Ryder Cup

I am occasionally invited on to radio programmes to talk about why I hate golf, which I do not really - not in the way I hate poverty, injustice and raw onions on a cheese roll - but I am not what you would call an enthusiast, and in this increasingly golf-centric world that more or less places you in the anti-golf camp.

Even I, though, cannot ignore the sport on Ryder Cup weekend. At least that is what the sports desk told me, in a series of emails pointing out that this is possibly the greatest team event in world sport, in which readers of this section of the newspaper might be expected to be particularly interested.

Point taken. It was never my intention anyway to play hooky from the GTE in WS - exciting though the rugby league play-off series is turning out to be - and I have dutifully spent significant chunks of my weekend snoozing in front of Sky's coverage. I feel, though, like a non-participant looking on at a great religious ritual.

From my agnostic standpoint, the players in the Ryder Cup reminded me of the Shia Muslim men I saw in a documentary once, enthusiastically flailing themselves with chains during the festival of Ashura. What was going on before my eyes seemed inexplicable to me, obviously deriving from a place outside my experience and beyond my ken. And I felt much the same about those Shia Muslims.

What I am growing to have a deeper understanding of, though, are the clothes. Not of the self-flagellants particularly, the bare-chested look being unsuitable in my view for a man of my vintage, but of the golfers, who are doing more for the tank top than anyone since Paul McCartney in the early days of Wings.

It is easy to snigger at the sports-casual look favoured by denizens of the golf course, but they may just be giving a lead to those of us who grew up with the Beatles and are now approaching that age often referred to by spouses as Not As Young As You Used To Be. The key to the mature gentleman's look, it seems, is to pay top dollar for your casual outfits.

I am sure I heard someone on Five Live say that the diamond-patterned tank tops the Americans wore over those subtly hooped grey polo shirts were fashioned from the finest cashmere, which might be why they looked so damned comfortable. Together with nicely pressed slacks, and a solid-looking pair of leather golf shoes given the Cherry Blossom treatment as prescribed in last week's column, those golfing types may help steer a generation away from cavalry twill and trilby hats. I never thought I should find myself looking at golfers and saying, "I could wear that," although that may say less about the sport's style and more about me reaching that age when living life in the fast lane means going through the eight-items-or-fewer checkout at the supermarket.

Not that golf is the old man's game it used to be. Its worldwide ubiquity has been built on a successful appeal to a younger generation, and Phil Weaver and Roger Warren, the PGA men who spoke at the opening ceremony, could afford to look smug, as representatives of what, with the possible exception of binge-drink-related mooning, must be the fastest growing pastime on the planet. Great swaths of Spain and Portugal are already given over to golf courses - fugitive criminals from Essex can barely find room to build their mock-Tudor haçiendas - and I foresee a time when I am more or less alone in sitting watching great golf tournaments muttering "Bah humbug."

Sky's coverage was exhaustive and, as far as I could tell, exemplary. Nick Faldo, one of the channel's pundits, even complained about the pressure heaped upon the players, as one of Sky's many cameras caught Europe's captain Ian Woosnam having to be helped to straighten the collar of his pale turquoise jacket (I might draw the line at those) as he got into the golf cart to be driven to the day's play. "There is no hiding place, there are cameras everywhere," said Faldo.

On which subject Sky did seem to be rather sticking it to those of its audience without HD television. "Our coverage makes television history," said the presenter David Livingstone. "All the shots, all the reactions, all the beauty of the K Club brought to you in high definition," he drooled. It is not enough that the ad breaks make me feel like some dinosaur technophobe because I am still shaving with a three-blade razor, now I have to be made aware of my technological inadequacy during the programme as well.

Finally, Big Ron watch. Having appeared only on the prime-time BBC2 series Excuse My French, the Sky One show Big Ron Manager and as a pundit on Eurosport since becoming a pariah unwelcome on British TV, the latest sighting of Big Ron was in something on Five called the All Star Talent Show. Ron appeared on the programme crooning Fly Me To The Moon, winning plaudits from judge Julian Clary, who cooed: "I'd like to show you my tackle."

This is clearly a show whose scrapings have taken it way beyond the bottom of the barrel - how about Carol Thatcher tap-dancing, looking like Boris Johnson in drag? - so why did they not get Ron down on one knee having a bash at Mammy. Where is television's sense of irony when you want it?