My money is on America

Please don’t tell those sniffer dogs at JFK before the next time I arrive in New York, but I do not particularly like the USA. Not only do I find American movies to be rather predictable and their food portions too big, but I also have my doubts about George W. Bush. And can somebody please tell me why a bunch of grown men playing a glorified form of touch rugby (without an off-side rule) should go around in crash helmets and body armour?

I do feel rather differently about Europe on the other hand. I’m practically from that continent, after all: a short three hundred years ago my forefathers were French Huguenots and Dutch castaways. To this day I love Italian kisses, French fries, Danish pastries, Irish coffee, Swiss army knives, German Shepherds, Dutch courage and Swedish football fans.

So why would I choose to back the USA in this weekend’s Ryder Cup competition?

The answer is simple: I believe that it is quite a compelling bet.

Last night, with less than twelve hours to go before the first tee shot being struck, you could get odds of no less than 2.48:1 on a win for the USA on Betfair, the largest internet betting exchange in the world. For the uninitiated, this translates into a nett profit of $148 for every $100 placed on the USA (in addition to getting your initial $100 back, of course), should the Americans indeed end up being the winners come Sunday evening.

At the same time, Europe was trading at a price of 1.9 (i.e. translating into a nett profit of only $90 for every $100 placed on the team, in addition to getting your original stake back). You could of course also back the draw at odds of 13:1 if you really didn’t think that there was anything to choose between the teams.

So, for the first time in living memory, the USA will be the clear underdogs when Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk, Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington step onto the first tee for the opening match of the competition on Friday morning.

And that is exactly why I fancy the chances of the Americans, for the Ryder Cup has proven to favour the underdog more often than not in recent years. Take the last five competitions for example: the European team happened to win four of these – in each and every instance, they were considered to be underdogs.

But let’s analyse this further. Much has of course been made of the presence of the four rookies in the American team: the relatively unknown Zach Johnson, Vaughn Taylor, JJ Henry and Brett Wetterich. Who are these people, a lot of sceptics have been asking, and do they even know how to address a golf ball?

My answer to them is simple: you might not have heard much about these four individuals, but each one of them has managed to finish in the top ten of a tournament on the US PGA tour, approximately every other week over the past couple of years – which is exactly why they made the team in the first place. And remember, the PGA Tour is by far the most competitive arena in the world that the game has to offer. In short: these guys can most definitely play the game.

What’s more, rookies seem to have the knack of surpassing all expectations more often than not – a form of beginner’s luck, if you will. Perhaps it is because they feel less pressure because people do not expect them to win, or perhaps it is simply because they have somewhat more to prove. When Luke Donald, David Howell and Paul Casey all played in their first Ryder Cup in 2004, for example, they proved themselves to be worthy competitors, helping the Europeans on their way to a landslide victory. All three of them are back with much fanfare this year; by now they are considered to be seasoned professionals.

Then there are those who like to write off Tiger Woods and his commitment to the cause of Team USA, whilst at the same time singing the praises of Colin Montgomerie and the inspirational role that he has played for Europe over the years. In response to this, I do of course have to acknowledge that statistics have a way of speaking for themselves, but I am also not convinced that either or both of these scenarios will necessarily play out again this year. As investment consultants like to say in the fine print: past performance is no guarantee of future performance…

There is after all some evidence that Tiger has embraced the team ethic at last: he did, for example, reach out to the lesser members of the team by inviting them to dinner straight after the team had been finalised. My bet is that he also plays better this time…

I won’t even dwell on the fact that the American team does not only include Woods, the world’s undisputed number 1 player, but also Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson whose respective world rankings happen to be numbers 2 and 3 at this point in time. Neither do I wish to over-emphasise the significance of no less than four major winners being present in the US team (the same three gentlemen mentioned a moment ago, as well as David Toms), compared to Europe’s sole member of that same club (an aging Jose Maria Olazabal).

Then there is also the issue of the captains. Can the importance of this be overstated? Everyone seems to be in agreement that a confident Bernhard Langer was instrumental in Europe’s success in 2004, for example. At the time, America’s Hal Sutton was clearly out of his depth that year, practically admitting to journalists that he had no idea what to do next after the disastrous results of his team on the first day.

