It’s Debatable: Laver Cup or Ryder Cup?

Aug. 30, 2019

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Hello and welcome to the latest episode of America’s new favorite show: It’s Debatable!

It’s the show where we take important, controversial topics and invite two experts to settle the argument once and for all.

This week, we’re discussing the most important issue facing America today: what is the best spectator sporting event in the world?

Our two experts are here, so let’s get started!

Narrator (N): Thanks for being here, everyone, and welcome to It’s Debatable! Americans spend 56 billion dollars attending sporting events. Why? Because sports allow us to see the best of us. It’s excellence personified. It raises our spirits and inspires our souls. And it has nothing at all to do with alcohol consumption! Here’s how the show works: I’ll start the experts on a topic and their arguments will follow. At the end, a verdict will be rendered. Ready to go?

Pro Laver Cup (LC): Ready.

Pro Ryder Cup (RY): I’m ready as old spaghetti.

N: Fine. Today’s topic is about the importance of sporting events. Specifically, what is the best sporting event in the world to watch:the Laver Cup or the Ryder Cup? Now our audience may not be totally familiar with either of these. Can you give us a quick background on your respective events?

LC: Sure. The Laver Cup is a team tennis event created a few years ago by the greatest athlete ever, Roger Federer. It pits six of the best European tennis players against six of the best players from the rest of the world and it’s held in various places around the world each year.

RY: The Ryder Cup is a biennial men’s golf competition between teams from Europe and the United States. It’s alternately held in United States and European locations.

LC: How factually and boringly put. Just like golf.

Run: Listen, bucko, the Ryder Cup is a prestigious event!

LC: Bucko?

N: Easy now. Let’s get into the arguments. First, why do you think Laver Cup is the best?

LC: Right off the bat, we can eliminate all of the big events as being the best. The Super Bowl? No way. Nobody pays attention at home due to all the house parties, and it’s quiet and corporate in person. The World Series? Are you kidding? Unless the Cubs or the Red Sox in 2004 are playing, who cares? NBA Finals? Impossible for a regular person to attend and mostly lopsided with too many commercials and time outs. Stanley Cup? Hockey?? The best events to watch or attend are individual sports. Normal people can afford to attend and it’s non-stop energy. It’s like a boxing match on steroids.

RY: You just made my point. The Ryder Cup is an individual sport, like you said, which makes the crowds intense. Ryder Cup crowds are the best.

LC: The best at what? Yelling out idiotic things like “mashed potatoes!” every time someone hits a shot?

RY: Our fans are passionate.

LC:  Passionate at trying to impress their Solo-cup-holding friends by saying something stupid on TV. And you don’t even get to see all the action. How do you watch the match on hole 4 while standing on the 8th fairway? At Laver Cup, every fan sees every shot all the time.

N: There is an argument for history, though. Hasn’t the Ryder Cup been around for a long time?

RY: Why, you hit that nail right on the head with that one, Mister! The Ryder Cup has been played since the 1920s. Our event has history!

LC: It’s true. The Laver Cup has only been around for three years. But it’s been a massive success. The pros can’t wait to play it, legends can’t wait to coach it, and fans buy up all the tickets for it immediately. It’s gotten so popular so fast that the ATP tour now offers ranking points for it. That’s unheard of!

RY: Well, at Ryder Cup, you get some positive peer approval if you do well.

LC: Inspiring.

N: Take us through the formats.

RY: At Ryder Cup, we have two days of four-ball and foursome matches followed by a day of singles matches. Winners are awarded 1 point and a tie is a half-point.

LC: Wait, a half-point? Really? You get the players and fans all jazzed up and then you can tie? Who came up with that? And who even knows the rules of four-ball or foursome matches? Why are they alternating shots? What’s going on? In Laver Cup, we play singles and doubles and every winner gets points. The points get higher as the competition progresses so the pressure and score changes get super intense as it progresses. It’s the perfect system with an understandable format.

N: Any final comments you’d like to add?

RY: We have a wonderful format. The crowds get to cheer…

LC: Mashed potatoes!

RY: …Ahem, the fans get to cheer and the competition is fierce even though, I grant you, it’s hard to keep track of the score with results happening miles away from each other. We’ve been doing it a long time and the fans and European players look forward to it.

LC: The Laver Cup is the most intense sporting event in the world. It’s the best in the world fighting harder–and getting more nervous–than they do any other time they’re on court. You won’t ever see Federer play doubles with Nadal your whole life…but you’ll see it a Laver Cup. You won’t ever see Federer play on the same team as Djokovic.. but you’ll see it at Laver Cup.

RY: Hmm, I never knew that.

LC: And you get three days of seeing the best players in the world act like over-stimulated teenagers.

RY: Oh…

LC: And where else on earth would you see multi-millionaire legends do things like this?

RY: I, um…

N: Well, it appears that our Ryder Cup expert just threw himself head-first down an open manhole cover. By virtue of that and the overwhelming points made by Pro Laver Cup, we can say that it’s no longer debatable:

The Laver Cup is the best sporting event in the world!

(The next one’s coming September 19, 2019 in Geneva, Switzerland at reasonable ticket prices.)

Thanks for joining us, everyone. This has been It’s Debatable, where every debate is a good one as long as the other person is wrong.

See you next time!

My book is called The Inevitability of Becoming Rich, and you can find that here.