Ryder Cup Revealed E-Book

Ross Biddiscombe

• Herausgeber: Dolman Scott Publishing
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Ryder Cup Revealed: Tales of the Unexpected is the previously-untold, behind-the-scenes story of golf’s most iconic team contest. The book reports on the commercial mysteries of the money and business; the political games and social mischief-making; the controversial actions and conflicting viewpoints; the ever-changing, sensitive relationship between the players, captains and teams.

Using new interviews, fresh insights, unique research and an alternative perspective, author Ross Biddiscombe debates and contextualises all nine decades of the Ryder Cup’s history. Plus, he provides dramatic forecasts on the future of the matches that have grown from being financial liability to one of the most successful stories in the whole of sport.

Leseprobe

RYDER CUPREVEALED

Tales of the Unexpected

Ross Biddiscombe

First published in Great Britain in July 2014 by Constant Sports Publishing.

© Ross Biddiscombe 2014

All rights reserved. No part of this publication reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher.

The right of Ross Biddiscombe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

For Ryder Cup Revealed news, go to golfontheedge.co.uk.

ISBN 978-0-9562850-1-0

Typeset by Leon Harris in Adobe Caslon Pro at 11/13.5pt.

Printed by Dolman Scott Ltd, dolmanscott.co.uk.

Constant Sports Publishing, London, England, a division of Constant Publishing.

Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTERS

1 The Three Ages of the Ryder Cup

2 Birth and Re-Birth

3 Remarkable Rivalries

4 Money & Business

5 Conflict & Controversy

6 Power & Politics

7 The Future

APPENDICES

Index

Ryder Cup results 1927-2012

Author’s Journal

Author’s Snapshots

eBook Extra

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Foreword

The Professional Golfers Association is proud to be recognised as the founding partner of the Ryder Cup, a competition that is fast approaching its 90th birthday. And, as the PGA chief executive and a golf fan, it is true to say that I have an almost obsessive passion for what Samuel Ryder helped create.

The start of these matches in 1927 was of huge significance to the PGA here in Britain. Samuel Ryder was already a well-known golf patron and well connected to the golf professionals of the early 20th century. He greatly respected the pros and, with his help, the Cup elevated those players within society, it gave them a new status. For many decades beforehand, professional golfers had been treated like servants, forced to doff their caps to golf club members, but the Ryder Cup underlined their high levels of skill: these men were the best players in the world, seen to be good enough to represent their country.

The Ryder Cup served the same purpose for professionals in America and the biennial contest has become admired in every country in the world where golf is played. Not only that, but every match keeps us all mindful that there is no greater honour in sport than playing – not for yourself – but for your nation’s flag.

So the foundations of the Ryder Cup were laid by a group of like-minded professional golfers and a canny businessman who cared about them. None of those pioneers could have known that the matches would become such iconic sporting events in the 21st century. Neither could they have forecast that a major legacy of the matches is that they act as a bridge between the game as it was and the game as it is today.

For me, that is what Ryder Cup Revealed: Tales of the Unexpected is all about, what makes it so different from all those books that have been written before about these matches: it firmly connects the past with the present; it talks about golf as part of society and the professional golfers as honest, working men battling against the problems of money, politics or controversy. That connection is what makes this book intriguing and enthralling and, like the Ryder Cup itself, totally engaging.

Therefore it is an honour and a privilege to write this foreword. Enjoy the book and love your golf.

Sandy Jones, chief executive of The Professional Golfers’ Association, May 2014

Introduction

It just doesn’t make any sense: how can a sport like golf that for so many years was thought to be sedate and gentlemanly produce such frenzied and nerve-wracking theatre? For three whole days every two years, two continents face off on the fairways and greens for the honour of a small golden trophy. No prize money, no second place, nowhere to hide for the losers. It is raw sport, all for glory and there is simply nothing to compare.

The Ryder Cup gets into your blood. Now in its ninth decade of existence, the Cup is a monster of an event, watched by billions and generating colossal amounts of money. Much of the reason lies in its unique history, a story that began as a battle between two nations and now incorporates two continents. In recent times, the tension has been so elevated that it feels like each shot in every foursome, fourball or singles confrontation is a matter of death or glory for the teams. The whole contest is extraordinary in the truest sense: no other competition can equal the to-and-fro of momentum over three long days of sporting struggle; the tales of nerves such as those on the 1st tee of the Ryder Cup are peerless; and nowhere else do tens of thousands of sports fans shout for Europe, for goodness sake. Plus it was Ryder Cup fans who actually invented the chant “U-S-A…U-S-A”, such is their passion. The levels of emotion and excitement are off the scale both inside and outside the ropes.

And yet there has always been so much more to the Ryder Cup than the birdies and bogeys that are played out on the greens and fairways of places as far apart as Kiawah Island and Celtic Manor. The fascination of the Ryder Cup dates back to the unofficial attempts to stage international golf team matches between professionals from Great Britain and America in 1921. These were the days when most golf club members came from the upper echelon of society, when magazines for golfers featured stories about new-fangled airplanes and fancy cars. This was a sport ruled by high-class people with a Corinthian code. Pro golfers, by contrast, were members of the ‘downstairs’ society who had to battle their way into the sporting spotlight.

The social shenanigans, the backroom battles, the craving for money and status were all present as the Ryder Cup came officially into being in 1927. The matches were between two powerful nations – Britain and America – who vied for world leadership in the post-war period and through the social uncertainties of 1930s. Then World War II changed the world and the Cup reflected the rise of the USA into a global superpower and Britain’s fading influence on the world stage. Well-heeled American golfers were almost invincible against the impoverished British.

Only one GB victory in the first 36 years of the post-war contests meant the Ryder Cup was becoming a meaningless exhibition with a pre-ordained winner. Is it any wonder that British golfers resented their American counterparts during this time? The seeds of a remarkable rivalry were sown in those years, so that by the time Team GB had become Team Europe in 1979, the needle on the enmity scale was often sky-high.

