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The 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...
