Team Europe greater than sum of its parts

Throw together some Englishmen with a Frenchman, a German and a Spaniard and you have what sounds like the start of a joke.

Now toss in a Dane, a Swede, a Welshman, a Scot and a couple of Irishmen for what, over history, has been a recipe for countless misunderstandings and rivalries, and more than a few wars.

Yet at the Ryder Cup - perhaps only at the Ryder Cup - this potent stew of nationalities, cultures, languages and histories gels fantastically to put real flesh and bones on an idea that otherwise can be a hard sell: a united Europe.