Chaska, Minnesota …
It’s timely on the final day of the 41st Ryder Cup to recall the very first Ryder Cup all of 89 years ago.
And it is the Worcester Golf Club on the outskirts of Boston that will be forever remembered at the spiritual home of the Ryder Cup.
And it was an enormous pleasure during the course of this year’s Deutsche Bank Championship to visit the club and meet with the current Worcestrer Head Professional, Alan Beldana.
Though there had been two unofficial matches prior to 1927 when pros from Great Britain and the United States, and both won by the British.
Gleneagles hosted the first match in 1921 but the second of these, held at Wentworth in 1926, was undoubtedly the most significant for among those in the gallery was a man called Samuel Ryder.
Ryder was an English seed merchant and entrepreneur from St Albans in Hertfordshire who made his money selling penny seed packets. He had taken up golf relatively late in life to improve his health and employed Abe Mitchell, one of the golfing greats of his era, as his personal tutor.
Ryder was enthralled by the match at Wentworth, and particularly delighted to see Mitchell team up with George Duncan to defeat the defending Open Champion Jim Barnes and the great Walter Hagen. ‘We must do this again’, said Ryder in the bar afterwards and The Ryder Cup was born.
Ryder donated a small but striking gold cup that today epitomises all that is good in sporting competition. It cost £250 and the small golfing figure atop the cup, as requested by the donor, stands as a lasting memorial to Abe Mitchell.
So the first Ryder Cup in 1927 competition was organized on a much more formal basis.
A Ryder Cup “Deed of Trust” was drawn up formalising the rules of the contest, while each of the PGA organisations had a selection process. In Britain Golf Illustrated launched a fund to raise £3,000 to fund professional golfers to play in the Ryder Cup from June 3rd to 4th, 1927 and then head south to Pittsburgh for U.S. Open at Oakmont that was staged from June 14th to 17th.
Why then choose Worcester? Well, the club had hosted a successful 1925 U.S. Open on the course designed by legendary Donald Ross and, in fact, now boast being just one of two courses in the U.S. to host all three events: the men’s and women’s U.S. Open Championships and the Ryder Cup. Also after his arrival in the U.S. from his native Scotland, Willie Ogg – who served as one of the early head professionals at Worcester was also at the heart in arranging for the Ryder Cup to head to his home course. Ogg also laid out the Green Hill Golf Club in Worcester, and the course opened up for play on April 1, 1929. Ogg served as vice president of the PGA of America.
And it also made sense for the visiting British to sail into New York and head north to Boston before finding their way to Oakmont.
A sub-committee of the Professional Golfers’ Association had been appointed to choose the Great Britain team consisting of golf’s then ‘Big Three’ Harry Vardon, J.H. Taylor and James Braid. So in March 1927 an initial group of 9 players was selected to represent Great Britain. Later that month it was announced that Abe Mitchell would be the captain of the team. However, in May, his health gave some concern. It was eventually decided that he was unfit to travel. Later he was operated on for appendicitis.
Seven members of the team left on the ‘Aquitania’ on May 21, and with England’s Aubrey Boomer being picked up in Cherbourg. Ray was appointed the new captain. George Philpot, editor of the British Golf Illustrated magazine, was the team manager and travelled with the team. With the team a man short, the PGA Secretary Percy Perrins recruited Herbert Jolly who sailed on a later boat, the ‘Majestic’, and arrived in New York on May 31, four days after the rest of the team.
Ryder had contributed £100 and, when the fund closed with a shortfall of £300, he made up the outstanding balance himself. Although not in the rules at that time, the American PGA restricted their team to those born in the United States.
