An ode to when the Ryder Cup wasn’t a series of blowouts

Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world. There was a time when U.S. victory in the Ryder Cup was, essentially, so predetermined that no one beyond the players gave a fig about it. Then the universe connected the dots between seemingly unrelated events, mixed in a few irrepressible forces and for nearly 20 years turned it into the most heart-stopping, heartbreaking and heartburn-inducing happening in all of sport. Today, suffering through an era where eight of the previous 10 Ryder Cups have been blowouts with Sunday snoozers, it can be easy to forget those splendid days.

As it is with the murky origins of golf itself, it’s impossible to say exactly when the stars began to align to ultimately form the Ryder Cup’s golden era. Decades of Great Britain being drubbed certainly created a persistent case of underdog-itis, which, if left to fester, can be powerful fuel when the tide finally turns. The founding of a European Tour, in 1972, played a part — as did, the following year, the addition of Irish players. Those two occurrences didn’t move the needle one bit — U.S. victories still came easy (1) — but they did stick a crowbar in the door to help pry it open.

The Festering Wound

In the round, Great Britain (2) lost the Ryder Cup by impressively sad margins that left them rather glum chums who felt they would lose before the first shot was fired. Take, for example, the 1967 playing, when, at the opening ceremonies, Dai Rees, the Welsh captain of the Brit team, introduced each player of his team with a list of accomplishments. When it was U.S. captain Ben Hogan’s turn, he spoke a single sen- tence: “Ladies and gentlemen, the U.S. Ryder Cup team — the finest golfers in the world.” (3)

“We might not have admitted it at the time, but we all felt rather deflated,” said Peter Alliss, one of the British regulars in that period.

Nearly 20 years later, Tony Jacklin, winner of the 1969 Open Championship and 1970 U.S. Open, was disgusted when the “cheap plastic bottom of his shoe fell off ” in a singles match versus Raymond Floyd in the 1975 Ryder Cup.

To lose is one thing. To be humiliated is quite another — and it sticks with a fellow.

The Foundation

During the 1977 Ryder Cup — five years after the founding of the European Tour, Jack Nicklaus brokered a meeting between the head of the PGA of America, Henry Poe, and John Stanley, head of the Professional Golfers’ Association. (4) It was then that Stanley spoke perhaps the second most meaningful sentence in Ryder Cup history: “We are now a European Tour and should include Europe [on our team].”

The pieces were falling into place, but Team Europe would shoot itself in the foot before the puzzle was complete. The timing for a united European team was uncanny, as future major champions such as Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam and Seve Ballesteros were emerging figures in world golf. The 1979 team included Ballesteros and countryman Antonio Garrido, but the U.S. still ran away with it — and did so again in 1981. The young talent, however, was growing more confident — in particular, Ballesteros — who did not play in ’81 because old-school British pros John Jacobs (captain in ’81) and Neil Coles (retired as a player but chairman of the European Tournament Players’ Division) decided to ban him because he had accepted appearance money to play in a Euro Tour event. (5)

The Captain

When Tony Jacklin was named captain of Team Europe in 1983, he knew two things mattered above all were they to have a fighting chance versus the Americans at PGA National in Palm Beach. First, they had to stop being treated by their own side as losers. As such, they would fly on the Concorde, they would bring their regular caddies (a first for them playing in the U.S.), and they would have the finest accoutrements. (6)

Second, he and the team needed Ballesteros, who, by then, was a three-time major championship winner on a team that was otherwise winless in the big four events. With Ballesteros still bitter about the ban imposed upon him in 1981, Jacklin knew it would be tough to sell the proud Spaniard. They met for breakfast, and Jacklin asked if there were any chance Seve might consider playing on his team. Ballesteros vented his frustration in a 30-minute diatribe and said he’d sleep on it. The next morning, Ballesteros, not a native English speaker, spoke the most important sentence in Ryder Cup history: “So, okay, Mr. Hacklin, I come, I help you.” (7)

In the 1983 match, it was still taken as a rule that the Americans would stomp Europe, so very few spectators turned out. (8) So, very few people saw Ballesteros hit the finest shot ever in Ryder Cup play. On the final hole of the opening singles match against Fuzzy Zoeller, Ballesteros fired a 3-wood from 245 yards — out of a fairway bunker with a three-foot-high face and across the water fronting the green — to salvage a half point for Europe. Jacklin’s team lost by one measly point on U.S. soil, and it felt like a victory.

The Conquest

Forty years ago, a stacked and confident U.S. team arrived at The Belfry in England for the 1985 Ryder Cup. An experienced and fully integrated Team Europe, backed by 90,000 raging fans, laid in wait. At the end of Friday’s afternoon four-ball, the U.S. led by a point. In the Saturday morning four-ball, Craig Stadler missed a two-foot putt on the 18th that would have won the match for him and Curtis Strange versus Langer and Lyle.