This year, the shoe appears to be squarely on the other foot. Whilst US captain Tom Lehman has been organised and eloquent, Europe’s Ian Woosnam seems to be bumbling along. Thomas Bjorn’s criticism of Woosnam, calling it “pathetic captaincy” when the Welshmen announced his captain’s picks a couple of weeks ago, may yet be prophetic.

To cut a long story short: here we have a two-horse race, with the better team (in my opinion, anyway) having the longer odds.

How could one not venture a tenner?

But this does beg the question: why are the Americans the underdogs this year? Are people merely extrapolating the result of 2004, when Europe gave the USA a good old drubbing?

Perhaps. But another reason probably also relates to the perceived home advantage that the Europeans will be enjoying in Ireland.

The counter-argument to this, I believe, relates to the very nature of golf fans on either side of the Atlantic. In America, the sport is followed by beer-swilling yobs wearing oversized T-shirts who like talking on Colin Montgomerie’s backswing. They also shout “You da man!” and “Go in da hole!” every time that Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson hits a shot. This, I would argue, constitutes real home-ground advantage, much as the cheer of the Loftus Versfeld faithful seems to put off even the mighty All Blacks more often than not.

In Ireland, on the other hand, the spectators are much more knowledgeable and respectful about the game. They will keep quiet no matter which team a player belongs to when he lines up a putt; they will applaud a good shot whenever they see one. All of which leads me to ask: what home advantage?

Finally, there is the question of market efficiency. To what the extent might the Betfair odds be skewed in favour of the Europeans, based on the fact that the vast majority of punters registered on this site happen to be domiciled in the UK and Ireland? Bear in mind that Americans are not even allowed to register on this site, as this form of sports betting is still outlawed in that country. Remember all those arrests of high profile internet bookmakers passing through the USA in the past couple of months?

Against this background, my tenner therefore says that the US team will win the Ryder Cup this weekend. Besides, if I happen to be wrong, I’ll cheer anyway, for I’m a European at heart as stated before.

You can call it a form of emotional hedging if you want to.

Now go in da hole!


Deon Gouws
21 September 2006

Let's eradicate the memory of Darrell Hair...

Just like clients and mothers-in-law, cricket umpires are always right – even when they’re wrong. Except that this is of course no longer the case, after the events of the past week. And that might yet be the saddest consequence of the whole Darrell Hair saga.

There has always been a certain old-world charm in the way that the laws of cricket entrench the authority of the umpire. This is all very different from other sports such as football for example, where top players are often seen arguing with the referee in a way which makes even the memory of a swearing John McEnroe look rather tame in comparison. Not so in cricket, however: even the shake of a batsman’s head after an unfair dismissal could result in severe punishment.

Think back to the third test between England and Pakistan at Headingley a few weeks ago: when Kevin Pietersen got an inside edge to a delivery of Shahid Nazir and was caught behind with his score on 2, Darrell Hair (who else) must have been the only person in the world who neither saw nor heard it. Vociferous Pakistani appeals could only fall on those same deaf ears. Video evidence was not to be consulted in terms of the laws of the game. Pietersen was adjudged not out and he went on to make 135.

It is the verb in the previous sentence that is instructive: the batsman was adjudged to be not out. For that is the job of the cricket umpire: to be the ultimate judge of a myriad factors in a silly game with illogical rules. What is the LBW-decision, to quote but one example, if not a question of judgement?

Did the bowler perhaps overstep? Might the ball have pitched outside the leg-stump? Did it hit the pads in line with the stumps? Wasn’t the batsman too far forward? Did the ball not strike him a little bit high? Was it not swinging too much? Would it thus continue to hit the wickets?

If and only if the umpire is 100% sure in his mind that the answers to these questions are, in order, no, no, yes, no, no, no, yes, will he adjudge the batsman to be out leg before wicket. Moreover, he needs to make up his mind in a split second, with the ball travelling at speeds approaching 100 miles per hour. Only to repeat it all again on the next ball. And so on, for five consecutive days.

