I don't understand the Ryder Cup. I don't see the point, I don't get the attraction. I just don't watch it. As I write, I am in a state of shock. I am apparently the only person in the world who doesn't understand or like the Ryder Cup. Around me, the population at large is experiencing the sort of bizarrely-disproportionate communal hysteria generally reserved for deceased royals. Come on Europe. Now I'm no bigot. Just because the sport is elitist and sexually discriminatory doesn't mean I'll bear an eternal grudge against the Knights of the Diamond Pattern Sweater. I'll wear my Pringle and swing my Big Bertha with the best of them. (You think I don't know how to get promoted in here?)

In fact, as a sort of preparatory for my dotage, I exposed myself to golf in several ways this year. I played one round (what's all the fuss about? Easy game.) I watched the US Masters on TV, and some of the British Open, and I had a short conversation with Padraig Harrington - hitch in his swing, he wanted me to take a look at. Came to me too late.

I have suffered golf, but I draw the line at the Ryder Cup. What is happening to the world?

A friend whose only known vice was a fondness for Bohs has just brazenly told me that he gave Rupert Murdoch money specifically to get the Ryder Cup into his living room. The sports editor is sitting in a slack-jawed golf trance before the TV, with his feet up and his brain idling in neutral. People are calling on the phone and expressing surprise that I can't swap Ryder Cup gossip. Every wire story and sports column that I scan tells me that the sports editor is watching the third biggest sporting event in the world.

Horsefeathers!

The Ryder Cup is a hoax, the last kick of a dying European tour, a televisual concoction which was lucky to survive the 1970s, but is now being milked as a cash-cow.

It was cooked up to show that American professionals were as fit as Brits to be full time pro's in their local clubs. When it got to the stage where the Brits couldn't beat the Yanks at all, it should have been laid to rest. Instead, we Paddies were dragged into it. To no avail. Then the rest of Europe was trawled and deemed fit to wear the blazer. Europe starting winning matches before it became necessary for us to annex Asia.

The beast should have died from natural causes - the lack of commercial interest - but the PGA discovered, just in time, that it actually owned the thing and after an unseemly little tug of war began flogging the Ryder Cup to death. What else has the European Tour got to flog? The marquee names want to play in America where it is sunny and when it rains, it rains dollar bills. Even Colin Montgomerie is distracted by the lure of the dollar. Next year, the Euro Tour may not even have the full Monty.

Politics and business interests ensured that as soon as it became a viable entity, the Ryder Cup got mired in the dreary little golf course which is The Belfry. The Belfry acquired some sort of gravitas for itself by latching onto the Ryder Cup in the way a badger latches onto a shinbone. It wouldn't let go until it could hear a crack. Eventually, the Spaniards got the tournament this year (Europe owed Seve big for saving the Ryder bacon a few times), but it's back to the Belfry in 2001. The tournament isn't even big enough to break free of The Belfry and get itself played on the great courses every time.

There is so much about the Ryder Cup that is squalid, contrived and commerce-driven.

Question: Why is it that one half of the partnership (Europe) has sold off it's share to a sponsor (Johnny Walker), while the Americans have remained pure?

Answer: Because the US have three majors every year and here in Europe, there is only the Open. The Yanks have a market of 25 million golfers. Europe has just 2.7 million. Europe needs to flog the thing.

And what about the format? The beauty of golf is its pace, its lonely agonies, its eternal symmetry. Turning it into a raucous team sport means squeezing the delicacy out of it. It may be television, but it just ain't golf. As for being the third biggest sports event in the world, well, given that that the All Ireland hurling and football finals are the biggest events, and the Olympics and the World Cup probably come in next, and the Masters is infinitely bigger in the US (NBC only showed live Ryder Cup coverage yesterday) and that Africa is completely disinterested and even European countries like Greece and Italy weren't even carrying live coverage, given that even the Superbowl gets a bigger worldwide audience . . . me thinks not.

And Europe? I'm supposed to root for Europe, right? Toss my beret in the air, swig my sangria and take my sauerkraut in front of the TV? I'm supposed to identify with the entire continent, or just the posh percentile of it who golf? I love the whole land mass, the whole shooting match, the great golfing continent from shore to shining links.

I can't do it. I'm pro-European, but all sports are local. And anyway, in 1981 I got beaten up several times in Germany because Germans kept mistaking me for a Turk. I bear the grudge. I understand why the Railway Cups have died a death and the All Ireland Club championship has grown from strength to strength. I can't understand why a golf match between two continents appears to catch the public imagination.

For instance, in no way do I identify with Nick Faldo. I like Jesper Parnevik, but then he eats gravel, which is interesting because I myself get to bite the dust quite frequently in this job. Constantino Rocca? So what. And besides, why aren't we still sulking because we thick micks weren't admitted to the thing until 1973 and our European brothers didn't get the call till 1979 when the competition was in intensive care. (Before they asked us in, they had already considered making it the USA versus the Commonwealth. Imagine how many they could have lost with the great white shark aboard.)

On the other side of the Atlantic, I can see that the partisanship is purely nationalistic. The yanks were transported away to a place of such small-minded nationalism in the course of the competition played during the Gulf War that there was a good case for abandoning the damn competition there and then. Yet the Ryder Cup marches on, a great juggernaut of hype, loaded up with nationalism, elitism, and commercial exploitation. This column stands in it's path like a solitary dissident before an imperial tank. Come on Pringles, mow me down.