Wry jokes about tied scores are a staple in the world of perspiring arts. That no one is particularly elated or depressed when the score is even at the end is reflected in two standard nuggets in the jock lexicon: “We’re with you win or tie, Coach,” and, the granddaddy of the genre, “a tie is like kissing your sister.”
Fans may wonder why they even bothered when there is no victor or vanquished at the end, but there is nuance within the tie that a mere win or loss can never achieve. For example: in 1968, Harvard’s scholar/football athletes scored 16 points in the last few minutes to equal Yale’s total in their big game, inspiring Bill Rafferty’s 2008 documentary “Harvard beats Yale 29-29.” Not all ties are the same, in other words.
As in the Ryder Cup. A little history: when the teams finished with identical totals in that great year for sister kissing, 1968, the US side kept the Cup for a year, and the chaps from Great Britain/Ireland held it for the other. But the competition evolved from biennial tea party (with the US the perpetual winner) to the current blood match. So when the squads finished with the same point total in 1989, the incumbent—Europe—partied like it was 1999 and kept the gold trophy for the full two years.
Possibly that set of facts informed the strange behavior of Eldrick T. Woods on the final hole of the final match last Sunday. Europe had already achieved its minimum goal, the tie that would allow it to take the Cup back across the Atlantic. A halved hole in his match with Fran Molinari would have meant a tied match. But ETW quickly whiffed his try for a par, then conceded of his opponent’s putt of nearly identical length. Thus Molinari won their match, and Europe won the Cup. Tiger had declared loud and clear that a tie and a loss were for him equally distasteful.
“We came here as a team,” he said in the solemn aftermath. “This is a team event. And the Cup had already been retained by Europe, so it was already over. Just get this over with.”
But Tiger took no poll of his teammates or Captain regarding their preference for a tie or a loss—can you imagine anyone choosing defeat?—so his haste to get off the stage was unilateral and childish, and his explanation was disingenuous. There would have been more honor in a full effort, and in a tie, but the former boy king of did not agree.
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