The Boring and Invisible Ryder Cup

I had a horrible dream the other night. In it, I was being punished for doing something of which I was entirely innocent and for my punishment, I had to play golf. Now I consider that punishment enough for any man, but to make matters worse, I had to play against the devil himself. He was all afire and leaving worrying scorchmarks on the grass (or the "green", as golfers themselves call it, the boring bastards) where his cloven feet trod. I had to win in order to avoid further and painful punishment and the trouble is that I wasn't any fecking good and he seemed to have been practising - a lot. It was 2 against 1, though, but the nail in my punishing coffin came when I realised that my partner was Padraig Harrinton. Now, on the one hand I was glad to have him on my side because he's a top-class player (or so I'm lead to believe by the bores that watch this shit), but whether I'm or whether I'm wrong, I regard him as the epitome of boredom. Mr. Harrington is, to my observant mind, Tedium Personified. As we walked boringly, slowly from one "hole" to another "hole", Harrington was giving me an earache with his verbal hairy elephant dung, such as "I'm a fit guy - I like to stay in shape." and "I wasn't really comfortable standing over that hole", all delivered in that monotone drone of his with that miserable effort of a smile that seems to be fixed onto his face, tanned from walking around and spending his ridiculously huge pay on sunny holidays and the like. It's actually quite typical of the professional golfer, so it is - all of that.

All the while, the devil is ahead of us, getting on with the game and making great progress with birdies and eagles and pars and whatever else they have in this "stupida fucking game", to quote the Neopolitan hitman from the Sopranos. And the bastard devil is laughing at me and my predicament, struggling to cope with this travesty of sport and all the time being driven to distraction by this babbling idiot beside me.

To cut to the chase, the dream ended well, with me beating Harrington to death with the club and the devil joining in to deliver the final coup-de-grace, but I'm trying to address the issues raised in my reverie.

Perhaps I'm feeling a little insecure because I know so many people who think that golf is great and that the Ryder Cup coming to Ireland is the most exciting thing ever. But, what kind of a sport is it? It's not really a sport at all, in my mind: all that walking around followed by a slave. It numbs the mind and the fuckers are overpaid. Part of the reason why the greedy bores are so overpaid is because they sell the television rights to satellite tv companies who can get all the money back by sucking it out of the fans of this crap. I don't know how an Irishman like Padraig Harrington can hold his head aloft at all when he's involved in this skullduggery - part of bringing this big occasion to Ireland, where the national broadcaster can't show the stupid thing on television. Take the club to the Sky box and the satellite dish, then bring the remains to your dealer and say something like "I'm mad as fuck and I'm not taking it any more!!". That should do it.