The compelling nature of the Ryder Cup comes from those feelings, the emotions that have built up over decades and that often spill out into stand-up arguments, inexplicable tears, bitter recriminations and eye-popping celebrations. If the Ryder Cup had not mattered to so many people for so many years then today’s matches would be a pale shadow of themselves. In addition, we – that is the many millions of British, European and American golfers of all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities – care so much that the players themselves are even more pumped up. And add to that the professional pride and competitiveness of the best golfers in the world and it is a powerful cocktail.

Given the fascinating history of the matches, Ryder Cup Revealed: Tales of the Unexpected delves into the Cup in a way that no other book has attempted before. Instead of just recounting the contests and the personalities who played, captained, administered, and operated them, the book shines a light on the little-known, behind-the-scenes stories that tell the fans how and why the matches are such a spectacle in so many ways.

By taking an original angle on the Cup’s history, the chapters provide fresh answers, different perspectives and new talking points. For example, why did Samuel Ryder and not some other patron put his name to these international team golf matches for professionals? Why did the first two attempts to stage the contest fail when the Walker Cup – the amateur version – had already roared into life so successfully? Why did it take so long for the Ryder Cup to make serious money and how come its future was on life-support at least twice. Or what exactly made the atmosphere at the Ryder Cup turn sour after World War II and who were the main perpetrators? Why was Europe’s third consecutive defeat in 1983 perhaps the most significant turning point in the whole history of the event?

The book does contain a few references and stories about the key drives, chips and putts, but the focus is much more on the other side of the ropes, away from the course itself – in the back rooms, the meeting rooms and the locker rooms – where many matches have been shaped and where an equally compelling story can be told. The book also tackles the question of how the contests have changed over the decades: the rivalry, the money, the crowds, the captains, the sponsors, the TV audience and much more. The inside stories come from people directly involved with their opinions and analysis.

Ryder Cup Revealed reveals the political games and mischief-making; the controversial actions and conflicting viewpoints; the ever-changing, sensitive relationship between the players, captains and teams; the early search for money and stability as well as the modern-day means of spending the event’s enormous profits. And all this is reported, outlined, contextualised and debated in specific chapters that deal with each key issue that has helped develop the Ryder Cup over a history that covers nine separate decades.

The book aims to surprise, to be insightful and even to shock as it looks both at the past in an alternative way and also projects into the future using original interviews, first-hand research, unique analysis.

I have carried out well over 100 interviews on both sides of the Atlantic, but not just with players and captains past and present. I have also spoken extensively with top golfing administrators; golf historians; psychologists; senior members of the European Tour, PGA of America and the British PGA; match organisers; host club secretaries; sports TV executives; sports commercial experts; and many more people at the heart of the Ryder Cup’s often unspoken story.

There is also significant new research and facts about the early matches thanks to the assistance of the British PGA’s archives; the USGA’s library; the European Tour’s information files; the Samuel Ryder Foundation; and memorable stories directly from host clubs both in Britain and America. Analysis – for instance, in areas such as money and finance – is the product of much thought and debate with input from expert sources close to the subject, while all the words have been read by experts who have provided their own opinions and estimations.

Ryder Cup Revealed is the first book to fully explain in-depth both how and why the Ryder Cup – a sporting event once on the point of irrelevancy – is now among the most anticipated dates on the world’s sporting calendar.

Ross Biddiscombe, May 2014

1The Three Ages of the Ryder Cup

It was a steamy, hot October day in Florida when the 1983 Ryder Cup match reached its climax. Massive amounts of rain had fallen earlier in the week and the course was still saturated as thunder and lightning began to threaten on the Sunday evening. An unusually large crowd of 15,000 fans lined the fairways of the Palm Beach Gardens course as this most unusual Ryder Cup contest reached its climax. For the first time, the US team was in real danger of losing a home match.

Never before – not even in the days of cloth caps and plus-fours – had a Ryder Cup contest in America been this thrilling. The teams were level after two days and then, as the early singles matches played out on Sunday, neither team could gain more than a one-point advantage. With the last two Americans battling against their European opponents, the overall score was 13-13. The last two points to be decided were in the hands of America’s Tom Watson, who was ahead in his game against Bernard Gallacher, 2 up with two holes to play, and Jose Maria Canizares of Spain, who was 1 up as he and his opponent Lanny Wadkins stood over their approach shots to the 18th green. A remarkable 14-14 tie looked the most likely final score.

Then the latest in a long line of Ryder Cup heroes stepped forward. Jerry Lanston Wadkins, Jr. was a good, ol’ boy from Virginia, a major champion with 18 professional wins to his credit and two successful Cup appearances behind him. He played his golf with a smile and celebrated his victories with vigour, but he also knew how to stare down an opponent eye-to-eye. Wadkins was playing the tail-gunner role in the singles for a reason – he was a born match player, a street fighter-type of pro golfer who never gave up. In his sights this time was the mercurial Canizares who was playing beautifully and had been 3 up in the match at one point. If the US team was to maintain its record of never losing or tying a Ryder Cup match at home, Wadkins needed to do something extraordinary.

Most of the crowd was now surrounding the 18th green and fairway; the nervous US captain Jack Nicklaus and several members of his team were stalking the Wadkins-Canizares match because they knew it was their best chance of overall victory. The two players both had short pitch shots and their accuracy would decide the fate of this crucial point. Canizares hit first, but caught the ball fat and it landed well short in spongy rough. The Spaniard looked disconsolate and his countryman Seve Ballesteros, who stood next to him in support, knew that the American now had a chance to win the hole to halve this match.

