The Ryder Cup As Metaphor In America and Academic Medicine
By
Leonard Zwelling
The Ryder Cup is a golf competition between European and American professional players. It takes place every two years and alternates between a European and an American site. Usually, the home team is felt to have an advantage. Thus, when the Europeans win here it’s an upset and when the Americans win there, the same.
This year the competition was held on the famous Bethpage Black Course on Long Island, in New York. It is a course I actually played once many years ago. It is close to where I was raised. It was exceedingly difficult then and more so now that it has been made more challenging as it hosted a number of major tournaments. Obviously, the Americans had hoped to return the Ryder Cup to our shores this year after it has spent two years in European hands.
The unusual thing about the Ryder Cup is that all the matches are in what is called match format. Each hole is its own match. Total score does not matter. It’s who wins the most holes. If you win a hole by one stroke or ten, it still counts as only one point. To add more complexity to the games, the first two days consist of sixteen two-man team matches in different formats including alternate shot. Team golf, is very different than what these professionals are used to playing. They are used to playing only for themselves and where every shot counts. That’s not Ryder Cup golf. Ryder Cup golf involves team strategy. The captains have to choose the pairings carefully so that the two individuals on any team mesh in personality and temperament.
This year the Europeans crushed the Americans on the first two days of competition. They know how to play team golf. On the final day, which consists of twelve individual one-on-one matches, the United States almost caught up, but came up just short. I’ll not go into the details. They are not the point.
The point is that these Americans, among the best in the world at what they do, cannot work together very well. Let them loose on their own and they do great. And remember we invented baseball, football, and basketball—all team sports.
My argument for years has been that this is the problem with academics in medicine. They do amazing things on their own in the laboratory and in clinical research, but put them on a team where they are not the captain and they perform less well. Even more telling, in the current climate of money above all else in academia and with the ability for the faculty to participate in shared institutional governance having been largely eliminated, the faculty can only overcome this situation with a team effort of true resistance to authority. But they can no more act as a team than can the American professional golfers, so the faculty lose.
Now let’s shift to the country as a whole. There are some real winners in our country, none larger than the current President of the United States. But rather than gather the country together when a team effort is most needed in a highly competitive world, Mr. Trump is dividing us, picking winners and losers, and pursuing those he considers enemies with law suits from the Justice Department which is supposed to be independent of the White House.
I fear that both the academic faculty and the people of the United States are suffering from poor leadership and an inability to play as a team, just like the USA Ryder Cup team.
The need for teamwork has never been more vital, yet it has never been less a part of the lives of academic medical faculty members or of average Americans.
There is still no I in team. Dr. House said there’s a me in there somewhere. Perhaps, but the faculty of academic medical centers and the people of the United States can still be brought into highly functional teams. Both America and American academic medicine just need to find leaders. Alas, there are few on the horizon. And, for the record, Tiger Woods’ Ryder Cup Record is 13-21-3 (ties). He was no team player either.
