When players could lose with a smile without having to grit their teeth

It comes to something, tells us something about the time in which we live, when people are moved to praise professional golfers for being gracious in victory and dignified in defeat, behaviour that would have gone unremarked 10 or 20 years ago.

I have gone into this not without accounting for the Ryder Cup at Brookline in 1999, where the ugly patriotism of the United States team and its supporters was an example of how the self-propelling pace of sport can carry you beyond its declared aim.

However, if the conduct (inside and outside the ropes) at the Ryder Cup last week went a long way to erasing unpleasant memories of the previous encounter, the attention since given to it suggests that no decent ethic has evolved to ensure that sport remains synonymous with what we used to call sportsmanship.

During the run up to last week's exciting match at The Belfry, so much was made of the responsibility borne by both captains that you could imagine Sam Torrance and Curtis Strange getting their men together and saying: "Right guys, we want to win, but win or lose let's do it with a handshake and a smile. The game is on the line here."

On the final day, I had the privilege of following a terrific singles match between Sergio Garcia and the most under-estimated member of the United States team, David Toms. Like all great sporting contests it had the merit of fluctuation until Garcia conceded on the 18th fairway. By the time Garcia got himself together after this disappointment, Toms was some 200 yards up ahead, retrieving his ball from the centre of the green. The American looked back and raised an arm in a salute to which the Spaniard responded. It was one of those moments in sport that make you tingle.

The late Jim Murray wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times asking: "Whatever Happened to Frank Merriwell?" Merriwell was once the fictional hero of all American boys, much as Wilson and The Cannonball Kid were comic book heroes of my generation. Referring to Murray's column in one of his broadcasts, Alistair Cooke said: "Today, he [Merriwell] would provoke salvoes of raucous laughter as a square and a cissy. Because, to use the quaint old phrases, he played fair, he gave his all, and lost with a smile."

Each of us brings our own sensibility and neuroses to sport, enabling us to find whatever we want there, from fun and games to hero and scapegoat and even to catharsis and the fount of essential, infinite wisdom. Knowing fully what is going on out there is unimportant. Seeing and feeling is important.

Much of what I see and feel today is an insult to past generations of great performers. Footballers faking a foul when they are tackled and trying to get an opponent sent off, batsmen refusing to walk, the shamefully approved practice of bad mouthing in cricket.

So what is it about modern sport that turns people away from values that were once held sacrosanct? Once, when playing for Juventus in a fiercely contested derby against Torino, the marvellous John Charles kicked the ball out of play because he had accidentally injured an opponent. The Rev David Shepherd writes in his autobiography of lessons in etiquette learned from seasoned professionals. Today, footballers are encouraged to seek every possible advantage. Cricketers can no longer be relied on to disclaim catches.

The majority of sports players are now so occupied by their piece of the action and so preoccupied with themselves and their contracts that they really have no conception of the ethos upon which sport was founded. The notion that sports-type character equals citizen-type character is Orwellian. Anything goes.

This has brought up in the minds of some people the question of where sport is going and what it will look and sound like in the future. The testy questions of right and wrong are transcended, in the experience of sport, by the substance of what we see and hear and read.

By any sporting standards, the Ryder Cup was exhilarating. The behaviour of the players and the audience was perfect. The obligation should have been automatic.