Wadkins was still grim-faced as his wedge lifted the ball high and straight at the pin. It landed a little short, bounced forward twice and stopped 18 inches for a gimme birdie. Canizares had no chance of holing his own birdie attempt from the rough and so Wadkins had stolen a half-point out of the European team’s pocket through guts, determination and a chunk of pure skill. Moments later in the other match, Watson confirmed his win and the Americans had sneaked home 14½ to 13½. Nicklaus was so relieved he kissed the ground from where Wadkins had hit his wedge shot.

American pride had been preserved but, for once, the home team’s victory was no the main story. It was the narrow defeat suffered by the visitors that prompted the headlines. For the previous 30-plus years, US teams had achieved a near-perfect Ryder Cup record, with just one defeat and one tie since 1947. But this result in Florida heralded a new era for the competition… the Third Age of the Ryder Cup.

It was in the summer of 1927 that the official history of the Ryder Cup began, the start of the First Age of the matches. The initial few contests were relatively friendly affairs played among the best professional players in the world – just what Samuel Ryder envisioned when he became the event’s figurehead. This initial era in the Cup’s history lasted just 10 years and six matches, from the inaugural contest at Worcester Country Club, Massachusetts in 1927 to the final one before World War II in 1937 at Southport & Ainsdale Golf Club in Lancashire, England. This was a time when Britain and the US were the only significant golfing nations, but plenty of financial and logistical problems had to be overcome each time the biennial match was staged. Establishing an international team competition for the pros on the golfing calendar required plenty of determination from the players and their associations.

Each country took turns to act as host and the first five meetings were all won by the home team. Drama was at a minimum, although the 1933 match in England was won on the final green by the GB squad with the Prince of Wales in attendance creating as much media attention as the golf itself. The sport was hardly a mass participation pastime; far more people played cricket or football in Britain and many more fans followed the results of these sports. In America, baseball was the national sport and sporting superstars emerged from the diamond, the football gridiron, the athletics track or even the boxing ring. However, golf had one advantage: it was the only sport at the time where John Bull regularly faced off against just Uncle Sam, but the Ryder Cup had not fired the passions of whole nations. The contests needed an extra edge to reach the front pages rather than remain just in the sports section. The key would be revenge.

It happened when the sequence of home wins was broken in 1937 as the Americans under Walter Hagen’s captaincy (his sixth and last) proved too strong for the GB team. That win was a painful blow to Britain’s sporting pride. The US team – with the hugely confident Hagen leading it – seemed smug and the build-up to the next match in autumn 1939 would feature much more patriotic rallying of support for the GB team. After all, pioneers from the British Isles had spread the game of golf around the world – including America – and to be toppled from their perch as the sport’s No.1 nation was unacceptable. The temperature of the matches was set to rise as the British media called for a super-human effort to restore lost pride. Then World War II got in the way. Just a few weeks before the 7th Ryder Cup match was due to take place in Jacksonville, hostilities broke out in Europe and a chance for British golfing redemption was put on hold. Thus, the First Age of the Ryder Cup ended.

1927: US 9½ Great Britain 2½

1929: Great Britain 7, US 5

1931: US 9 Great Britain 3

1933: Great Britain 6½ US 5½

1935: US 9 Great Britain 3

1937: US 8 Great Britain 4

Matches: 8; US wins: 4; GB wins 2

1939-1945: No matches due to World War II

The Americans held on to the trophy throughout the war and even chose would-be teams that played fund-raising matches with the actual Ryder Cup on show. The British had not time nor energy for golf and thoughts of the Cup were put aside. When peace arrived after six long years, there was no guarantee that the GB-US series would resume.

Britain had changed significantly between 1939 and 1945. The war left its mark on sport just as it did on every other aspect of life; the nation was tired and its people listless even in victory. By contrast, over in America, the end of the war prompted an already energetic society to enjoy a period of prosperity and growth. Indeed, it was the get-up-and-go attitude of the Americans that saved the Ryder Cup from becoming a forgotten competition. But perhaps the most pertinent change to emerge in terms of the Ryder Cup’s history was that by the time the matches re-started, the edge between the teams had sharpened considerably.

It was only through the generosity of an American millionaire, Robert A. Hudson, who paid all their expenses, that a British team could actually travel to contest the Cup in 1947. But within the atmosphere of American largesse, came the counter feeling of British inferiority and it is little wonder that this GB team was trounced 11-1. Already, a depressing template had been established at the start of the Second Age of the Ryder Cup.

The gap in ability between the American and British teams was not a chasm, but the difference in self-esteem certainly was. Every two years, the best GB players went into the match believing they were closing the gap only to find themselves thrashed once again.

A certain antipathy – whether justified or not – emerged between some of the participants. Feelings of jealousy and missed opportunities were understandable among many British players whose prime golfing years had been lost to the war while many American pros had been able to play and earn money on tour.

The ill-feeling on the golf course mirrored what was felt between the ordinary people of the two nations. The default feeling of the British (reflected in large sections of the media) towards their US cousins was coloured for a long time by the war years when Yank soldiers were characterised as “over-sexed, over-fed, over-paid and over here”.

Every time the British Ryder Cup team was beaten in the immediate post-war matches, it was a blow to national morale; the more often the Americans won, the deeper the British resentment. So, after Dai Rees’ team surprisingly won in 1957 at Lindrick in south Yorkshire, the home crowd’s response was to carry him shoulder-high back to the clubhouse. Rees was an overnight national hero.

But the Lindrick win was the single bright spot amidst another gloomy run of poor British performances. A 16-16 tie in 1969 provided another isolated highlight that temporarily lifted the gloom. The British team was still sprinkled with club professionals who had to hurry home to tend to the needs of their members at weekends while the US squad was filled with world sporting superstars like Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus who had no such distractions and could concentrate solely on becoming better players. The contest was basically unfair.

Over three decades, the two PGAs had tried to change the format of the matches to make the results tighter, but nothing really changed – instead, the Americans actually looked like they were getting stronger.

