Nick Westby: Gleneagles ends long wait after losing Ryder Cup to Moortown

A further £5m went into reburbishing the grounds and facilities.

Such are the modern-day costs of staging a sporting event that is widely regarded as the third biggest in the world, behind only the Olympics and the football World Cup.

Eighty-five years ago, Gleneagles was one of two courses in the running to stage the second Ryder Cup.

That it missed out on what was a long way from the prestigious honour it is nowadays, owed nothing to the club being outbid, merely because it was too far north.

In 1929 the right to stage the first biennial duel between Great Britain and Ireland and the United States fell to Moortown, in Leeds.

The professional golfers’ association felt more people would attend the event if it was in Yorkshire or Lancashire.

That is the verdict of journalist and author Ross Biddiscombe, whose book Ryder Cup Revealed: Tales of the Unexpected delves deeper than any other book of the genre into the origins and storylines of the great battle.

According to Biddiscombe, although the PGA, with the support of five-time Open champion James Braid, wanted the match to be staged in the north of England, the man behind the bid was local bank manager Kolin Robertson.

Paying barely a fraction what Gleneagles had to pay to win the bid nearly a century later, Mr Robertson also enlisted the support of a local newspaper to help publicise the event.

The Yorkshire Evening Post was already the name behind an annual professional event at Moortown, which in 1929 became a part of the Ryder Cup package.

As the only media outlet of the day, newspapers carried significant clout, and the Evening Post invited players from both teams to play in its pro event the week before the Ryder Cup.

Joe Turnesa won the YEP event before returning to Moortown the following week, where, as part of the eight-man United States team, he was defeated 7-5 by a British Isles team captained by George Duncan – who would beat Walter Hagen 10&8 in the second-day singles – and including the great Henry Cotton.

Tickets cost three shillings (15p) per day, and an estimated 10,000 spectators watched the action each day at Moortown, which goes to show that even by its second match, the Ryder Cup had already captured the public’s imagination.

The loud roars that echo around courses like the The K Club, Celtic Manor and Medinah are not a new phenomenon drummed up by the media.

There was no need for a #bringthenoise advertising campaign from the host broadcaster. Already in 1929, the importance of the match was growing.

As Biddiscombe writes: “The match had turned into an event unlike any other golf tournament of the era because team golf meant the entire crowd could simply cheer for one side against the enemy from overseas; everyone was behind the entire GB team.

“Whereas the protocol of the crowd was normally to stay largely silent, this Ryder Cup (1929) was slightly different, especially after day one when the visitors held a one-point lead.”

There was even a technology dispute to add spice to the rivalry. American players predominently used metal shafts which were outlawed by the R&A, so they had to return to the wooden shafts they thought they had left behind.

Twenty-two years later when the Ryder Cup returned to Yorkshire, controversies over equipment again loomed over proceedings as the 1949 match got underway at Ganton.

The hangover from a bitter dispute of two years earlier when British captain Cotton was angry at the amount of backspin the Americans were getting from more advanced equipment, the issue in 1949 was re-raised by Ben Hogan, who contested the depths of the dots in the British players’ clubs.

Ganton paid £5,000 to host the first Ryder Cup in Britain since the Second World War. In its favour, the North Yorkshire course was, and remains today, one of the country’s finest. The fact that former Open champions and golfing pioneers Harry Vardon and Ted Ray had served as captains in the past, merely added to its standing in the game.

But the United States team which included Sam Snead, who had won the first match after the war 11-1 two years earlier, won again, 7-5, despite the best efforts of Dai Rees, who recorded one of only two singles wins from the eight matches on day two.

It was an exhibition match between Rees and Fred Daly at Lindrick in the early 1950s that sewed the first seeds on the Ryder Cup’s return to Yorkshire just eight years later.

Stuart Goodwin, writes Biddisombe, was a wealthy steel magnate from Sheffield who was ‘entranced’ by the exhibition match and within five years he had written a cheque for £10,000 to be the match’s benefactor, provided it would be played in his home city.

Despite the A57 splicing through its heart, Lindrick was chosen, though it was Mr Goodwin and the PGA who made the announcement and led the way in hosting the event, with members and officials at Lindrick often overlooked during the whole process.

The committee reported in its minutes that the club made “a few hundred pounds”, a paltry income that has now been multiplied infinitely by the rare distinction of having hosted a Ryder Cup.

Defeat for the British Isles eight years earlier at Ganton had sadly not been an aberration.

The United States were dominant, winning every match from 1935 onwards until the two sides met at the inland links on the southern border of Yorkshire in 1957.

A team including Rees, Max Faulkner, Christy O’Connor and Peter Alliss before he became the voice of BBC golf, won by 7.5 points to 4.5.

It would be their last victory for 28 years, by which time the Ryder Cup had been rejuvenated by the European golfers – famously Seve Ballesteros – swelling the ranks of the beleaguered Great Britain and Ireland team.

That American dominance has been overcome, and it is Paul McGinley’s European team that begin the 40th Ryder Cup week as favourites and the two-time defending champions.

Gleneagles will look resplendent and will play its part in another emotionally-charged chapter in Ryder Cup history, 85 years after it first bid to host golf’s greatest duel.

* Ryder Cup Revealed: Tales of the Unexpected by Ross Biddiscombe, published by Constant Sports, priced £20.

Emotions will be runnng high for Cup

A golfer’s true colours come to the surface in a Ryder Cup.

Whether it be the popping eyes and bulging veins of Ian Poulter, the redoubtable tenacity of Colin Montgomerie or the look of incredulity Tiger Woods shot playing partner Phil Mickelson after ‘lefty’ had slammed his tee shot on the 18th hole in 2004 into the fence.

Emotions are so raw during golf’s biggest event that they are nigh on impossible to mask.

Four years ago at Celtic Manor – that mesmering four days when emotions swung this way and that and back again – Europe’s victory sparked scenes of frenzied jubilation in the valleys.

The beaten team are forgotten in an instant but it was in their post-match press conference that the true emotions of the US team shone through.

Hunter Mahan, the man whose fluffed chip signalled the final act, broke down in tears trying to explain how he felt.

Mickelson, the class act that he is, leapt in to answer the question to save his friend, while Stewart Cink then praised his heartbroken team-mate for having the courage in the first place to volunteer for the responsibility of the final singles match.

America had lost but they gained a lot that day. As did the uplifting appeal of the Ryder Cup.