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With the Ryder Cup, pennant race baseball (including the last game at Yankee Stadium), Week 3 in the NFL and the Chase for the Cup on in NASCAR. Oh, and preseason hockey and basketball are right around the corner. There really isn’t much of a better time for sports.

The Ryder Cup certainly lived up to its billing this year. There was no blowout as in years past and the US played with emotion that it had lacked in years past. Boo Weekley, Anthony Kim, JB Holmes, Kenny Perry and the rest of the US team played with a passion and a fire that had been lacking from the US side. Boo goofed off, Kim got fired up and gave out more high fives, JB and Kenny made the crowd explode for their hometown boys and the US team sunk big putt after big putt.

Aside from the energy and passion that US played with, they also managed to play great golf. Each of the four guys I mentioned played extremely well on top of bringing an edge, all winning their singles matches on Sunday to help the US clich. Boo and Kim didn’t just win, they crushed their opponents: Oliver Wilson (who actually played pretty well) and Sergio Garcia (who looked awful) respectively.

All four of these guys were impressive and took their game to another level for the Cup, but the player who impressed me most with his play was Hunter Mahan. He was simply as cool as the other side of the pillow.His game might not have been as explosive as Anthony Kim or JB Holmes, but the guy can flat out play and he did. He was just very smooth and controlled. There weren’t very many bad shots from Mahan all weekend. He got pumped up like the rest of the guys, but the steadiness of his play was unrivaled. I was really impressed with him.

Mahan was the most impressive from a purely playing standpoint to me and I love Boo Weekley and everything he did this weekend to win the match and drive the Europeans, but my favorite golfer of the weekend was definitely Anthony Kim. It was close between Kim, Boo, Mahan and JB Holmes, but Kim wins because of how he obliterated Sergio on Sunday, got fired up throughout the week and generally played great golf, exciting golf. His game was electric all weekend, playing shots better than Johnny Miller (who was downright atrocious this weekend in the booth) could envision in the booth. But the thing that stood out most about Kim was his ability to drive Sergio up the wall. Firstly, he was playing better golf than Sergio, but he was also making Sergio putt everything out and questioning rulings and whether or not Sergio really needed to take a drop on one hole. Basically, he was everything that Sergio used to be in the Ryder Cup, but he was doing it to Sergio and you could just see how it was driving Sergio crazy. I loved that.

Azinger really did a great job putting this team together down to the last man and every single player earned his keep. The US has found plenty of Ryder Cup stars for years to come and I am already excited for the next Ryder Cup. What a great win.

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