The Ryder Cup was becoming a minor event because it lacked any regular competitive spark. Crowds in America were small and polite (why get excited about another easy win?) whereas in Britain they were larger but resigned to disappointment. By the mid-1970s, the event stagnated. America was an overwhelming golfing power, standing like a Colossus over the newly constituted British and Irish team.

Then in 1977, Tom Weiskopf (a senior member of the US Ryder Cup team and, four years previously, the Open champion) became the first headline American player to refuse to play in the match because, for him, it had become a meaningless exhibition. At that moment, the Ryder Cup organisers had been handed an ultimatum – change or die. Something more drastic than a few cosmetic nips and tucks had to be undertaken.

At Nicklaus’s suggestion, the British PGA allowed the introduction of continental European players in 1979, but the American momentum still brought them a comfortable victory. Then at Team Europe’s first home match in 1981, the result was even more embarrassing – the US team, perhaps the most powerful ever assembled in Ryder Cup history, won so early on the final day that seven of the 12 singles were still out on the course when the trophy was secured. It looked like the European gamble had failed.

1947: US 11 Great Britain 1

1949: US 7 Great Britain 5

1951: US 9½ Great Britain 2½

1953: US 6½ Great Britain 5½

1955: US 8 Great Britain 4


1957: Great Britain 7½ US 4½

1959: US 8½ Great Britain 3½

1961: US 14½ Great Britain 9½

1963: US 23 Great Britain 9

1965: US 19½ Great Britain 12½

1967: US 23½ Great Britain 8½

1969: US 16 Great Britain 16 (US retains cup)


1971: US 18½ Great Britain 13½

1973: US 19 Great Britain & Ireland 13

1975: US 21 Great Britain & Ireland 11

1977: US 12½ Great Britain & Ireland 7½

1979: US 17 Europe 11

1981: US 18½ Europe 9½

Matches: 18; US wins: 16; GB/GB&I/Europe wins 1; ties: 1

Fortunately for all concerned, the planets had were beginning to align and the one-sided Second Age of the Ryder Cup was about to end. It was the third Europe-US match in 1983 when the American Colossus finally encountered a worthy opponent. The long-time underdogs rose to the challenge because of four crucial reasons: 1. Seve Ballesteros became the team’s unofficial on-course spearhead; 2. Europe now had a team core that featured ‘The Big Five’ – Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, Bernhard Langer and Sandy Lyle – all major champions either present or future; 3. A new sponsor – Bell’s Whisky – pumped in a previously-unheard-of amount of money to support Team Europe; and 4. New captain Tony Jacklin used that cash and his own inspirational motivating skills to imbue his team with a new level of confidence and self-belief. So began the Third Age of the Ryder Cup.

To prove that an era of exceptional Ryder Cup competitiveness had begun, Team Europe did not need to win the 1983 contest (the US actually won by a point). The point was that this closest of results underlined the change. Just two years later at The Belfry in the heart of England, the Europeans achieved an historic win (the first in 28 years) and a real rivalry was duly established.

Part of the beauty of this new situation was the fact that the European continent was now joined together to create one sporting team; this was a completely fresh concept. Politically, Europe’s countries had been trying to work in harmony for years, but centuries-old differences often prevailed and infighting was as common as agreement. Golf had become the unlikely glue to bring nations together in a common cause; everyone from Catalonia to Caledonia felt like a European at the Ryder Cup. In this contest, the French could no longer hate the Germans nor the Scots show antagonism towards the English. Instead, the common enemy was America.

Europeans like Ballesteros and Langer brought a new attitude to the matches. They wanted desperately to prove themselves on the world stage at every opportunity, both personally, by winning major championships, but also collectively within a successful Ryder Cup team. Suddenly there was a reversal of fortune: decades of British and Irish golfers defeats against a vastly superior US team were consigned to the past and GB inferiority complexes of the previous decades were destroyed as European victories began to rack up – nine in the first 15 matches from the start of the Third Age.

Not only that, but the event was becoming stronger with every dramatic contest – from 1987 to 1999, there was one tie and never more than two points between the teams after three days of fierce competition. The organisers were able to sell more tickets and merchandise, gather in ever-larger television fees and attract more sponsorship and hospitality money. The match that nearly died because of lack of cash had become a veritable cash cow.

The competitiveness put fire in the bellies of the players of Teams Europe and USA, and also their fans; both responded with a patriotism that was fervent and even became so intense that it bordered on the unacceptable. Some US players complained about European crowds cheering their bad shots, but it was in America that tempers really boiled over. In 1991 at Kiawah Island and, more significantly, in 1999 at the Country Club of Brookline (both American victories), the behaviour of the home team and even the home crowds reached objectionable levels. However, that unwelcome development in the Cup’s story was put into sharp contrast after the 2001 match was postponed due to the 9/11 acts of terrorism. Angry words on the golf course had been put into proper context and respect between all participants returned.

Since then, Europe has held the upper hand in terms of results while every match has been a huge commercial success as well as being watched by increasing numbers of fans throughout the world. The Ryder Cup has even been copied – by the women’s Solheim Cup and the US PGA Tour’s Presidents Cup, for example – as well as imitated by the likes of the EurAsia Cup that began in 2014. Such is its power.

The 40th match at Gleneagles – the 16th and latest of the Third Age of the Ryder Cup – was set to break all kinds of records. The future of the competition is seemingly set fair for generations to come, given the current levels of excitement and investment. Samuel Ryder would be amazed.

