The Ryder Cup was "officially" born in
1927 as a biennial competition between
professional golfers representing the
U.S. and Great Britain.
The competition has been held every
two years since (with the exception of
2001, due to the terrorist attacks in
the U.S., and 1937-47 due to World War
II), and foursomes and singles match
play have been a part of the competition
since the very beginning.
The formats and the teams have
changed through the years, and so has
the level of competition.
Origins of the Ryder Cup
While the Ryder Cup matches officially
began in 1927, informal competitions
between teams of American and British
golfers go back a few years earlier.
In 1921, teams of British and
American golfers played a series of
matches at Gleneagles in Scotland, prior
to the British Open at St. Andrews. The
British team won, 9-3. The following
year, 1922, was the first year of
competition in the Walker Cup, an event
pitting American and British amateurs in
match play competition.
With the Walker Cup founded for
amateur golfers, talk turned to the
desire for a similar event limited to
professionals. A London newspaper report
from 1925 mentioned that Samuel Ryder
had proposed an annual competition
between British and American
professionals. Ryder was an avid golfer
and a businessmen who had made his
fortune by selling seeds - he's the
person who came up with the idea of
selling seeds packaged in small
envelopes.
By the following year, the idea had
taken hold. Another London newspaper
report, this one from 1926, reported
that Ryder had commissioned a trophy for
the competition - what came to be the
actual Ryder Cup itself.
A team of American golfers arrived a
few weeks early for the 1926 British
Open in order to play against the
British team at Wentworth. Ted Ray
captained the Britons and Walter Hagen
the Americans. Great Britain won the
matches by a whopping score of 13 to 1,
with one match halved.
One of the members of that 1926
British team, Abe Mitchell, is the
golfer whose likeness adorns the Ryder
Cup trophy.
But the Ryder Cup was not actually
presented following the 1926 matches.
The trophy likely wasn't ready by this
point anyway, but the 1926 matches soon
came to be regarded as "unofficial." The
reason is that several of the players on
the American team were not actually
American, most prominently Tommy Armour,
Jim Barnes and Fred McLeod (how a team
featuring Hagen, Armour, Barnes and
McLeod could get trounced by a 13-1-1
score is a mystery).
After completion of play, the team
captains and Ryder met and determined
that team members would henceforth have
to be native-born (this was later
changed to having citizenship), and that
the matches would take place every other
year.
But the first "official" match was
scheduled for one year hence, in 1927,
to be played at Worcester Country Club
in Worcester, Mass.
In June of 1927, the British team
departed for the U.S. It was at the
send-off that the Ryder Cup trophy made
its first appearance. The British team
set sail from Southampton aboard the
sailing vessel "Aquitania." The
transoceanic voyage took six days. Costs
for the British team's travel were
covered in part by donations from
readers of the British golf magazine
"Golf Illustrated."
Ted Ray and Walter Hagen again
captained the teams, and this team each
team was comprised of native-born
players only. And this time, the U.S.
won, 9 1/2 to 2 1/2. The Ryder Cup was
presented to the American team, and the
first official Ryder Cup competition was
in the books.
