All this talk about how the Presidents Cup actually features a better field than the Ryder Cup, and how it’s more of a worldly event and should get more publicity than its more famous competition is omitting one major factor as to why it will never be as big of a deal:

There’s no Sergio Garcia.

Okay, it’s not just Sergio, but the whiny, waggle-happy, yellow pants cry baby is the icon to use.

The American Sports Fan just can’t get riled up about the International Team like the Europeans. To bemoan about 6/7’s of the world’s landmass would be like saying “You suck, most of Earth!". Americans are ethnocentric enough as it is.

But when you channel a team down to one continent that America has a thick history with, it gets us Yanks’ blood boiling. Maybe we’re still bitter from the Stamp Tax, or maybe it’s that smug look the Europeans have when they proclaim their coffee stronger than ours…but Americans just love to hate the Brits and Euros one weekend every other year.

How can that passion be the same with Internationals, who span from Argentina to Australia? Even if we have a personal grudge against lets say…New Zealand, does that mean we should cuss at the TV when we see Fiji’s Vijay Singh lining up a birdie putt? And just because Canada’s currency is inexplicably the same value as the USD now, and we can’t find a bar anywhere in the world without a drunk Canadian telling us how bad America’s health care system is, it doesn’t mean we should heckle South Africa’s Ernie Els.

You just can’t duplicate the emotions involved with the Ryder Cup. And each time the Europeans give the U.S. a beat down, thanks to their unbreakable togetherness from all their Euro Tour slumber parties, it will only make the U.S.A.’s eventual breakthrough that much sweeter.

So thank you Sergio - and all you other feisty Europeans - for making a most formidable and entertaining match play foe.