Cups Runneth Over
What if the PGA TOUR ran the Ryder Cup? Would the President’s Cup exist?
AP golf writer Doug Ferguson penned an excellent column about “disruption” in golf — a word we hear often these days. He compared today’s LIV-driven angst to the rift inside the PGA of America in the late 1960s, when touring pros wanted more control over their product and less emphasis on club professionals. With a young Jack Nicklaus among those taking up the cause, the players broke away from the PGA to create the Tournament Players Division — forerunner to the current PGA TOUR. As Ferguson notes, the divorce included the customary dividing of assets.
The splinter player group took over the World Series of Golf, a 36-hole exhibition for major championship winners at Firestone CC in Akron. That morphed into a regular Tour stop and eventually was elevated into the nascent World Golf Championships schedule.
The PGA of America took the Ryder Cup, which is now the most prestigious team event in men’s professional golf. From today’s perspective, the PGA won that exchange handily. In 1968, however, nobody would have predicted that.
As Doug also notes in his piece, the Ryder Cup in the late 1960’s was nothing like the cash cow it is today — in fact, it was losing money. It was also non-competitive, with the Americans winning 18 of the first 22 competitions, with one tie and only three losses. To create a more competitive event (and hopefully keep the cup going), the Great Britain and Ireland side was expanded in 1979 to include all of Europe. The deepened talent pool has paid significant dividends: in 21 competitions since 1979, Europe is up 12-9.
The Ryder Cup rosters were expanded because it was impossible to ignore the rising tide of golf in nations outside Great Britain and Ireland. It’s hard to imagine Ryder Cup history without Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Thomas Bjorn, or Sergio Garcia.
Similarly, it would be a disservice to the game if players like Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, KJ Choi, Adam Scott, or Retief Goosen never got the chance to challenge the Americans on a similar stage. That’s one of the reasons why the PGA TOUR started the President’s Cup in 1994. Just as the rise of European golf demanded a change to the Ryder Cup, the emergence of world-class players from outside Europe practically demanded the President’s Cup.
So, to answer my question from above: even if the Ryder Cup had fallen under the PGA TOUR umbrella after the split from the PGA, I still believe that some form of the President’s Cup would exist today. It would have been impossible to ignore the talent from South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, Canada, and countries in South America. The game has gone global, and a President’s Cup-style event was inevitable, regardless of who held the reins.
Still unanswered, after the last week in Charlotte: how to make it competitive.