1983: US 14½ Europe 13½

1985: Europe 16½ US 11½


1987: Europe 15 US 13

1989: Europe 14 US 14 (Europe retains cup)


1991: US 14½ Europe 13½

1993: US 15 Europe 13

1995: Europe 14½ US 13½

1997: Europe 14½ US 13½

1999: US 14½ Europe 13½

2002: Europe 15½ US 12½

2004: Europe 18½ US 9½

2006: Europe 18½ US 9½

2008: US 16½ Europe 11½

2010: Europe 14½ US 13½

2012: Europe 14½ US 13½

2Birth and Re-birth

Three times during its history, the Ryder Cup has been on life support. The matches played in this era are vast in every sense – the crowds at the course, the massive TV audience across the world, and the huge amounts of money that pour in from sponsorship, hospitality and merchandise. Yet, the Ryder Cup could easily have withered and died long before the 21st century arrived. First, it stuttered from a lack of investment, then it stumbled due to the effects of a world war and, finally, it was almost strangled by overt apathy. But each time it survived and three men can claim to have stood up for the Cup when it was on its knees: the visionary seed merchant who gave his name to the event, Samuel Ryder; the Oregon millionaire whose money funded the first post-war match, Robert A. Hudson; and the golfer who is arguably the world’s best ever, Jack Nicklaus. Each of them showed a special affinity for the Cup that changed the course of golfing history.

But the uneasy birth and then the two subsequent re-births of the Ryder Cup were far from guaranteed. Each time the matches were threatened with extinction, there were other possible outcomes and even other possible saviours. For instance, the first questions must be the most obvious: would there have been a Ryder Cup without Samuel Ryder? More accurately, perhaps, would American and British golfers have met in an official professional international team challenge match in 1927 without the input from the seed merchant from St Albans in England?

The key question for the first re-birth in 1947 is why did a man from faraway Oregon think this golf contest could be revived by British golfers taking a 6,000-mile trek to the Pacific North West and, without Hudson’s patronage, would the 10-year gap between the 6th and 7thmatches have been significantly longer, or could the Cup’s absence even have become permanent?

Finally, what if no one had addressed the depressing downward spiral of non-competitive matches that led to widespread American disinterest in the Cup? The Americans had become so dominant by the 1970s that Britain’s best player of the time, Tony Jacklin, was worried about the event’s future. “I thought there was a danger it might be scrapped altogether,” he said. Step forward Nicklaus. But if the Golden Bear had not drawn a line in the sand on behalf of the players and forced the change from a GB&I team to a European one, would the world’s greatest golfers have started to decline the invitation to represent their country? Would the Ryder Cup have become a pleasant but meaningless biennial exhibition or even survived at all?

Like so many stories from history, the perspective of time can provide different answers to the same questions, or even raise new ones. However, it is clear that the men who wanted to set up an international golf team challenge match between Britain and America in the 1920s could never have envisioned what would happen to their idea over the next nine decades.

The genesis of international team golf

It is not known exactly when conversations about staging a full-scale, professional team golf contest between Britain and America’s best professionals first took place, but it was certainly several years before 1921 when the first of two unofficial matches were played. In fact, it may have happened more than 20 years earlier in 1900 when first the great Harry Vardon and later J.H. Taylor (two thirds of Britain’s Great Triumvirate of golfers of the time, the other being James Braid) visited the United States for a series of exhibition matches. Vardon played as many as 80 times in America that year and he galvanised the whole sport as hundreds of thousands of native golfers flocked to watch the world’s best player.

At that time, there were very few professional golfers in America and most of them were immigrants from Scotland, young men who were seeking a fortune in the new country. Both Vardon and Taylor were usually too good for all the American challengers – native-born players or ex-pats – and they climaxed the tour by finishing first and second in the US Open in October that year, a result that put American golf firmly in its place as a definite second to the best of British. Nevertheless, the tour led US golf through the next decade and the excited and innovative Americans did not play second fiddle for long. But to be the best, the US players – many of them still amateurs – had to play against and with the best. That meant travelling the length and breadth of the States and, most definitely, abroad.

Perhaps surprisingly, there was one American golfing pioneer in 1900 who had already won an historic international title before Vardon and Taylor had returned home to England. Thirty-four-year-old amateur Charles Sands – who only took up the sport five years earlier – won the gold medal for men’s golf at the 1900 Olympic Games in Paris although the title was grander than the event with only just over a dozen competitors on a course built within a horse racing track in Compiègne, 30 miles north of the French capital. There was even a woman’s golf event won by another American, 22-year-old art student Margaret Abbott (she was based in Paris at the time), who shot a 47 to win gold in a 9-hole competition she entered at the last minute along with her mother, who finished seventh. Such was the level of international golf at the time.

Back in Britain, of course, international golf meant a contest between English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish players while competition against continental European opposition was extremely rare. Of the countries across the English Channel, France was embracing golf as fast as anyone and staged the French Open for the first time in 1906, the year before the country’s best golfer, Arnaud Massy, travelled to Royal Liverpool Golf Club in England to become the first non-British player to win the Open Championship. The British golf grandees actually had a chance to stage the first truly international golf tournament in the world (albeit, of course, for amateurs only) when London hosted the Olympic Games in 1908. Three courses in Kent were willing to stage the tournaments and both the Olympic organisers and the golfing media were excited about many countries being represented, especially after golf at the 1904 Games in St Louis, Missouri, had been contested only by Americans and a few Canadians. However, a letter from the International Olympic Committee to the R&A (who controlled the sport in Britain at the time) went unanswered and golf was dropped from the Games. Over a century later, it was restored to the schedule and will make its return as an Olympic sport at the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro.

In 1913, Vardon made his second tour of America and, by this time, the sport had grown globally. A couple of hundred courses, many built by ex-pat Brits, were now operating in countries like Argentina, India and Japan – but the sport was developing fastest in the US itself. From a few thousand players in 1900, when Vardon first visited, there were now an estimated 350,000 golfers across America playing on hundreds of courses, not a few dozen.

