The Ryder Cup

Every sport holds in it the classic moments and events that define them as a sport, not a ground for defining the overall champion or best of the best, but instead staking a claim to a tradition of the game that means everything. Professional football has Thanksgiving Day to stake a claim to a distinct part of sports lore, professional baseball makes a true even out of the beginning of the season with the events of opening day, while golf stakes its claim to tradition with events like the Ryder Cup. Not a place to define a champion or decide who the one best player is among all of the rest, no the Ryder Cup is about joining a team in a sport where teams aren’t the focus, the Ryder Cup is about bragging rights.

Like a lot of events or places in sports, the Ryder Cup is named after a professional and wealthy businessman who had a passion for the sport, Samuel Ryder. Ryder revolutionized the way that people purchase seeds by selling them in small envelopes and then revolutionized golf by coming up with an idea for a golf competition. By pitting professional golfers from the United States against professional golfers from Europe. In doing so the two major powers in the world were brought together to play a gentlemanly game in front of thousands of adoring fans.

The Ryder Cup is a series of matches that are totaled to determine an eventual champion, the champion either being the team of United States players or European players. There have actually been a few ties in the history of the Ryder Cup with one coming in 1969 and the other being in 1989. The winners of the previous Ryder Cup were then able to retain the title as they had not technically lost the title. The Americans actually conceded a put to the British in 1969 that Jack Nicklaus allowed which forced the tie, an unhappy concession among American players who wanted to see if they could defeat the British.