-bent on starting a third world war, unlike some previous British captains who have approached the event as though they were leading the Light Brigade into the Valley of Death".
In 1985, Hal Sutton, the US golfer, was so shaken by the jeering and abuse at The Belfry that he commented: "If this is an example of British sportsmanship, then it's a sad day for golf."
"Their behaviour is disgraceful," Jacklin responded graciously on behalf of European culture. "I know Hal Sutton can't wait to get back to America and head straight for McDonalds."
On Sunday night, speaking to a small group of journalists after the winners' press conference, Sutton noted that in 1987 he had been on the 17th fairway when Seve Ballesteros closed out on Curtis Strange to win. The celebrations of the European team were similar to what occurred on Sunday, said Sutton.
Losers always have short memories, he said.
The year 1987 was when American captain Jack Nicklaus was commended by the eminent golf writer, Peter Dobereiner, for giving an assurance that the match would be "a sporting occasion somewhere between the World Series and the third world war, the way we in Europe have always esteemed the biennial confrontation between European and American professionals."
So now Europe has the Ryder Cup it has always yearned for. Close fought and bellicose. An event which beams the faces of European players into the big American market. A competition that is a little spiteful but generously drizzled with money.
Players from both sides whipped the crowd up all weekend. People in Brookline nipped like worker ants from cool corporate tent to cool corporate tent, wherein they guzzled an ocean of free drink before being sent out into the broiling sun to cheer their country.
Little wonder they were poorly behaved. Ugly Americans and Ugly Europeans respond the same way in those conditions.
There were 3,000 people there in Palm Beach Gardens on the last day of the pre-modern Ryder Cup in 1983. ABC lost $1 million on showing the thing but there was a sense that a corner had been turned. Europe lost just narrowly.
Looking for ways to get America interested in the Ryder Cup had been a complicated business, necessitating a series of rule changes and the drafting of the rest of the European continent. Finally Europe was on the verge of kicking some moneyed American butt. Yahoo.
Fast forward 16 years. On Sunday night some European journalists were inclined to compare the behaviour of the American crowds to scenes from a Nuremberg rally, which as we now know took place somewhere in Ohio.
Without details of the corporate catering at Nuremberg the comparisons are invalid. We stirred up the hornets' nests of nationalism and greed, and now the spirit of the thing is dead.
The best way to remember the 1999 Ryder Cup would be to celebrate the quiet heroism of Padraig Harrington, who, after a perfect round, declined when asked to join in the chorus of Eurowhining.
Remember also the lovely sportsmanship of Payne Stewart, who brought along genuine respect for the tradition of the game he was playing.
No ugliness in either man. Makes you wistful.
Vincent Browne is on holiday