The Ryder Cup finally tees off this week in Wales, putting to a stop the endless discussion regarding the selection of the European and American teams, the organisation of the golf course and, of course, who is going to win.

Neither captain, Corey Pavin for the United States and Colin Montgomerie for Europe, has said anything too interesting in the lead-up days and the only remote controversy came several weeks ago after Tiger Woods shot 18 over par at a no-cut World Golf Championship event.

Rory McIlroy, the precociously talented kid from Northern Ireland, said he would be especially keen to play Woods in the final-day singles matches.

The insinuation was that in that sort of form, he was very beatable, but Tiger detests slights from other players and if they did happen to meet, it would be a fair bet that Woods, no matter his form, would grind out a win.

The first two days are made up of four series of matches. Both days include foursomes (alternate shot) and fourball (best-ball) matches and the trick is to find the two-man teams that gel best. If the captain can match the perfect pairs he is hailed as a genius; if he doesn't, he is a complete clunker.

At Oakland Hills in 2006, Hal Sutton paired Woods with Mickelson and one would have thought that was the dream team. But they were useless together.

Sutton soon gave up on pairing the two biggest rivals in the game.

Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus seemingly had a similarly distant relationship to Woods and Mickelson but they had a much better record in team events when they paired together.

The Europeans are the favourites, in no small way because they are playing at home, but the oddity of modern golf design in Britain is that new courses such as Celtic Manor are more American than most American courses.

They have been designed mostly by Americans, who tend to do exactly what they do at home, making little effort to build something more ‘British'. The two notable exceptions are Kingsbarns near St Andrews and a brand new course near Inverness, Castle Stuart.

The courses tend to be softer because it rains more and the mowing patterns that dictate how wide the fairways are and how thick the rough will be are exactly as they would be in America.

Fortunately there are few courses in Australia that follow the same boring formulaic structures and neither do the old, traditional courses in Britain, but it would be a mistake to assume the European Tour plays many old-style, traditional-looking golf courses.

The world of golf has changed completely since the days of almost utter American domination. Thirty years ago it would have been inconceivable that three of the major champions of 2010 would come from places like Northern Ireland (McDowell), South Africa (Oosthuizen) and Germany (Kaymer).

The days of American intimidation and the matches being over before they started are long gone.

Europe plays without two of their best players, Justin Rose and Paul Casey, because of the oddity of the selection system that meant both failed to accumulate the necessary points as a result of spending more playing time in America.

It will be a sore point if the Europeans lose but Casey is not the most popular man in the team room and one can assume that when Colin Montgomerie made his three captain's picks, this counted against him. He is playing some terrific golf now and the European team would be a stronger one for his inclusion.

The first matches tee of on Friday night Australian time and after a year and a half of incessant speculation, we finally get to watch it all unfold.

If McIlroy plays Woods on Sunday, it will be one of the more interesting matches of the season.