In which sport is the Ryder Cup contested?

Golf, and it is a strange event in a sport otherwise entirely individual - a team match between the United States and Europe, played every two years, with no prize money at all. Players who earn millions on tour compete for nothing, and it is routinely the most emotional golf anyone plays.

It began in 1927 as Great Britain against the United States, and the Americans won so consistently that by the 1970s it was barely a contest. The fix, suggested by Jack Nicklaus among others, was to widen the British team to all of Europe from 1979 - which brought in Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer and transformed it into a genuine rivalry. It is one of the few cases where a sport deliberately reorganised itself to stop one side winning.

The format is why it feels different. Most of it is matchplay - hole by hole rather than total strokes - which means a disastrous hole costs you one point rather than the tournament, so players attack in a way they never would in a stroke event. The trophy is named after Samuel Ryder, a seed merchant from St Albans who made his money selling penny packets of seeds by post.