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It has never been unequivocally established who exactly conceived the notion of the Match. Perhaps it was no one individual, but two energetic promoters of the idea were Americans, and both had a certain pecuniary interest in its development. One was George Sargent, who was president of the PGA of America from 1921 through 1926. At that time, when golf was still relatively new to the country, private golf clubs were inclined to hire British-born and bred head professionals at their clubs. The thinking was, presumably, that they knew more about the game by virtue of having come from its birthplace. The members may also have liked the British or Scots accent around the club, as another or added authenticity check. As Sargent put it, “Too often, when American clubs need professionals they get lads from the old country, and we have been training very good American boys as pros. So, to show a strong offense as the best defense we…began the Ryder Cup Matches [which] stopped the idea that British professionals were easy superiors to Americans. In other words, the Match a kind of job action, a union seeking to improve the workplace situation and get better paying jobs for American-born pros. If the American pros could beat the Brits on the course, then surely they could teach as well, and recommend the best equipment.
There is another aspect to this that impacted on how the teams were made up. In formulating the competition, the PGA of America set in motion the decree that only American-born professionals could represent the country’s team. The British side went along with this, but not for the same reason. Because many of the top American pros in the early days of the Match—Jock Hutchison, Fred McLeod, and Bobby Cruickshank, to name three—were British by birth, PGA of America president John Mackie felt they were playing simply to get an expenses-paid trip back home to visit family and friends. As the American golf journalism pioneer, Herb Graffis, noted in his history of the PGA of America, “In an effort to eliminate free-loaders, Mackie offered and had passed a motion that limited the foreign-born players on the American team to professionals who had been in the United States five years and had declared their intention of becoming citizens.” Not long after, this evolved (or devolved) into a restriction on anyone who was not born in the United States. Period. As a result, such outstanding players as Harry Cooper (born in England) and Tommy Armour (Scotland-born) were never eligible to represent the country in which they did indeed become citizens and made their outstanding golf careers. Cooper was especially resentful to his dying day. The rule was contrary to the immigrant history of the United States, and was finally modified in 2000 so that anyone born abroad of American parents, or who becomes an American citizen before his eighteenth birthday, is eligible to play on the U.S. team. Another monetary consideration in the formation of the Ryder Cup Match was that almost all the travel expenses of the American players in the initial, unofficial combat, was picked up by Golf Illustrated magazine, and then published out of Chicago. The power behind that was James Harnett, the magazine’s circulation manager, who considered it an investment in increasing his publication’s circulation.
We don’t know if Golf Illustrated picked up a lot of subscriptions, but we do know that Sargent’s raison d’etre didn’t work, at first. Two weeks before the 1921 British Open, a group of top American and émigré American pros who traveled over to play in the championship, got “slaughtered,” as legendary American pro pioneer and a member of that team, “Wild” Bill Mehlhorn, described the 9-3 loss to a group of British colleagues. In the next informal, or unofficial Match, again in Great Britain, the Yanks once again got even more trounced—13 ½ -1 ½ . It was after this inter-country competition when Samuel Ryder got involved and, at the suggestion of George Duncan, a leading figure in British professional golf, put up a trophy that formalized the bi-annual, home-and-home event.
Ryder attached a couple of provisos to his gift. One, the figure atop the trophy he bought was to be a likeness of Abe Mitchell, the British golf professional who taught Ryder how to play. For another, the competition had to be named after him—the Ryder Cup. There has been speculation over the years since, in particular by Graffis, that Ryder wasn’t being entirely eleemosynary. He was the proprietor of a large seed company, built largely on mail order sales in Great Britain and Europe, but that also sold grass seed to golf courses in the United States. Which is to say, (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) his company could mark up some public relations points, and obtain a nice bit of free advertising through the Ryder Cup Match.
Recalling the pinch-penny attitude of John Mackie in regard to eligibility for the U.S. team, American pros dating back to Gene Sarazen’s day, in the early to mid-1930s, only competed in the British Open when the Ryder Cup was also held there. The same applied to Byron Nelson and Sam Snead, et al in the late 1930s. It was because they had their expenses paid for the trip over. You could hardly blame them, since even the winner’s share of the purse for the British Open in those days didn’t cover their costs. Sam Snead famously (or infamously) made a point of that when he won the ’46 British Open, and didn’t return to defend the title. Julius Boros told me that he never wanted to play Ryder Cup in Great Britain because the prize money was too light, and it cost him a couple of tour events in the United States where he felt sure he could pick up good checks. What’s more, the trip, much slower in those days, would knock him off his balance and it took a week to get righted. He went because his equipment company (Wilson) insisted.
From 1947 through 1977, the American team won 12 of the 14 Matches, losing one and tying another. It had become so uncompetitive, and of so little interest, that there was much talk of discontinuing the series. At the suggestion of Jack Nicklaus, and some others, the British side was allowed to make eligible players from the European continent. The first European team played in 1979, and featured a young Seve Ballesteros and another Spaniard, Antonio Garrido. It didn’t help, at first. The Euros lost in ’79, and in ’81 and ’83, but with the last loss some handwriting appeared on the wall. The 1983 team had a matured Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Jose Maria Canizares, and a phalanx of young Brits with superb games, including Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Bernard Gallacher, and they lost by only a point on American turf (PGA National, in Florida). But starting in 1985 the tide began to turn significantly. In the next ten matches, through 2006, the Euros won eight times.
It followed, of course, that interest in the Ryder Cup jumped dramatically. And the PGA of America had itself a money windfall. Millions in television dollars, and by other means, filled the coffers to overflowing. The American players were making their contribution to the treasury, so to speak, by playing for nothing more than expenses and some clothing they surely didn’t need. Finally, they began to think that maybe they should be getting a cut of the pie. Payne Stewart was the first to note that publicly, in my experience. And when David Duval and Tiger Woods made a very definite point of it, in 1999, things changed. Indeed, rather dramatically. Each American Ryder Cup player now gets a total of $200,000, and donates it all. They give $100,000 to the charity of their choice; $90,000 to the university of their choice, and $10,000 to the Patriot Golf Day Foundation. A lot of good meat now on that bone.
It is intriguing to conjure whether the Ryder Cup would have continued on had the PGA of America not made this provision. One way or the other, as the old cliché has it; money does make the world go ‘round. Always has.
