Liguori: European Ryder Cup Player's Brother Tees-Off On American Fans

By Ann Liguori
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One way to try to make a name for yourself, particularly when you're the brother of the reigning Masters champion and you must be starving for some attention and recognition of your own, is to voice your distaste for American fans.

Pete Willett, the brother of European Ryder Cup team member Danny Willett, did just that and more in a recent newspaper article. And he did it just days before the biggest international team golf competition there is.

Pete Willett wrote a column for National Club Golfer, a British online publication, and in it he revealed his putrid thoughts on Americans.

A teacher by trade (imagine that?), Pete Willett called Americans "pudgy, basement-dwelling, irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer ..."

But wait, there's more ... lots more:

"Team USA have only won five of the last 16 Ryder Cups. Four of those five victories have come on home soil. For the Americans to stand a chance of winning, they need their baying mob of imbeciles to caress their egos every step of the way. Like one of those brainless bastards from your childhood, the one that pulled down your shorts during the school's Christmas assembly (f**k you, Paul Jennings), they only have the courage to keg you if they're backed up by a giggling group of reprobates. Team Europe needs to shut those groupies up.

"They need to silence the pudgy, basement-dwelling, irritants, stuffed on cookie dough and pissy beer, pausing between mouthfuls of hot dog so they can scream 'Baba booey' until their jelly faces turn red."

He then outlined in detail what Team Europe needs to do during this week's event at Hazeltine National Golf Club in Chaska, Minnesota.

"They need to stun the angry, unwashed, Make America Great Again swarm, desperately gripping their concealed-carry compensators and belting out a mini-erection inducing 'mashed potato,' hoping to impress their cousin.

"They need to smash the obnoxious dads, with their shiny teeth, Lego man hair, medicated ex-wives, and resentful children. Squeezed into their cargo shorts and boating shoes, they'll bellow 'get in the hole' whilst high-fiving all the other members of the Dentists' Big Game Hunt Society."

Upon hearing about Pete Willett's comments, European Ryder Cup Captain Darren Clarke said he spoke to Danny Willett and revealed that the English star is "bitterly disappointed in his brother's article. It is not what Danny thinks. It is not what I think. It is not what Team Europe stands for."

"I was obviously very disappointed in it, as well, because that's an outside person expressing their opinion, which is not representative of what our thoughts are," Clarke added.

When Danny Willett was asked about it on The Golf Channel, he said he'd "like to apologize, obviously, to everyone involved for what's been said. It's obviously not the thoughts of myself and of the team and of Captain Darren. I spoke to him (Peter) on the phone after I was made aware of what was said and what has been going on. And I said to Peter that, you know, I was obviously disappointed in what was said and what was written about the Amerian fans that obviously took me under their wing fantastically back in April."

The news of Pete Willett's rant comes just days after U.S. Ryder Cup Captain Davis Love III tried to explain his comments on how he views this year's American team as "the best golf team maybe ever assembled."

As for Pete Willett's comments, questions remain: Is that how Brits really view Americans? Was he trying to make a name for himself? Or both? Either way, the verbal sparring continues and the only revenge for the insults would be for Team USA to take back the Cup. It's long overdue. As Willet pointed out, the Americans have only won five of the last 16 Ryder Cups, including a 16 1/2-11 1/2 loss in 2014 in Scotland.

The time is now.

Follow Ann on Twitter at @AnnLiguori