Much has been made of the superior effort of the European team in Ryder Cups over their higher-ranked and more illustrious American counterparts. The theory goes that Europeans are more suited to the team game, and the solipsistic yanks are just <a href=”http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1877235,00.html”>not team players – the stats back this up, as Gavyn Davies shows</a>. <a href=”http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/main.jhtml?xml=/sport/2006/09/21/sgnich21.xml”>Tiger Woods in particular is often cited</a> as having a very poor Ryder Cup attitude and record when stacked next to his 12 majors and umpteen titles.<br />
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So far, so true. But a couple of things look out of place here.<br />
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Tiger Woods may have performed badly, but his record in Ryder Cup play is as follows:<br />
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Cups played: 4<br />
matches: <b>20</b><br />
Overall <b>W-L-H: 7-11-2</b> <br />
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This is a scoring record of 40% – not good for the outstanding golfer of his generation.<br />
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However, the US team in the four Cups in which Woods has taken part have scored 13.5, 14.5, 12.5 and 9.5 points, out of a possible 28×4=112 – a return of 44%. So Wood’s contribution is not that much worse than the rest of the team. It’s only a 4% difference. <br />
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If Woods had played 4 percent better, he would have won only one more match overall in Ryder Cup play – enough to have swung the 1997 cup to the US away from Europe if, for example, he had beaten Constantino Rocca in the singles, but not enough to make a difference in any other cup. <br />
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So – Woods may be poor, but the rest of the team is not doing much better. Given that since 1997 only TWO <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_championships_%28golf%29#Major_championship_winners”>majors</a> have been won by Europeans (the 1999 Masters by Jos� Mar�a Olaz�bal and Open by Paul Lawrie) and another <b>13 Americans</b> have won Majors aside from Woods, Tiger should not be the scapegoat.