In September 2012, my dad told me that, for the next three days, only golf would be on our television at home. I felt rather aggrieved: I had always thought golf was boring, slow, and repetitive and I simply could not see how 24 men from either Europe or the USA swinging a 'stick' about to try and put a ball in an arbitrarily placed hole to win the Ryder Cup could possibly be considered a good spectator sport.

That was before I started watching, though. As I watched the intensity of the crowds' emotions and the real passion and skill of the players, I began to regret ever having doubted golf’s greatest event. After all, I had watched the 2012 Ryder Cup: the famous ‘Miracle at Medinah’ where Team Europe performed one of the greatest ever comebacks in sporting history, and the event sucked me into a golfing world that I had unforgivably scorned for so long.

Golf as a singles sport requires great skill, but this is intensified during the Ryder Cup. Over three days, players from Europe take on players from the USA in a variety of formats with the aim to reach that magical score of 14 and a half points to lift the trophy. Golfing – indeed, perhaps sporting – passion is arguably never more evident than when a player is putting to win his team a valuable point.

As the famous Jack Nicklaus said of the Ryder Cup in 1973: "If (golf) has one drawback, it is its individuality, its self-concernedness – its selfishness, to be blunt about the matter. Playing for a team, and particularly for country in someone else's country, really brings a group of players together".

And The Charleston News has gone further: "The teams are playing for their countries, their families, their teammates, Uncle Sam, The Queen, Mom and dad, the Fatherland and the legends of the leprechaun, all rolled into three days of golf."

The winning team receives no prize money, but there seems to be more passion about this event than any of the sport's lucrative championships. At the Ryder Cup, there is singing, and chanting as thousands of spectators heckle, cheer and jeer in elation and despair.

While watching Europe’s dramatic comeback in 2012 led me to watch and play golf more often, I have always considered golf to be a team sport, not an individual one. It is an easy misconception to think that in the Ryder Cup you have 12 players working on their own to get points for the team, but that is simply not true. 

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In the foursomes, the players share a ball and in the fourballs, there is so much that team strategy can offer, as was evident a few weeks ago at the most recent Ryder Cup. One player hits a ball safely into the middle of the green so his partner can attack. A player takes his longer putt first to try and decrease the difficulty of his partner’s attempt. 

Over the years, it has produced some of the greatest ever sporting partnerships. For example, the Spanish pairing of Seve Ballesteros and José María Olazábal won 11, halved two and lost only two of their matches together, picking up a number of trophies along the way.

It is easily forgotten, too, that the pressure of the Ryder Cup is immense. As Matt Kuchar, a US Ryder Cup player, describes: "I had heard stories of the guys when we were starting off in alternate-shot, and had their plan of guys taking odds and even holes, and the guy that was set to play the first drive on the first hole said: 'Too nervous, too nervous, I can't do it,' and so they switched the format." Indeed, the focus on the players is such that great Ryder Cup victories are often twinned with great meltdowns, particularly when a team is competing in front of a heckling, sometimes abusive, crowd.

It follows that an event of such high pressure and intensity brings in huge viewing figures. Allegedly, the competition is the third most watched in sport, and thousands upon thousands of spectators turn up on the course, jostling for the best viewing position. The rivalry between the two teams is also one of the most bitter: as early as 1939 The Times was printing anti-American snipes as brutal as "the modern American professional has no character and no crowd appeal. He just goes on and on playing what a famous cricketer called 'the business shot'."  

There are complaints about overenthusiastic crowds – Rory McIlroy even requested this year that a spectator be removed for heckling – but above all else, in spite of the pressure and desire of each of the players, there is great sportsmanship. In 2012, Tiger Woods conceded a putt to Francesco Molinari to allow Europe the half-point that would ensure they won outright. And in 1969, Jack Nicklaus famously conceded a very missable putt with the knowledge that the tournament would end in a draw.

So it comes as no surprise that, for the vast majority of golfers, their greatest desire in the game would always be to win the Ryder Cup. There is, after all, something about playing in a team and playing for your country (or continent) that brings out the most passion and the best ability. 

The Ryder Cup is not simply the pinnacle of golf – it is golf.