Surely Donald Trump has got to say something stupid about the Ryder Cup before it starts on Friday. It's golf and it's got flags and foreigners: put a fat guy building a wall around Hazeltine and its Trump Christmas. So he's bound to get all 'U-S-A, U-S-A' about something, which is good because the core element of this Ryder Cup phenomenon is the Ugly American.

‘The Donald’ is certainly no oil painting but he is a golfer, apparently quite a decent low-figure handicapper too, although it’s hard to tell for sure from the various golf publications that care about such things since their investigative priority appears to be how far up the presidential candidate they can blow smoke.

Golf and Trump are a perfect fit. It’s little wonder he owns courses dotted around the world. Trump can be the clubhouse bore wherever he goes, including Doonbeg in Co Clare. He wants to build a wall there too, behind which he may eventually come to terms with how different and wrong are not synonymous.

Anyway, while nasty opportunist suits obsessed with expensive exclusivity and the size of their dicks is hardly just an American thing, it is important for this week’s action that it comes stereotypically bedecked in Stars & Stripes.

A lot of Americans get their jollies from the flag anyway, happy to beat the chest and ‘woo-hoo’ their patriotic fervour no matter how minor the context.

So for instance, even when the US won all but two Ryder Cup renewals in half a century, making the competitive aspect all but redundant, there was still no reluctance to put the boot in, even when it got embarrassing enough for those at the receiving end to start looking away.

That changed when the event transformed into meaningful competition, touching genuine sporting emotion and occasionally morphing into ridiculous jingoistic shaping while continually expanding into the massive corporate monolith that now oversees a level of European hegemony which is potentially a very real problem.

Because the Ryder Cup only works if Europe are underdogs: that's the only way it makes any kind of sense for millions of people who otherwise rarely identify themselves as European in any way, shape or form, unless there's a grant or tax break involved.

In fact, the political trend is increasingly towards oozing hostility at the very concept of Europe as any kind of entity. Trump waves ‘Old Glory’ like a castaway trying to draw attention. Feelings towards the flag of Europe are so ambivalent it doesn’t even have a nickname.

Spectacular

That’s what’s been so noteworthy about the Ryder Cup’s spectacular commercial success over the last three decades from a European point of view. Its whole Team Europe idea is essentially a mirage in terms of the sort of sentiment upon which sporting identity hinges.

No one on the team, never mind the millions looking in, identify themselves as European in any meaningful day-to-day sense. If the matter arises at all it’s only in terms akin to that childish habit of extending your name and address as far out as it can go until you come to ‘The Universe’. Europe gets in before ‘Earth’ but it’s still a long way down the list of emotional ties.

It’s why Ryder Cup fervour on this side of the Atlantic actually isn’t so much pro-Europe as it is anti-American. Any sense of wanting ‘Our’ team to win in reality pales in comparison to wanting ‘Them’ to lose.

So in reality European investment in the event is rooted in a negativity towards the most powerful country on earth that is strong enough to park centuries’ worth of deeply entrenched national prejudices behind a thin veneer of chippy pan-European resentment towards ‘Los Yanquis’.

The entire Ryder Cup concept is essentially a reflex reaction against the big bully boy in the class, the one who likes to throw his weight about and is barely aware of anyone else’s existence.

Underdog

But how sustainable is that when the big bully has won just once in the last seven clashes, and only twice in the last 10? Who’s really the underdog here? And in a Brexit Europe, who’s going to wave the flag for the David that keeps beating the snot out of the supposed Goliath?

The saving grace for those in charge of the event is that the Americans are again favourites with the bookmakers this week. They usually are. But the bookies have been wrong so often in the past that the political climate within the US is actually something of a Ryder Cup godsend.

There is an ugly uncertain mood in America that Trump is exploiting with the sort of flag-waving, anti-foreigner rhetoric which clearly resonates with a lot of people. It’s jingoistic claptrap that can manifest itself in golf through unashamed ‘U-S-A, U-S-A’ bombast of the sort that memorably peaked in the 1999 ‘Battle of Brookline’.

The conservative political instincts of many of the American players mean they’re hardly likely to want to dilute such sentiment either. You can see why too since they know precisely what flag they’re playing for, not like those snotty opponents from ‘Yerp’ who might not want America to be great again.

That’s why Trump’s got to get his oar in at some stage. It’s made for him to pump for all it is worth.

And it will be more than enough to keep the Ryder Cup’s momentum going for another while yet because this is what makes sense of the whole thing for Europe’s golf followers. Articulating what they’re for is tricky but they know what they’re against. And that’s The Ugly American.

It’s why ‘The Donald’ might yet end up being Europe’s secret weapon –  You Da Man!