A lot of golfers probably imagine that poor behavior at the
Ryder Cup
originated at The Country Club in 1999, when the infamous rush of
Americans onto the 17th green followed Justin Leonard’s miraculous
birdie putt
against Jose Maria Olazabal. Or perhaps they point to the
1991 Ryder Cup, when
gamesmanship, flag-waving and camouflage hats were
remembered as much as the
United States’
down-to-the-wire victory at Kiawah Island.
The truth is, the 1969 Ryder Cup at Royal Birkdale produced a
far
more egregious incident. So ugly was the fracas, it forced the captains of
both teams, Sam Snead and Scotsman Eric Brown, as well as the president
of the
British and Irish Professional Golfers Association, Lord Derby,
to rush from the clubhouse to the
8th green and defuse a situation that
had been teetering on the edge of
fisticuffs for some time.
The bloodletting actually began on the first morning, in a
foursome
match that pitted Scotsman Bernard Gallacher and Englishman Maurice
Bembridge against Lee Trevino and Ken Still. On the 13th tee, Bembridge
asked
Still to move out of his sightline. Still bombastically moved
everyone—caddies,
players and officials—from their customary places on
the tee.
At the same hole, Trevino bunkered his team’s second shot
under the
lip. When Still tried to extricate the ball, it rebounded and visibly
hit his shoulder, which meant a loss of the hole. “It hit you, didn’t
it?”
Trevino asked. There was no answer from Still. “Pick it up,” said
Trevino,
walking to the 14th tee. Still was benched that afternoon and
for the next
morning’s matches.
On the second afternoon, Gallacher and Welshman Brian Huggett
set
out for a fourball match against Still and Dave Hill. One could hardly have
dreamed up a more volatile quartet, and the trouble started on the 1st
green,
when Huggett asked Hill to stand still while Huggett putted.
Then Still, who was
almost breathing down Huggett’s neck, had to be
asked to move. Never a shrinking
violet, Huggett told Still, “I want
you behind me from now on.”
At the 2nd hole, just as Gallacher was about to putt
following a
succession of waggles, Still suddenly called out to his caddie, who
was
attending the flagstick: “I don’t want you doing that. Bernard’s caddie
should be doing it.”
The tension reached a fiery climax at the par-3 7th hole
when, with
Gallacher some three feet away, Still putted up just inside him and
promptly holed out—thereby playing out of turn. “You can’t do that,”
the British
pair chorused, then addressed their complaints to referee
David Melville, the
professional from La Moye Golf Club in Jersey,
Channel
Islands. As Melville delved
into his Rules book, Still snatched up
Gallacher’s marker and shouted,
“You can have the hole and the [expletive]
Cup!”
As the players made their way up the 8th fairway, I remember
not
only the players shouting at each other, but the crowd also getting into it.
Thankfully, the captains and Lord Derby arrived in the nick of time. It
was the
closest I ever saw to an actual fistfight on a golf course.
Samuel Ryder, who
donated the chalice that bears his name to spread
international friendship
through golf, must have been spinning in his
grave.
The irony is that in the last of the 16 matches on the final
day,
Jack Nicklaus made what I believe is the greatest sporting gesture in golf
history—even if it infuriated Snead at the time. That, of course, was
the
concession of Tony Jacklin’s final putt to allow the English hero a
halved
match, resulting in a 16-16 tie, the first time the British and
Irish had
avoided defeat since their 1957 victory at Lindrick.
Fortunately, Jack’s gesture, rather than his teammates’ and
opponents’ misbehavior, has provided the enduring memory of the 1969
Ryder
Cup.
