Is the ultimate demise of the U.S. starting on the golf course?

The initial recorded time that someone made the comment that the U.S. was headed to hell in a hand basket came on July 5, 1776, in a New York Times’ editorial titled “John Hancock: Why an ego-maniac with big handwriting shows America is doomed.”

That it was right next to the editorial “Stem cells aren’t babies! What are you, a friggin’ idiot?!” also made it the first time the Times was blasted as being a liberal mouthpiece, but that’s neither here nor there.

The point is that people have been talking about the decay of the United States since the “States” part actually meant something. Nonetheless, as years passed the U.S. did little but kick ass and take names, accumulating a plethora of names taken and asses kicked along the way.

But now, America’s role as the world’s leading ass-kicking name-taker is undeniably in jeopardy. And all the evidence you need for this can be found on the golf course.

You see, Americans didn’t invent golf, but man, were we good at it. Better than everyone else, for that matter. How many Jack Nicklauses has the rest of the world produced? And our stars came in all races, shapes and sizes: Arnold Palmer, Babe Zaharias, Tom Watson, Nancy Lopez, Lee Trevino, Kathy Whitworth, etc., etc. Heck, even John Daly rolled out of bed hungover one weekend and won the British Open.

Today, we still have Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to carry the flame of greatness, but overall, the U.S. is getting routinely stomped in tournaments held home and abroad.

In 2006, the U.S. men are not winning tournaments with surprising regularity, with Australians, of all people, consistently thumping us. An amazing fact: 93 percent of all Australians who golf have won a PGA tournament this year.

The LPGA is in much worse predicament as while no one was watching, South Korea was busily cloning brilliant golfers who do most the winning these days, while the most impressive young star is not Michelle Wie or Paula Creamer, but Mexican Lorena Ochoa. It’s gotten to the point that even the so-called Minutemen have taken to accepting Annika Sorenstam as a full-blooded American girl, just so the U.S. has a chance.

Now, judging the fate of an entire nation based on success on the golf course may seem a bit like folly to you, but you’re not employed by a golf Web site now, are you? And one need look no further than this site to see that the general debate skills of Americans have completely atrophied following eons of using “Oh yeah? Well we’re better than you” as a successful debate tactic. But that only works if you’re actually better than everyone.

Do you think the Roman and Ottoman empires wanted to collapse? Of course not, but recent research has shown that declining putting skills and a severe drop in greens in regulation were key contributing factor in their respective demises.

Gentle reader, I am not a man prone to hyperbole, but if Americans don’t win the British Open, PGA Championship AND the Ryder Cup Matches, the entire infrastructure of the country will collapse and we’ll all be required to either work in treacherous Chinese tea mines or be forced to be prostitutes serving insatiable Chinese tea barons. Mark my words, China and tea will somehow be involved and it will all be highly unpleasant.

Because at its core, golf is a barometer of success. If Americans can’t be the best golfers, then we lose the right to proclaim that we’re the best. And once that right is lost, it’s only a matter of time before the Chinese tea barons come and enslave us big-handwriting, stem-cell-misunderstanding, lousy debaters.

And then our hand-basket will really be hell bound.