REDS PLAYING FROM THE BLUES:

America’s Republican guard: why so many US golfers align themselves to right-wing politics and born-again Christianity (Bruce Selcraig, 9/15/06, Irish Times)

[T]here’s still one significant cultural divide that, while hardly apparent to the casual golf fan, has now become so sensitive an issue most players simply avoid addressing it when they’re on the other’s turf. Simply put, many Europeans and other international players are put off by the overwhelming number of American PGA Tour players who identify themselves as George Bush-loving Republicans who support the US occupation of Iraq.

"Every movie you see, every book you read is like, ‘America, we’re the best country in the world,’" German Alex Cejka told me in May at the Byron Nelson tournament in Fort Worth, Texas. "When I hear this (from players) I could throw up. Sure it’s a great country . . . but you cannot say ‘we have the most powerful president in the world, the biggest country in the world’ . . . It’s sad that they are influenced by so much bullshit."

The affable and well-read Australian Geoff Ogilvy, who won the US Open and has lived in Arizona with his Texas wife for four years, says: "A lot of their conservative views (on tour) are way off the map . . . I think George Bush is a bit dangerous. I think the world is scared while he’s in office, (but) there’s less tolerance of diversity (in opinions) over here (and) people have more blind faith in their government."

Various Europeans have hinted that they have similar views, but say privately they’ll be crucified in American locker-rooms and newspapers if they publicly oppose Bush, his fundamentalist Christian agenda or the Iraq war. [...]

And sure enough, when told of the above comments by European golfers, American tour player Olin Browne, a 14-year veteran, responded thus: "The players who like to criticise America sure do like to come over here and play in our events." [...]

[T]here is definitely a sizeable and often vocal element among the Americans that follows politics, advocates right-wing Republican policies – tax cuts for the rich, corporate welfare, pro-death penalty, anti-gay marriage, anti-labour unions – and increasingly, identifies with evangelical Christian ideology.

In a Sports Illustrated survey of 76 US Tour players published in March, 88 per cent said they supported the American invasion of Iraq, and 91 per cent supported Bush’s controversial nomination of Samuel Alito to the US Supreme Court – a judge who was welcomed by Republican and fundamentalist Christian groups as the court’s swing vote in one day outlawing abortion.

This Republican tilt on tour has been documented since at least the Ronald Reagan administration and is so widely accepted as fact that in the presidential election year of 1996, Golf Digest asked me to do a story on tour politics and specifically hunt for any golfer who would actually admit to supporting Clinton, a Democrat. (In 1993, some Republicans on the American Ryder Cup team threatened to boycott a visit to the White House to protest a Clinton tax plan that raised taxes on the rich.) My search turned up only one heretic – the former US Open winner Scott Simpson – a free spirit and "born-again Christian" who has now reversed his thinking and supports Bush.

For those unfamiliar with American politics, the Republican party has become inextricably tied to the evangelical Christian movement, which can mobilise millions of votes through its churches to affect local, state and national elections. George Bush, who campaigned for office as a born-again Christian, is the icon of the evangelical movement and once famously told a group of Amish farmers: "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job." [...]

David Feherty, the former Europe Ryder Cup member from Northern Ireland who is now a popular TV golf commentator in America, believes the very public display of fire-and-brimstone Christianity is still unsettling to most Europeans.

"I think a lot of Europeans find that conservative Christian thing as frightening as conservative Muslims," he says. "If you find any European pros who are in that Bible-thumping category, it’s usually because they’ve been to the United States."

Again, the Pew Research Center studies shed some light. Their 2002 survey of 38,000 people in 44 nations found that more people in the US (59 per cent) said religion was "very important" to them than in any other developed country – vastly more than even heavily Catholic Italy (27 per cent) or Poland (36 per cent).