Less than a week after Brandt Snedeker picked up an eye watering $11.5 million check as he claimed the FedEx Cup, the best golfers from the United States and Europe will go head to head with not a dime on the line and with nothing to play for but pride itself.
The 39th Ryder Cup matches at Medinah Country Club in Chicago will be watched by packed and partisan galleries and a huge global television audience, but for the 12 players on each team overall victory in the biennial team event is all that matters.
They are playing for expenses only and whenever the issue of financial rewards is raised, it is quickly ruled out.
"No prize money is involved, just a lot of pride," three-time European captain Bernard Gallacher told CNN.
"And the matches are very, very competitive."
The American team will have the Stars and Stripes running through their veins and it's a chance for the Europeans to combine under a united flag.
"It's the only competition we have with the United States outside the occasional football match and it's the same for them given that their main sports are baseball, gridiron and ice-hockey," said Bill Elliott, Chair of the Association of Golf Writers.
"Let's face it, it's not hard for Americans to show nationalistic pride! " the Briton added with tongue in cheek.
Timely intervention
This is a contest which grips golf and sports fans for three days but was in danger of extinction in the 1970s and had it not been for the intervention of 18-time major winner Jack Nicklaus, it may well have withered and died.
Nicklaus proposed to Earl Derby, the then president of the Professional Golfers Association, that players from continental Europe should augment the Great Britain and Ireland line-up to make for a better contest.
The United States had only lost once in the post-war era -- in 1957 at Lindrick -- and interest, particularly in America, was dwindling.
Nicklaus' suggestion was taken up, so in 1979 two Spaniards, Seve Ballesteros and Antonio Garrido, took their place for the match at Greenbrier in West Virginia.
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This did not prevent the visiting team from suffering a heavy defeat, but as Elliott, who was reporting his first of 17 Ryder Cups and counting, recalls, the change was "absolutely essential".
Scot Gallacher made one of his eight appearances as a player in that watershed encounter and admitted "Seve and Antonio had disappointing matches." (They both had 1-4-0 records.)
"However, their participation in the long-term saved the Ryder Cup," he added.
Two years later, Ballesteros sat out proceedings at Walton Heath in 1981 after a dispute over his European Tour membership, but even he would have been able to do little to prevent what is rated the strongest U.S. team in history thrashing the home side.
United Europe
That was to be last time that the U.S. enjoyed such a level of domination and by the time of the next match at Palm Beach Gardens in Florida in 1983, the Europeans were united under the captaincy of Tony Jacklin, with Ballesteros in his pomp.
A narrow defeat was followed by a resounding victory at The Belfry in 1985. Ballesteros famously drove the 311-yard 10th at the Midlands club to set the scene.
Sam Torrance sunk the winning putt and the champagne flowed as the players celebrated on the clubhouse roof as Concorde flew past.
"There wasn't a dry eye in the house," said Elliott.
When rookie Jose Maria Olazabal and Ballesteros led from the front to help Europe to their first win on U.S. soil in the 1987 match at Muirfield Village, the transformation of the event into a clash like no other was finally complete.
Read: Seve and Olazabal: Ryder Cup revolutionaries
Olazabal, who will captain Europe in Chicago this week, says he was addicted to the Ryder Cup drug from the moment he first sampled the atmosphere.
"That 1987 Ryder Cup was very special to me -- it made me realize how special the event was and I fell in love with it straight away," he told CNN.
Top partnership
His partnership in four balls and foursomes (where the players take a alternative shots) with Ballesteros was to bring 11 wins and two tied rubbers in 15 matches over the course of four Ryder Cup contests.
Despite their domination, it was the United States who made a mini comeback of their own.
They tied the match at The Belfry in 1989, then wrested the trophy back in the "War on the Shore" at Kiawah Island in 1991, where Bernhard Langer agonizingly missed a tricky putt to force another tie.
The U.S. also won at The Belfry in 1993, but a European team under Gallacher's captaincy took the trophy back at Oak Hill in 1995 to spark a run of six victories in the last eight contests.
It was Ballesteros' last match as a player and he was sadly past his best, losing his last day singles.
But his tearful embrace with arch rival Nick Faldo, who had beaten Curtis Strange in the key match, is symptomatic of the spirit of the Ryder Cup, where individual performances are secondary to the team effort.
Gallacher had tasted narrow defeat as a non-playing skipper in 1991 and 1993 so victory in such fashion was sweet.
"I felt I made a few mistakes in the first two matches, but feel I learned from those mistakes for the 1995 match," he said.
The two victories for the United States since 1995 have both been on home soil: the infamous "Battle of Brookline" in 1999 and at Valhalla in 2008.
Raucous galleries
Olazabal will doubtless still have the images of 1999 deep in his memory as the U.S. team poured on to the green after Justin Leonard's putt gave him victory over the Spaniard.
But Olazabal still had his own putt to halve the 17th, meaning that golf etiquette had been breached. He missed the 25-footer and the cup was heading back across the Atlantic.