American golf celebrated a couple of significant landmarks in the run-up to Vardon’s second tour. Firstly, in the summer of 1911, the 19-year-old Philadelphia-born Johnny McDermott became the first home-bred player to win the US Open, at Chicago Golf Club. Then just four days later over at Royal St George’s on the Kent coast in south-east England, Chick Evans, one of the most acclaimed amateur players in America, tied 49th to become the first home-bred American golfer to complete all four rounds of the Open. This pair had put American golf on the map and their achievements gave great encouragement to the thousands of US players who were taking up the game every month in the belief that one day soon they could beat the best golfers from Britain. In addition, Evans also reached the quarter-finals of the [British] Amateur Championship that summer to reinforce the message that American golfers were now a force to be reckoned with.

Then in June 1913, McDermott (who had won the US Open for a second time in 1912) made his first trip across the Atlantic to play in the Open Championship at Royal Liverpool. He performed admirably, tying 5th, two shots behind fourth-placed Vardon and 11 shots behind the winner J.H. Taylor. In addition, his countryman Tom McNamara tied 25th on the first occasion there had been two American professionals in the field.

Vardon travelled back to America in September that year along with his great friend and fellow Jerseyman, Ted Ray, to play exhibition matches and climax the trip at the US Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts – the same venue that hosted the Ryder Cup in 1999. By now, not only had the number of golfers in America grown, so had their expectations when taking on the mighty British. McDermott was expected to spearhead the native talent, but there was also a promising 20-year-old professional from New York named Walter Hagen. Local amateur Francis Ouimet, also aged just 20, actually lived next door to the course, but wasn’t regarded as a serious challenger – until the event got under way.

While the British duo were heavy favourites, they had not reckoned on the dazzling play of Ouimet, whose sensational win – after an 18-hole playoff between himself, Vardon and Ray – became front-page news all over America. Later immortalised in Mark Frost’s book The Greatest Game Ever Played, Ouimet’s victory was as incredible as it was unlikely. The fresh-faced, untested amateur had never faced such esteemed golfing opposition. Hagen’s tie for fourth place emphasised the new mood of American golf compared to when Vardon had squashed the local opposition 13 years earlier.

Needless to say, the sense of disbelief among Britain’s golfing population was immense and one of the most interested of the country’s golfers was 55-year-old Samuel Ryder who had taken up the sport by chance five years earlier because he needed more fresh air to recover from a bout of ill health. As soon as Ryder had taken up this new sport (he was a cricketer in his youth), it became his obsession. He quickly reached a single-figure handicap and became captain of the local Verulam Golf Club in St Albans in 1911. Reading the press reports about Vardon’s shock defeat and the subsequent rise of American golf may well have given Ryder the idea that there should be more matches between British and American players. But less than a year after Ouimet had made so many sporting headlines, Britain was at war.

Four years of hostilities ended in 1918 and it was soon apparent to Ryder that a sea change had taken place in the sport: the young American upstart golfers, who had only been full of hope in 1914, could now claim to be the equal of the British. After all, while life in general and golf in particular throughout America were only marginally disrupted from 3,000 miles distance, the Great War had devastated British society. The era of golf’s Great Triumvirate was over (neither Vardon, Taylor or Braid won a major title after World War I) and the next generation of British players either suffered four years of golfing idleness or lay dead on the battlefields of Belgium and France. Meanwhile, a group of young American pros, including Walter Hagen, were poised to lead the sport into the future.

Hagen had turned pro in 1912 having graduated from his job as a caddie at the Country Club of Rochester, New York. His tie for fourth behind Ouimet in the 1913 US Open was merely the precursor to him winning the title the following year. Then in 1920, with post-war Europe still struggling to return to normal, Hagen lay down the gauntlet to the entire European golfing establishment. He travelled across the Atlantic for the first time and won the French Open that summer, then played in his first Open Championship at Royal Cinque Ports. The 27-year-old may have only tied 53rdon the Kent links, but he knew America’s time was coming because he was now one of the best players in the largest nation of golfers in the world, approaching two million participants.

Jim Barnes, an ex-pat Cornishman who had been playing in America for almost 15 years, was sixth in that 1920 Open Championship, helping to trigger renewed debate about the ability of golfers from the States throughout Britain’s golf clubs. Samuel Ryder and his fellow members at Verulam may well have been among those wondering whether Britain or America was now golf’s real powerhouse. However, Ryder’s role in staging a country vs country team match that might settle the matter was far from fruition.

First rumblings of a contest

The earliest published information about a potential golf match between pros from Britain and America dates back to 1920, two years after the end of World War I and a time when the civilian populations of the two countries were happy to try new and inventive ideas. Many golf historians believe the president of the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio, Sylvanus P. Jermain, was one of the early initiators of the notion for such a contest. Both a successful businessman and a hugely important figure in US golf at the time, Jermain helped to persuade Vardon and Ray to travel to Inverness to play in the US Open in August of that year. Of course, Jermain was hoping for an American champion, but Ray defied a strong local field and pulled off a win, with Vardon tied second. While not the result he was hoping for, it was enough for the Ohioan to come up with another plan to provide American pros with an even better chance to prove their potential superiority – an international team contest.

Jermain was an extremely important figure in the history of American golf; he developed the first public golf course west of New York and also served as president of the Ohio Golf, Central States and Western Golf Associations in the early 1900s. He was a lifelong bachelor who devoted his life to the sport. In 1907, he even wrote a book called American Code of Golf, which aimed to simplify the rules of the sport that had been formulated across the Atlantic by the R&A (it was the first time anyone in America had dared to challenge the rule-makers from St Andrews). So, given his standing in the sport in America, he soon found supporters for his scheme of a team match.

The leading golf magazine of the day in America, Golf Illustrated, was quick to back him. The circulation manager, James Harnett, was especially taken with the idea. His job was to sell more copies and what better way to achieve that than by Golf Illustrated promoting a top quality international golf tournament? After all, the publishing industry was by now extremely powerful in sport and Harnett soon attracted the support of the PGA of America. The minutes of its annual general meeting in December 1920 state that the association would partly finance the trip.

