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The U.S. team walks the course at Gleneagles head of the 2014 Ryder Cup in Auchterarder, Scotland.Jamie Squire/Getty Images

The 2014 edition of the biennial golfing slugfest known as the Ryder Cup came close to being a celebration of Scottish nationalism. If last week's referendum had gone to the Yes side, there is no doubt that an independent Scotland's promoter-in-chief, Alex Salmond, would have hijacked the entire event. How could he have resisted using one of the world's biggest sporting events – the TV audience is estimated at 600 million – to celebrate Scotland's coming-out party?

"Even though I voted Yes in the referendum, and we lost, I would have been disappointed if we did vote Yes and Salmond had treated the Ryder as a nationalistic event," says Jack Welch, 50, a golfing fan and renewable-energy executive who was touring the Ryder course on Wednesday with his daughter, Audrey.

Welch may have spoken too soon for the Ryder Cup is indeed a political event, like all international sporting events, from World Cup soccer to the Olympics. But the Ryder Cup occupies a special spot on sport's political spectrum, for it is really the only sporting event of any size that is genuinely European. The bureaucratic gnomes in Brussels have yet to concoct a Europe-only soccer or hockey team.

At Gleneagles, you don't see Union Jacks or Scottish flags; you see the simple blue and gold flags of the European Union. "Seeing the EU flag here is heartening," says Alexander Walford, a European Commission communications officer who is manning the EC booth at the Ryder Cup's spectator centre. "We're not a big presence here, but we should be all over this event."

Indeed, Gleneagles is a celebration of European unity at a time when Europe seems to be coming apart at the seams. The Scottish referendum saw 1.6 million Scots – 45 per cent of the voters – opt for independence. In November, the Catalans will hold their referendum on independence from Spain (unlike the Scottish vote, it will not be binding). In the European Union elections in May, the French vote was won by Marine Le Pen's Front National, which doesn't much like immigrants and loathes the EU – she would yank France out if she wins the next presidential election and the polls says she could.

In Britain, the ultranationalistic, Europe-hating UK Independence Party, led by Nigel Farage, also placed first in the EU election. Farage, who is a golf nut, would happily strip Gleneagles of every EU flag.

"This isn't an EU event," he thundered on Channel 4 news in 2010, when the Europeans beat Team America at Celtic Manor in Wales. "What on Earth has it got to do with the European Union? I love the Ryder Cup, but my support is for the continent of Europe."

The Ryder Cup wasn't always about European unity, or even Europe.

The transatlantic golfing competition came to life in 1927, when an Englishman who had made his fortune from selling packets of "penny" seeds, Samuel Ryder, made good on his dream of staging a competition between teams of American and British golfers (the first Ryder Cup was easily won by the Americans at the Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts).

Later, the Irish were invited to join the Brits, but the event did not feature a "European" team until 1979.

That was when the desperate Brits invited players from the whole continent to join them. They were desperate because the Americans had utterly dominated the event and fans and TV viewers were growing weary of perennially one-sided competitions. Since then the Europeans have done remarkably well, taking 10 cups. A win at Gleneagles would mark their third successive win.

This year's 12-man European squad includes three Englishmen, a Welshman, two Northern Irishmen, a Dane, a Spaniard, a German, a Scot, a Frenchman and a Swede. Every fan I talked to on a warm, sunny Wednesday morning at Gleneagles, with the lush Ochil Hills clearly visible in the distance (fog and rain often obscures them), said they were cheering for Team Europe, not the individual players and the countries they came from.

They don't feel betrayed by the fact that many, perhaps most, of the European players have traded European addresses for American ones. Rory McIlroy, the Ulsterman who is the world's top-ranked player, lives in a 15,000-square-foot mansion in Jupiter, Fla. But at Gleneagles, they are all Europeans.

"There is no other event that gets Europe together like this," says Phil Pattinson, 36, an Englishman who works as a horse exporter and who is volunteering at the Ryder Cup.

To be sure, the European winning streak and the stunning upset at Medinah in 2012, when the Americans blew a commanding lead on the third and final day, is boosting the sense of European unity. Beating America just because it is America – that is, the undisputed world power – gives some Europeans a sense of geopolitical pride disguised as sporting pride.

"There was a time when Americans never lost," says Robert McCleneghen, 24, of Glasgow, a golf management student. "But since we Europeans have been wining, it is the Americans who are the underdogs, not us, and that's a nice feeling."

In spite of the Europe-first nature of the Ryder Cup's European team, there is one player that the Scots will be rooting for as a Scot, not a European, though you would be hard-pressed to find a Scot who would admit so. That would be Stephen Gallacher, the lone Scotsman on the team. If you figure that at least half of the 55,000 paying fans Gleneagles are Scottish, and half of those half voted Yes to independence, you've got close to 15,000 separatists on site who might consider a European win a Scottish win, assuming Gallacher wins a point or two.

But Gallacher himself isn't playing the Scottish card, to the point he refused to say which way he voted in the referendum. At a media conference Wednesday, I asked him if he feels more Scottish than European on the Ryder Cup team. Absolutely not, he insisted: "There's no individuals at all this week. It's 12 guys and a continent versus a continent … We bond as one."

Europe is heavily favoured to take the Ryder Cup. If that happens, a lot of pro-Europe politicians, a dwindling bunch on the continent, are going to be totally thrilled.

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