The United States are hot favourites for the Ryder Cup despite winning only two of the last seven matches. This may be explained in part by their players' superior world rankings; then again, it is often argued that those rankings are too heavily biased in favour of the US Tour.

Here at Golf Masters we treat the tours more equally, and when it comes to looking at earnings, we feel that our more gradual falling off in prize money provides a better indication of consistent performance. So in the week that the line-ups for Brookline were finalised, we decided to examine the 1999 Golf Masters performance of the two Ryder Cup teams.

So the States have a higher total, but in Golf Masters Europe had to make do with only 10 players. In fact, of those players on our tour, the Europeans are faring slightly better with average earnings of $525,036 to the Americans $496,511, and pound for pound the Europeans have proved better value also.

The remaining Golf Masters tournaments are: This week: NEC Invitational. Sept 2nd- 5th: European Masters and Air Canada Championship. Sept 9th-12th: British Masters and Canadian Open. Sept 16th-19th: Lancome Trophy and BC Open.