Harnett knew the magazine’s readers enjoyed the debate about the relative strengths of the two leading golf nations, especially after Ray’s US Open victory, so stories about a possible match appeared in the magazine in late 1920. But the genius of Harnett’s plan was that the magazine itself did not declare sponsorship, but instead asked readers to make small donations to help the newly-formed PGA of America (it had only been created in 1916) fund the expense of sending the pros on a month-long trip to Britain.

It might have seemed like a brilliantly innovative idea, but it was unsuccessful. Perhaps not surprisingly in this post-war period when, even in America, money was in relatively short supply, the fans could not see themselves supporting their pros. A small amount was raised, but in order not to lose face the PGA of America eventually voted to bridge the funding gap from its own bank account. It was then all systems go for a match in the summer of 1921 with around $10,000 available to send 10 pros to Gleneagles in Scotland. Also, there was a bonus for the American golfers: they could play in both the Glasgow Herald 1,000 Guinea tournament and the Open Championship in St Andrews while in Britain in order to make the trip more worthwhile.

The only question that remained was who would represent the USA? Despite successes by players like Hagen and McDermott, not all the top American pros were home-bred players at this time. There were rumblings from some leading lights among the PGA of America that this contest would have no credibility if the US team was packed with British ex-pats. The question of the Americanisation of the 1921 team was very important to the status of the game throughout the States and to the retiring president of the PGA of America, John Mackie. He was one of the loudest voices in favour of native-born talent and even suggested that any ex-pat Brits on the team would simply be getting a free trip home. It was rather a petty argument, but it won the day. After much discussion, it was agreed that the American team would be made up of a mixture of home-bred players plus, if necessary, naturalised Americans or those who had lived in the States for at least five years and intended to become US citizens. Ex-pat Brits who clung to their connection with the motherland were not welcome.

The match was set for 6 June 1921 at the newly-opened King’s Course at Gleneagles. The journey for the Americans was without incident until they arrived at the now-famous Gleneagles Hotel that, unfortunately, was unfinished (it did not open until 1924). The visitors had to stay in five railway carriages a few miles from the course and fetch and carry water for their washing. It was an inauspicious start, but the pioneer spirit prevailed and, in any case, a strong GB team was waiting, including The Great Triumvirate of Vardon, Taylor and Braid plus other top British golfers like George Duncan and Abe Mitchell.

By contrast, the American team could not boast such a long list of storied golfers. Walter Hagen – a loud supporter of this match from the very first murmurings – had made only one previous trip to play in Britain and had not reached the zenith of his career at this point. Three Scots-turned-Yanks, Jock Hutchison, Fred McLeod and Clarence Hackney, had some knowledge of golf in their homeland, but American captain Emmet French (a true home-bred player, born in Pennsylvania) had won only one US professional golf tournament and the extravagantly-named “Wild” Bill Mehlhorn from Illinois none at all to date. However, as they prepared to play, the American pros did gain some cheer from their amateur counterparts who had been able to set up a similar team match against British amateurs in May. The US amateurs, led by Bobby Jones, beat a team representing Great Britain and Ireland 9-3 at Royal Liverpool.

The defeat of the American pros in the match in Scotland was also by six points – 10½-4½ – and, although no disgrace, neither was it exactly a vindication of all the hope and hard work that had gone into sending the team 3,000 miles in the hope of establishing a glorious international legacy for professional golfers (annoyingly for them, the amateurs managed it – the Walker Cup began the following year).

Not only was the result from Gleneagles a disappointment, so was the reaction in Scotland. The Glasgow Herald publicised the contest extensively, yet the fans were largely indifferent to the team concept. Most of them preferred the subsequent Glasgow Herald event that was won by one of their own, George Duncan. To make matters worse, many of the pros in Scotland had been disdainful of the American challenge in the first place. They saw it as a rather ordinary exhibition match and one vocal pro from the area, Andrew Kirkaldy, previewed the event by saying it would be too one-sided for anyone to get excited about. “The Americans have nay a chance.”

In addition, the young King’s Course (laid out by Braid and just two years old) was not well received by the players; there were mutterings about the poor condition of the fairways and greens. Meanwhile, The Times golf correspondent, Bernard Darwin, bemoaned the state of the bunkers and the rest of his press colleagues were equally unimpressed. In fact, the whole affair fell rather flat and it was soon clear there would be no follow-up event the next year.

But while the professionals scratched their heads and wondered what went wrong, the amateurs’ match in Hoylake was deemed a successful experiment and the following year the Walker Cup was established with a GB&I team invited to the National Golf Links of America on Long Island for the inaugural official event. It seems astonishing, nearly 100 years later, to think that an amateur sporting event could flourish while its pro equivalent withered. It felt like the pro team challenge match was the right idea at the wrong time, but there were several probable reasons.

Firstly, the two PGAs, which would act as organising bodies for any pro match of this kind, were still in their infancy – the British PGA was formed in 1901 and the PGA of America in 1916 – and, therefore, unable to underwrite the considerable funds that a team match required on an annual or even biennial basis. Not only were travel and accommodation costs required, but the visiting pros would miss a month’s salary back at their clubs, hence the need for sponsorship by Golf Illustrated to send the American team over in 1921. By contrast, the top amateur golfers were often gentlemen of some standing with an income to support themselves or, if not, then their own individual patrons to fund such a trip.

Secondly, the professionals and amateur international teams were battling for the same support from both fans and sponsors. Being so close after the end of World War I, there was still not enough money around to finance every new idea and there were very few potential supporters at this time from the world of business who felt they might benefit from an international sporting contest of any sort.

Finally, the most obvious missing link was a figurehead. The amateur team competition had George Herbert Walker (hence the Walker Cup) as its driving force and in other sports there were similar men of vision and influence: Pierre de Coubertin is regarded as the father of the modern Olympic Games; Harvard graduate and future US Secretary of War, Dwight Davis, was an avid tennis player and had helped to create the Davis Cup back in 1900; and football administrator Jules Rimet soon had the World Cup football trophy named after him. The British and American golf professionals had just not found their man in 1921, but in five years time, they had.

