IN the land of the leeks there can be little doubt that the Celtic Manor Ryder Cup will be remembered as the tournament of the leaks.

It’s sad for everyone involved in the decade-long process of organising the competition, but it’s as certain as the Commonwealth Games in Delhi being defined by the squalor of the living conditions, or the World Cup Final being remembered as a foul-fest.

There is a great deal of goodwill towards Sir Terry Matthews and the Celtic Manor among the media corps, and a huge level of criticism being aimed at tournament organisers, particularly the American contingent, who insisted on the Ryder Cup being pushed back to October in order to accommodate the FedEx Cup, which was an unmitigated disaster, golf fans in the USA simply not interested in a tournament that means nothing other than very rich men getting obscenely richer still.

However, while it’s easy to make a stauch defence of the Celtic Manor, there can be little doubt that the legacy this tournament was supposed to create now won’t materialise.

Anyone who thinks this Ryder Cup will boost Welsh golf tourism is dead wrong. They wanted a lasting legacy, but all we’ve got is reinforcements of the stereotype that it always rains in Wales. Nick Faldo’s famous warning that everyone should “bring their raincoats to Wales”, at the Ryder Cup two years ago turning out to be the only thing he got right as European captain.

The National Assembly committed in excess of £35m on improving supporting infrastructure and creating a golfing and economic legacy for this Ryder Cup.

Electronics billionaire Sir Terry Matthews spent £150m on redeveloping the Celtic Manor to host the tournament, promising it would be one of the best ever.

While it would be cruel to say that those aspirations were doomed to failure, everyone mentioned above will be shaking their head and cursing the weather gods.

In reality, though, the staging of the event in October, when there isn’t an ounce of spare daylight to compensate for weather interruptions, is by far and away the key element in the blame game. If it rains in the summer, and of course it can, you can play until 9pm to compensate.

We’ve seen it before in the Wales Open, in the 2010 tournament, for example.

The next Ryder Cup in Europe is scheduled for Gleneagles in Scotland. They’ve had nothing but rain for three days. The next Ryder Cup is slated for Illinois, where this week they’ve enjoyed similar rainfall to Newport, with the addition of 40mph winds.

Between Thursday and Sunday we’ve had two inches of rain, more than half the average amount of rain we usually get in the 61 days of September and October. There is simply no planning for that.

What we should be doing is looking at this in another way, namely that the Celtic Manor is the only course in Britain that could cope with this sort of rain and still have playable fairways and greens, that’s what a £500,000 drainage system gives you. If we were at Gleneagles now, chances are this Ryder Cup would not only have gone into a fourth day, but we wouldn’t have had a legitimate finish either.

The scheduling remains the crux of the issue here, on this side of the Atlantic the European Tour runs the Ryder Cup and the professional schedule. In America it is different. The PGA Tour runs the schedule and a completely separate body, the PGA of America, administers the Ryder Cup. The Ryder Cup is not the primary concern of the PGA Tour because it doesn’t generate enough money. The European Tour isn’t immune from criticism because it bowed to the demands of the PGA of America when it needed to show a firmer hand.

The lesson learned is surely that it’s imperative to stage the tournament in September at the latest to avoid a repeat of what has happened here. That, or just make it a four-day event.

While the superb golf and likely result with the forecast good for today means this tournament will be exciting and dramatic, we’ve already seen some incredible golf. However, the big legacy for Wales simply won’t materialise.

It’s a real shame, but words like tragedy and disaster are wholly inappropriate. The 2001 Ryder Cup being postponed for a year because of the 9/11 terrorist attack, that was a disaster and a tragedy.

This is a huge shame for those in Wales who worked so hard for so long to bring the Ryder Cup here.

And to think, it was sunny and rain-free throughout the last week in September. How cruel!