No sooner are the Americans here than the same old people start saying the same old things. The United States team to play the Internationals in the third edition of the President's Cup, this year at Royal Melbourne, had hardly got the grass of the marvellous composite course under their spikes before they started mouthing the hypocritical platitudes that have become commonplace of late.

The Americans are keen to assure everyone that the President's Cup will not be like that Ryder Cup thing - you know, the one that's over the top, the one where the result is not life and death but more important than that. No, this will be a match played civilly and graciously, with loads of after-you-Claude.

Tiger Woods and Mark O'Meara, these days joined at the hip in their opinions on matters, have repeated their nonsensical outpourings about how the Ryder Cup is so intense and so important that you cannot actually enjoy yourself and go into town at night and have a decent hamburger.

Woods said yesterday: "This is not a war, it is not a battle, it is a friendly match. The Ryder Cup is treated by the media as though it's life and death, and it's not. This," he went on, "is my first President's Cup and already I can tell the atmosphere's a little different from the Ryder Cup, which is really nice."

"The Internationals," American captain Jack Nicklaus said, "would like to win this very much and our boys would like to win very much but the important part of this thing to me is that the game of golf wins."

This is puerility of the highest order. There should not be a single player on either team at Royal Melbourne trying merely to foster "the game of golf."

What the Americans seem to want is the "no body-bags" syndrome, a match-play situation where losing does not hurt. It has yet to be invented, and never can be. They may well win this match because they have, in world-ranking terms, a far superior team. But, should they lose, one can only hope that they do not then start bleating about how everyone is taking this cup thing far too seriously and how, after all, golf is only a game.