But what happens when an umpire’s judgement starts failing him? What if he’s no longer sure whether or not the light is good enough to continue playing… whether or not the ball actually carried to first slip… whether or not the bowler’s action is illegal?

The answer seems simple enough: if his judgement goes, the umpire himself should go, for he is no longer up to the job. And in the case of Darrell Hair one might actually go one step further, for there are many who would argue that the man never had much judgement in the first place. Just ask Peter Kirsten or Shaun Pollock, both of whom have been fined in the past for questioning Hair’s eyesight. Or speak to any person of Asian descent: Hair certainly doesn’t have an abundance of friends from the sub-continent.

In questioning Hair’s judgement, I am not suggesting that the man was necessarily wrong in deciding that the ball had been tampered with at the Oval last week, or when he lifted the bails to indicate a void match after the Pakistan team failed to take the field following the interruption. These are vexed questions, and any commentator’s opinion boils down to nothing more than speculation.

No, my real criticism of Darrell Hair is purely based on his rather clumsy offer to resign in return for a $500,000 pay-off from the ICC. A man with judgement would never do that, after all. If he had any sense, he would have approached the Pakistani management and he would have demanded a lot more money. No doubt they would have paid a few million dollars to see the back of this bespectacled Aussie.

But the real question now is whether this lack of judgement is not perhaps symptomatic of a much more fundamental condition. Maybe Peter Kirsten, Shaun Pollock, Arjuna Ranatunga, Inzamam-ul-Haq and scores of other players who clashed with Darrell Hair over the years were all right: perhaps he never actually had much judgement to begin with. In which case the question is: what now?

In formulating a response to this, I am reminded of the movie Thank You For Smoking. One of my favorite parts of the movie is where a US senator rules that all those classic scenes where people smoke in older movies such as Casablanca should be modified, so that future generations would never again be exposed to brain-washing tactics in terms of which cigarettes are portrayed as being cool. Do you really believe that it’s good to change history in this way, an interviewer asks him. We’re not changing history as such, he responds, we’re merely improving it.

So this is my suggestion: due to Darrell Hair’s lack of judgement, every effort should now be made to improve history in a way where all the man’s controversial decisions of the past are eradicated in one fell swoop. Based on this, Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling action will henceforth be known as a thing of beauty, Inzamam-ul-Haq has never in his life roughed up a cricket ball, and Kevin Pietersen has one less century to his name.

Not only that, but Peter Kirsten will be relieved to know that it’s official: he was never actually out LBW in the test against Australia at the Adelaide Oval in 1994. And neither were any of the other LBW victims of that day…so we have to add not only to Kirsten’s score, but also to that of Hansie Cronje, Jonty Rhodes and Brian McMillan. All of which means that South Africa actually won the test. Oh yes, and the series. Kirsten himself will get his match fee back. With interest.

Bizarre to suggest this? I don’t think so. There is after all a lot of precedent from the world of sport, with history being improved in some or other way nearly every week now. Think about Floyd Landis, who was stripped of his Tour de France crown just the other day due to excessive testosterone levels, of all things. Not to mention Justin Gaitlin, who used to share the world record for the 100 meters until he was found out to be so full of drugs, you’d think he played in a band with Pete Doherty.

Whether or not we actually manage to improve history, I do not think that history itself will treat Darrell Hair with much sympathy. Aged only 53, he has a great future behind him; one can only wonder what he will go on to do next. In my opinion, it’s not very likely that we will see him standing in international cricket again. And I’m also not sure how much he’ll enjoy umpiring the odd village game in his adopted Lincolnshire.

But the man is far too young to retire. Not that he’d be able to retire anyway, now that his gracious offer to go quietly in return for greasing his palm has been turned down by the ICC.

This is what I think: Darrell Hair should become a professional change agent, a consultant of sorts. After all, he has already turned one maxim on its head – as I said before, it is no longer true that umpires are always right.

Could he perhaps now turn his attention to unreasonable clients and nagging mothers-in-law, please?


Deon Gouws
27 August 2006