THE Americans, you could be forgiven for contemplating, have had just about enough of Samuel Ryder and his biennial competition. A nation which doesn’t voluntarily back losers is still coming to terms with a third successive Ryder Cup defeat and the fifth in six runnings.

The psychological effect was there for all to see at the K Club. From the opening cer emony onwards, the Europeans were confident, relaxed and looking, above all, as if they were enjoying themselves. By contrast, and despite their year-round exposure to sunshine on the PGA Tour, the Americans had the pallid demeanour of prisoners facing death row.

Like a relegated football team, the Americans have forgotten how to win. It is incredible, given their almost total domination of the first 60 years of the Ryder Cup, that only three men who have exper ienced the pleasure of playing on a winning side are likely to be in the 2008 team – Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk. If the tide is to be turned, it will have to be done by a new generation.

The lack of success also begs the question: how long will the American public tolerate the present state of affairs? If their side slump to another nine-point defeat at Valhalla, how many will care about the outcome when the 2010 match is played at Celtic Manor? Even Europeans might start to lose interest if the match continues in its present pattern – when the positions were reversed, the Ryder Cup was about as popular with the public as a winter midweek football match at Station Park, Forfar.

As the recriminations continue in America, I spoke to three of the young players who could expect to be in the 2008 team. Lucas Glover just missed out on selection this year, while Arron Oberholser and Sean O’Hair are PGA Tour winners whose careers are on the ascendancy. All three are playing in the American Express Championship at The Grove, open to the top 50 players in the world rankings, and all expressed a burning desire to extract revenge on the Europeans two years down the line.

Two of the three, though, expressed concern that the PGA of America are using a flawed system to select the side. We in Europe, and especially Britain, regard ourselves as masters of the cock-up, but across the Atlantic it seems they are not slow to learn.

Illogically, the PGA Tour, who supply all the players, have no input into the selection process. Instead, a weird and less-than-wonderful system has been devised by the PGA. Did you know, for example, that the selection race for 2008 has already started and that third place is occupied by one Eric Axley?

The European Tour won’t even start their process until next September, and have refined it to virtually ensure that the best 10 players in the 12 months leading up to Valhalla will qualify automat ically. They do things differently in America, where only those finishing in the top 10 in PGA Tour events earn Ryder Cup points and the winner of a no-mark tournament will outscore a player who finishes second in a Major.

It’s a system which asked for, and got, a Brett Wetterich.

“I really think we have to look at it again,” said Oberholser, who this year won the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and a $972,000 cheque. “We don’t like to be beaten, whether it’s by half a point or nine points, and something needs to change. One of the biggest things is that the PGA of America need to do a better job with the selection process.

“They’re not going to care what my ideas are, because I’m only a fourth-season player, but I like the way the Europeans do it – they seem to get a very well-balanced team by selecting off the money list and the world rankings. I don’t understand why we don’t do it too.”

Oberholser also believes that his fellow Americans are too tightly strung at the Ryder Cup.

“My observations from watching the last two matches is that we might just be trying too hard,” he said. “Sergio [Garcia] is laughing over every shot but there isn’t one player on our side who looks like he’s having a good time.

“The media in America were very critical, both before and after the match, so perhaps that’s a factor. Also, sometimes I think we take ourselves too seriously and the game too seriously. Maybe if we lighten up we’d have a better chance of winning.”

That and holing more putts – the one factor that Oberholser, Glover and O’Hair agreed on as the principal downfall of the Americans in the last two matches.

“The Europeans make the putts and that’s the key,” said O’Hair, a 26-year-old who won last year’s John Deere Classic. “We hit the ball just as well, or maybe better, at the K Club but the Europeans were dropping bombs from all over the place.”

Asked if his peers on the PGA Tour might now regard it as a poisoned chalice to be selected for the Ryder Cup, O’Hair was emphatic that the opposite was the case. “I’m getting tired of you guys winning the damn thing and I want to change that,” he said.

“The young guys on the PGA Tour would love to play in it – short of winning a Major it’s the best there is in golf. And don’t forget what made the Ryder Cup such a big deal for the Europeans was that you were once in the position we’re in now.”

Glover, who is also 26 and a PGA Tour winner, said: “It’s my favourite sporting event. As a kid growing up I watched it on television avidly. I care about it deeply, or I wouldn’t have tried so hard to make the side this year.”

But do the American public still share his passion? “I’m on the inside looking out, but you would hope people would rally round more and try to produce a good result,” Glover said. “It’s hard to tell.”

Oberholser believes the core fans will stick with the Ryder Cup, while conceding the less committed could take their custom elsewhere.

Valhalla is shaping up as a watershed contest in the 79 year history of Sam Ryder’s vision – but the next gener ation of Americans is at least up for the challenge.