By Cathal Dervan

TO Ireland it’s the Ryder Cup, to the world it’s an invitation to join the biggest and the best sporting party that a sports mad nation has ever hosted.

Not since the wonderful spectacle and the tremendous success that was the Special Olympics in 2003 has the country hosted an event of this magnitude.

For a week this September the island of Ireland will rock to a Ryder Cup beat, and the reverberations will be heard around the globe.

The event itself will take place at the K Club in Straffan, Co. Kildare, from September 22-24, on a course molded by the American legend Arnold Palmer.

It is widely acknowledged as one of the great one’s finest pieces of work, an American-style stadium course that will test the best golfers the world can offer on Irish soil.

But the 2006 Ryder Cup is about so much more than a test of golf between a European team looking for a hat-trick of wins, and an American side searching for atonement.

It is about so much more than a battle of wits between U.S. captain Tom Lehmann and Europe’s leader, the Welsh wizard Ian Woosnam.

It is about more even than the sight of Harrington, McGinley and Clarke doing battle with Woods, Mickelson and Furyk up the Straffan stretch.

This Ryder Cup is about Ireland and the Irish. It is about the opportunity for the nation to host the third biggest sporting event on the planet.

It is about selling Ireland and Irish golf to the world courtesy of an event behind only the World Cup and the Olympics in terms of a global television audience.

“After eight years of preparation, excitement is building to fever pitch throughout the country as the countdown progresses towards this most prestigious of world famous matches,” said Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism John O’Donoghue.

“An entire nation looks forward to a feast of golf and to another great Ryder Cup. We in Ireland have taken the game of golf to our hearts with more than 400 registered clubs and an estimated 250,000 players.

“Many young players are also taking up the game, auguring well for the future of the game in Ireland. That growth will increase with the Ryder Cup.

“Hosting Ryder Cup 2006 presents us with a golden opportunity to showcase out golfing facilities to a worldwide audience. We are proud of our involvement in Ryder Cup matches which stretches back to 1949, and we look forward to this one with great anticipation.”

The decision to award the Ryder Cup to Ireland came after years of investment from the government and from an Irish golf industry that has waited many lifetimes for the honor.

The history of golf’s greatest event is scattered with an Irish influence, from Fred Daly, Harry Bradshaw and the great Christy O’Connor Senior, through Christy Junior, Des Smyth, Eamonn D’Arcy and Philip Walton, to modern day heroes Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke.

“It is natural for Ireland to host the Ryder Cup just as it is natural for golf’s greatest event to find a home in Ireland at last,” said the European Tour’s Ryder Cup Director Richard Hills.

“The Ryder Cup at the K Club is the highlight of the ongoing close relationship between Ireland and the European Tour, and we all look forward to it with great anticipation.”

The current generation of Irish golfers, the golden generation if you like, have already earned their places in Ryder Cup folklore, but to enhance those reputations on home soil would mean so much to the likes of Harrington, Clarke and McGinley.

“On our island, with the Atlantic Ocean sweeping all the way up the Western Seaboard, there is a diversity of choice and good value that makes Ireland a golfer’s paradise,” said Harrington, a Ryder Cup debutant in 1999 and a member of the winning teams at The Belfry and Oakland Hills.

“This Ryder Cup is an opportunity for Irish golf to showcase itself to the world, but it is also an opportunity for the best Irish golfers to be part of the European team on home soil. I can only imagine what that will feel like, and I want to be a part of it.”

The event is still three months away, but a Ryder Cup rhythm is already racing through McGinley’s veins as he battles against a knee injury in a bid to make the team for a third successive appearance.

“The drive to be part of the team for the K Club is huge,” confessed McGinley. “I am a passionate Irishman and I want to be there. I keep telling people who haven’t been to a Ryder Cup just how big this event is. It is massive, almost as big as the World Cup or the Olympics, and it is coming to Co. Kildare this year.

“I am so proud of the fact that Ireland is hosting this event. I think we are going to be great hosts and I want to be part of the party. I don’t want to be sitting in the Allianz box and doing corporate stuff, that’s the last place I want to be.

“I want to be part of the team. If I’m not I’ll be in the Allianz box, but the one place I do really want to be is out there, on the pitch to use a football term. That’s what we live for.”

The chase for Ryder Cup points is now alive and kicking, a fact not lost on those looking to bring it all home this September.

“Of course there is real pressure on all the Irish players now but the pressure has always been there,” added McGinley.

“We have all got to play better. I know I have to when I get back. It will be a huge disappointment for everyone if there’s no Irishman on the team in Ireland, but we will cross that bridge when we come to it.

“I don’t think it is going to happen. I really do believe that we will have plenty of Irish guys in there but I also know that I, and the rest of the guys, have to play my way in. That’s the bottom line.”

McGinley is one of three Irishmen with current Ryder Cup history, a stalwart of the European teams that won for Sam Torrance and Bernhard Langer at The Belfry and Oakland Hills respectively.

But he is adamant that Ireland’s glorious Ryder Cup history is the real reason the most watched sports event on the planet outside of the Olympics and the World Cup is coming to these shores.

“People talk about the Ryder Cup coming to Ireland because Darren, Padraig and myself played on the last two teams, but we are not the reason the Ryder Cup is coming,” insisted McGinley.

“It is because of guys like Christy O’Connor Senior, Harry Bradshaw, Eamonn Darcy, Fred Daly, Christy Junior. They’re the guys who instigated it and created the history that makes Ireland deserving hosts of the Ryder Cup. Have no doubts about it, as a golfing nation we fully deserve to have it.

“It is not something we got because we have the Celtic Tiger roaring or because we have people with big influence. It’s not, it’s because we fully deserve to have it and that’s what’s really pleasing.

“The K Club as a venue will put on a fantastic show. There is a lot of pride involved and everyone concerned will do Ireland proud. I know they will.”