The second attempt

At the start of 1926, five years after the Gleneagles match, the old idea of an international team challenge match for pro golfers was re-cycled. In the intervening years, individual pro golfers had begun travelling to foreign countries on a more regular basis. Hagen (twice) and Barnes (once) had won the Open Championship on visits to Britain; golfers from countries including South Africa, Australia, France, Spain and Argentina had all played for the claret jug; and British pros like Duncan and Mitchell had been frequent visitors to America since 1921. So the concept of international golf competition was no longer a rarity.

In addition to the developments in the pro game, the Walker Cup had been up and running successfully since 1922 with both Britain and America taking turns as hosts. So it was high time for the professionals to return to the same idea and by now it had become a question of when a pro team challenge match would take place rather than if.

The obvious problems were fourfold and very much the same as they had been for the match at Gleneagles in 1921: timing, funding, team selection and finding a co-operative venue. The two PGAs were now better organised and their members showed a growing desire for the match, but what they most needed was a benefactor and there were not many of them around.

Nevertheless, there were moves afoot and in March 1926 the British PGA received a letter from St George’s Hill Golf Club in Surrey “setting out the conditions of a match to be played against a team of four American professionals selected by Walter Hagen and asking for approval of same also requesting the Association to select the British team and to fix a date for playing the match”, according to the association’s committee minutes. In addition, the PGA was approached by Car & Golf magazine to offer a trophy and prize money for such a match, while Stoke Poges Golf Club in Buckinghamshire wanted to stage a Britain vs America team match but only if it was to be watched exclusively by their own members and guests.

The PGA offered dates in early June to St George’s Hill for the planned two-day match that would allow time for the Americans to play in the Open Championship towards the end of the month. The other two offers by the magazine and Stoke Poges were dismissed. There was also speculation in the press that two other courses – Wentworth in Surrey and Waterloo GC near London – were possible venues (also offering to host the match for free with any gate money going to the PGA), while Golf Monthly magazine was already speculating about a series of matches and hoping that money for a return fixture in America “might be largely raised from the money drawn at the gates of this match”. British golf was clearly excited.

Over in America, however, there was not quite universal support for the match. There had been no formal support from the PGA of America (still a young organisation only exactly a decade old and with just 1,548 members) and no correspondence between that association and its British counterpart because both groups were still maturing (the British PGA had celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1926 and could still only boast around 900 members). The power of the two PGAs was still in the future, so this attempt at an international pro team match was largely player-driven, in fact more accurately, one-player-driven.

Hagen had travelled over to Britain for the Open Championship four of the previous five years and the topic would have been openly discussed by him, but he did not care much for the politics of any association. Hagen was a wealthy man by this time (mostly from exhibition matches for which he could earn as much as $10,000) and certainly the shining light of American professional golf (he had already won seven majors which was as many as Vardon). Hagen’s status in the American game meant he could ride roughshod over any dissent, problems with money or potential internal politics. Once it was clear that enough of his colleagues wanted to re-create the match, and after learning that the British PGA was even going to select a GB squad, Hagen decided to increase his team from four to 10 and got his men ready.

With just a few weeks to go, the Daily Express reported that Hagen would be bringing a strong group of players to Britain with foursomes on the opening day followed by 10 singles on the second. The newly-opened Wentworth club was finally chosen as host venue and the course owners would use the contest as a marketing tool to attract members. It was all systems go.

However, despite the best possible intentions, the match suffered from both bad luck and bad planning. Firstly, the General Strike of 1926 began on 4 May, just before the Americans were due to set sail. The industrial action was aimed at bringing the whole of Britain to a standstill and, given the potential widespread chaos, four of the US team decided not to travel.

Suddenly there was uncertainty that the Americans would be able to field a large enough team – eight was the absolute minimum because it at least had to match the Walker Cup – let alone how the General Strike would impact such a match. The media on both sides of the Atlantic continued its backing as the match date approached, but it was now hard to convince the public that “the Walker Cup for the pros” had not turned into an informal pre-Open Championship exhibition rather than the beginning of a great golfing spectacle.

The 10-man American team that eventually turned up at Wentworth was the weak link for the credibility of the contest. It was led by Hagen but contained a mixture of non-naturalised ex-pats (like Barnes) and home-bred players plus an Australian, Joe Kirkwood, who was best known as a trick-shot specialist rather than a tournament player. The British team was much stronger, led by three Open champions – Ray, Duncan and Arthur Havers. Cancelling altogether must have been an option, yet by the time the strike ended on 13 May, the players had arrived from the States and common sense prevailed; everyone made the best of a bad job.

Despite all the glitches, crowds in their thousands lined the fairways for the match because, after all, this was still the most star-packed international pro team contest that had ever been staged anywhere in the world. If it was Britain vs a hotchpotch American team rather than the real thing, then so be it. However, there was no hiding behind the one-sided result: a 13½-1½ win for GB. This had hardly been a contest to set the pulses racing, nor was it a reflection of the relative strengths of the two golfing nations.

The American players – particularly Hagen – were unhappy they had taken such a beating; all their reputations were at stake here. However, three weeks later at the Open Championship a record number of 11 US golfers teed off in the 116-strong field at Royal Lytham & St Annes along with a handful of Argentinians, Australians, French and Irish. In the end, the championship was dominated by Americans like never before – they filled seven of the top 10 places with the world’s No 1 amateur Bobby Jones as the champion and two of the professional team from Wentworth – Al Watrous and Hagen – second and third.

Perhaps the Americans’ performance at Lytham helped keep the idea of an international team match on the agenda because while the British may have gloated at Wentworth, they were embarrassed in Lancashire. A third attempt to decide which of the world’s two golfing nations was the strongest needed to be made and it could not wait another five years.

The emergence of Samuel Ryder