The key moment for the history of team golf came when the United States PGA’s counterpart in Britain recognised that it needed to include Seve Ballesteros and Bernhard Langer in the Ryder Cup, the biennial challenge match between Britain and the US. The Ryder Cup was more than 50 years old, but Britain had only won it three times, two of which were in the first four meetings.
In 1979 a European Ryder Cup team played the US for the first time and was duly beaten 17 points to 11 at the Greenbrier Club in Virginia. Two years later it was an even bigger margin — 18-and-a-half to nine-and-a-half — but in 1983 at PGA National in Palm Beach the margin was just one point.
The breakthrough came in 1985 at The Belfry in England when the European team handed the US a 16-and-a-half to 11-and-a-half thrashing. Two years later Europe won again, this time at Jack Nicklaus’s development, Muirfield Village in Ohio, and in 1989 the second halved match was played at The Belfry.
In one decade the playing fields had been levelled and it was soon apparent that a monster had been created that generated huge revenue and enthused a television audience who cared little for stroke play tournaments, but loved the hole-by-hole drama of match play.
By the end of the 1980s it was clear there was a market for the Ryder Cup that could not be assuaged by a biennial meeting, but neither organising body wanted to kill the golden goose by playing it every year.
It just so happened that the best player in the world was an Australian, Greg Norman, who, because of an accident of birth was ineligible for the Ryder Cup. He was not the only gifted and charismatic golfer with the temerity to be born outside of Europe and the US and so the success of the Ryder Cup, together with Norman’s pre-eminence led to the creation of an event that would fill the void.
There was no equivalent of Sir Samuel Ryder around to donate a trophy and name, so the wise men of the US PGA tour came up with the Presidents Cup.
Tour commissioner Tim Finchem explained that the name ‘would enhance the event and give it stature — it would also speak to the globality of the sport. To have various heads of state from all over the world participate would underscore the theme we felt the event was designed to be, which was to extend to a global basis team competition at its very highest level.â€
Implicit in Finchem’s explanation was that this tournament was about presidents in the plural, not the singular. The concept extends to non-Republican countries that don’t happen to have a president and the point is that there is no apostrophe in the title. The organisers of the Presidents Cup would like you to remember that.
This article is adapted from material that appears in Andy Capostagno’s new book, Fancourt: The Road to The Presidents Cup, published by Penguin, priced R180, available from all good bookshops.