“In the past, it was always us who missed that putt,” said Jacklin. “That has to crush them.”

Backed by a fan base that was losing its minds and voices, (9) Europe surged. Spaniards Ballesteros (3.5 points), José María Cañizares (2.5) and Manuel Piñero (4) led the way, with Paul Way, who Seve had mentored in ’83, adding three points to the effort.

In the end, Europe won 16.5 to 11.5 — its first outright victory since 1957. Atop the clubhouse, Jacklin rode on Seve’s shoulders spraying champagne.

The Aftermath

In 1987, Team Europe did something its GBI predecessors alone never accomplished — they won the Ryder Cup in the U.S. From 1983 until 2002, Europe won or retained the cup six times in 10 compelling dramas the likes of which the game had never seen and hasn’t since. (10)

One could venture that Ballesteros was at the core of it. José María Olazábal, his partner in many adrenaline-filled Ryder Cup matches (with a combined record of 11-2-2, the pairing earned the nickname “the Spanish Armada”), said after the win at Muirfield Village in ’87, “Seve was the spirit of the team. The way he talked, the way he looked at me (11) and every member of the team, the self- belief — everything transpired through him.”

Ballesteros played in his final Ryder Cup in 1995 and captained Team Europe to victory in his home country of Spain in 1997. Perhaps not coincidentally, Seve had no official role on the 1999 team that lost after compiling what seemed an insurmountable lead heading into Sunday singles. Olazábal and Sergio García carried on the spark Seve brought to the party, but with two exceptions — both one-point European wins (2010, 2012) — the magic had already come and gone.

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(1) In 1933, after the fourth Ryder Cup was played, each side had won twice. The U.S. won the next seven, until Britain won in 1957. Five consecutive U.S. wins followed, until the famous halved match in 1969, when Jack Nicklaus conceded a putt to Tony Jacklin in one of the deciding singles games. (Both men would play a role in the golden years of the Ryder Cup.) Seven more U.S. victories followed.

(2) And, ever so briefly, Ireland, from 1973 to 1977. Known as GBI, they were just as bad as GB on its own.

(3) One of Hogan’s best players was Arnold Palmer, then in his prime. The day before the matches began, Palmer delighted fans at Champions Club by putting on a one-man air show in his private plane. Upon landing and returning to the course, Palmer inquired as to whom an unamused Hogan might pair him with the next day. “I’m not sure you’re playing at all,” said Hogan.

(4) Two notes of interest here: The Professional Golfers’ Association was founded in 1911 after a professional in North Wales wrote a letter to Golf Illustrated magazine suggesting the idea. The PGA of America was founded in 1916. As for John Stanley, he is typically referred to as Edward Stanley or Lord Derby. He was born Edward John Stanley but preferred John, and he was indeed the 18th Earl of Derby, Lord Lieutenant of Lancashire.

(5) It seems almost laughable today that they determined Seve’s absence wouldn’t impact the European team. To make matters worse, they big-footed a young Bernhard Langer into voting to ban his own teammate.

(6) Depending on your age, you might not know the Concorde was a supersonic airliner that flew across the Atlantic at nearly 1,400 mph with a flight time of roughly 3.5 hours, about half the time it takes today to fly from England to the northeastern U.S. As for the clothes, he went with Austin Reed — quite stylish, including cashmere sweaters.

(7) And did he ever. He went 2-1-2 in a 1-point loss for Europe and proved he had the stuff to be the ultimate Ryder Cup mentor and partner. He was confused why Jacklin would pair him with Paul Way, who was only 21 at the time. “Hacklin,” said Seve, “I must hold his hand, tell him which club to use, how to chip. I feel like his father.”
“Here, you are his father,” said Jacklin. “Is that a problem?”
“For me, it is no problem,” said Seve.

(8) In fact, only an estimated 3,000 fans turned out on Friday.

(9) The U.S. team was rattled. Said five-time U.S. Ryder Cupper Curtis Strange: “You’d hear a roar go up over here, then a roar go up over there, and, all of a sudden, we were getting our asses kicked.”

(10) Margins of victory: 1983 (1 point, U.S.), ’85 (5 points, Europe), ’87 (2 points, Europe), ’89 (tied, Europe kept the cup), ’91 (1 point, U.S.), ’93 (2 points, U.S.), ’95 (1 point, Europe), ’97 (1 point, Europe), ’99 (1 point, U.S.), ’02 (3 points, Europe).

(11) As Seve’s partner, a nervous Olazábal recalled Seve saying, “José, just play your golf and I will take care of the rest.”