The Ryder Cup revolution

The Ryder Cup is simply unrecognisable from the first matches I attended in 1983

Eyder cup 1983

AROUND 200,000 spectators will travel to Celtic Manor to watch as Colin Montgomerie’s European team attempts to wrest the Ryder Cup back from America.

That’s an impressive figure and it’s also roughly 180,000 more than turned out for the first Ryder Cup I worked at back in 1983.

Twenty-seven years ago, when I arrived at West Palm Beach, Florida, one of the first things that struck me was how poorly the match was attended.

There might have been 1,500 spectators there each day, but certainly no more, and around 1,000 of them had made the journey across the Atlantic to watch.

Back then, the average American knew very little about the Ryder Cup and seemed to care even less. The American players might have been up for the fight but the bulk of their fellow countrymen certainly were not.

The good news is things were about to change. That year, driven on by their hugely influential captain, Tony Jacklin, whose greatest contribution was to rid his side of its complex about being second best, the Europeans came within a single point of registering their first win since their surprise victory under Dai Rees at Lindrick in 1957.

Two years later, Jacklin’s Euro-fighters inflicted that elusive defeat on the Americans, thereby heralding a new era which has seen the Ryder Cup develop into one of the most eagerly awaited events in all of sport. This year, more than two billion TV viewers from 140 different countries will watch the action unfold.

That 3 wood, hit 240 yards from a deep bunker to the edge of the final green, is something I will never forget and the same can be said for the Spaniard’s defiance in defeat.

Nowadays, the Ryder Cup transcends normal sporting boundaries in a manner that only the very best events can do and there is no reason why it should not continue to do so, provided it continues to produce the intense drama for which it is famed.

Jacklin played a seminal role in the popularisation of the Ryder Cup but he couldn’t have done it without his on-course lieutenant, Seve Ballesteros, who that year in Florida played the finest shot I have ever seen to halve his singles against Fuzzy Zoeller.

That 3 wood, hit 240 yards from a deep bunker to the edge of the final green, is something I will never forget and the same can be said for the Spaniard’s defiance in defeat.

“There is no need to be unhappy,” he told his team-mates. “Now we know we can win.”

And win they did, in 1985, 87, 95, 97, 2002, 04 and 06.

Looking back now, it is clear that the 1983 match heralded the start of a new era, one driven by Ballesteros and the other members of Europe’s Big Five – Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Bernhard Langer and Ian Woosnam – and subsequently reinforced by a strength in depth that simply did not exist 27 years ago.

Back in 1983, the Europeans would have been seriously weakened without the services of two members of that Big Five.

This year, however, Montgomerie apparently has no qualms about facing the Americans with a team that includes six rookies but not the world No 9, Paul Casey, or the world No 22, Justin Rose.

When selecting Padraig Harrington, Luke Donald and Edoardo Molinari as his captain’s picks, the Scot continually spoke of the “embarrassment of riches” at his disposal.

It wasn’t a line I recall Jacklin ever using and is further proof of just how much the Ryder Cup has changed over the last three decades.

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