#15
2004, Oakland Hills:
The Tiger-Phil pairing bombs, highlights worst stretch in American history:
In the midst of America's lowest point in Ryder Cup history—three straight drubbings—this was the worst of them all. It came at home, when two of the best players in the world, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, failed to mesh, losing two straight Friday matches before the idea was completely abandoned. To this day, Mickelson and 2004 captain Hal Sutton are mad at each other, but disasters like these eventually led to Paul Azinger's captaincy, and the first American skipper to think like a European.
#14
1979, The Greenbrier: Larry Nelson beats Seve Ballesteros in singles, becomes first player to go 5-0 in current format
The first match of the "European era" proved that adding Europe alone would not be enough to make the Ryder Cup competitive. The Americans crushed the continental team, with Larry Nelson’s five-point sweep (four wins coming against a hapless rookie named Seve Ballesteros) highlighting the drubbing. Not until 2018 was Nelson's feat duplicated, then by Europe’s Francesco Moilnari.
1985, Belfry:
Sam Torrance 22-foot putt to clinch first European win.
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#13
1908: A seed merchant named Samuel Ryder becomes ill, a friend advises him to take up golf in order to "get more fresh air"
Frank Wheeler is the name of the pastor at Trinity Congregational Church who encouraged Ryder, then 50, to give golf a try as a way of getting more exercise and improving his health. Without Wheeler, and indeed without whatever was plaguing Ryder, he may never have taken up the game, he may never have watched an exhibition between American and British golfers in Gleneagles in 1921, and he may never have agreed to sponsor an official competition later that decade. Trace that line out, and who knows? We probably don’t have a Ryder Cup.
#12
2016, Hazeltine National:
Rory vs. Reed, the eighth hole
This incredible exchange is not just one of the best single on-course moments in Ryder Cup history—it also showed that America was ready and able to hold off a Sunday surge by the Europeans, that Hazeltine would not be another Medinah, and that in their first test since the Gleneagles disaster, they had come up with a winning plan. In time, this may look like the definitive start of yet another era—the American comeback.
#11
1983, PGA National: Lanny Wadkins clinches Cup with divine pitch in last hurrah for American dominance
Playing Jose Maria Canizares in the decisive match, Wadkins hit a pitch so perfect on the 18th hole that Jack Nicklaus, who so badly wanted to avoid being America's first losing captain on home soil, kissed the divot. He may not have known it, but this was the twilight of America's long period of dominance. Since that win, Europeans have gone 12-5 in Ryder Cups, and completely flipped everything we know about the event that the U.S. controlled for so long.
#10
1985, The Belfry: Sam Torrance 22-foot putt to clinch first European win.
With America's streak at 12 straight victories, plus a tie in 1969 that was like a victory, Europe needed to prove to itself and the world that it could actually win. Things had seemed to change in 1983, with a close loss at PGA National, and at The Belfry, Europe made good on that promise. When Torrance's putt dropped to end his match against Andy North, the streak was over, and the modern era of the Ryder Cup truly had begun.
#13
1969, Royal Birkdale: The Concession
It's easy to forget now how difficult and brave it was for Nicklaus, a Ryder Cup rookie, to concede Tony Jacklin's final putt at Royal Birkdale, ensuring a 14-14 tie rather than potentially securing a 14½-13½ win. Nicklaus' teammates, and his captain Sam Snead, were upset, and some never forgave him. It took an incredible sense of the moment for Nicklaus to even think of conceding, much less do it, and it stands as one of the great acts of sportsmanship in golf history.
#9
1991, Kiawah: The rise of the American fans; a spirited exhibition turns hostile
As a captain in 1987, Nicklaus' lament was that the fans simply didn't care enough at Muirfield Village. In 1991, they cared. The players and fans dressed up in fatigues—this was in the aftermath of the first Iraq war, and patriotism ran high. The heckling was intense, both on course and off, to the point that some American fans called European players’ hotel rooms in the middle of the night to wake them up at the behest of a local shock jock. Starting in Kiawah, nobody would ever have to worry about a "casual" Ryder Cup ever again.
#8
2014, Gleneagles: The Mickelson Rebellion sparks a change in American thinking
Fail for long enough, and even the most stodgy, backward institution will have to change its ways. Following a loss marked by total team dysfunction, Phil Mickelson took Tom Watson to task publicly, and the result was a U.S. Ryder Cup Task Force that—despite some snickers about the self-serious nature of the name—instituted immediate change, and saw immediate success two years later.
#7
1947, Portland Golf Club: Robert Hudson revives the Cup after World War II
America suffered greatly in World War II, but came out of that conflict in an incredibly strong global position. England, meanwhile, was devastated by human loss and German bombing, and entered a period of serious decline. In this obscure but hugely seminal piece of Ryder Cup history, Robert Hudson, a grocery executive from Oregon, paid all travel and other expenses for both the U.S. and British teams to play the first Ryder Cup in 10 years at Portland Golf Club. Without him, the entire event seemed well on the way to its death.
#6
1987, Muirfield Village: Olazabal dances on the green, Europe wins for first time on American soil.
Here it is: The first win for the Europeans on American soil. The fate that Jack Nicklaus avoided by the skin of his teeth in 1983 came back around to find him in 1987, where his team couldn't muster the fight to come back against a massive 10½-5½ lead run up by Tony Jacklin's Europeans. Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal went 3-1 when paired together, and it was Olazabal who put the symbolic exclamation mark on the weekend, dancing on the green when Europe broke their 60-year American losing streak.
#5
1999, Brookline: Justin Leonard's bomb leads to U.S. miracle at Brookline
If you want to pick out two moments that have brought the Ryder Cup to another echelon of sports drama in the last 25 years, they are mirror images of each other. The first came in Brookline, when the U.S. stormed back from a 10-6 deficit to stun Mark James' Europeans. The moment that lives on is Justin Leonard's putt against Jose Maria Olazabal that sent the Americans into spasms.
#4 (tie)
2012, Medinah: Justin Rose's putt spurs the Miracle at Medinah
The reflection of Brookline came 13 years later at Medinah, where the Europeans mounted the same comeback from the same deficit. They needed every bit of magic that day, and the most jaw-dropping moment of all came with Justin Rose's putt at 17 to win the hole from Phil Mickelson, which kept European hopes alive and pushed the unthinkable comeback from a far-fetched fantasy into the realm of reality.
+
1977, Royal Lytham & St. Annes: Jack Nicklaus meets with Lord Derby, demands change
Frustrated from the winner's side by yet another American drubbing, and a little annoyed by slow play, Jack Nicklaus met with a man named Lord Derby, cousin to Queen Elizabeth, who headed up the British PGA. He suggested—perhaps with a subtle implied threat—that something needed to change in order to save the event, and that something was the inclusion of the entire continent. Lord Derby agreed, the wheels were set in motion, and by 1979 the rest of Europe had joined Great Britain and Ireland. Without this vision from Nicklaus, the Ryder Cup would bear no resemblance to how it looks today . . . if it existed at all.
#2
1983, England: The Two Meetings — Jacklin becomes captain, Seve agrees to play
One meeting happened at the driving range at Moortown Golf Club in Leeds, where a shocked Tony Jacklin was offered the 1983 captaincy. The next meeting happened shortly after, at the Prince of Wales Hotel in Southport, when Jacklin convinced a peeved Seve Ballesteros to give the Ryder Cup another shot after money disputes kept him out in '81 following a disastrous 1-4 rookie campaign in '79. Both men said "yes," and though America didn't know it yet, the European renaissance had begun. Almost 40 years later, it's still going.
#1
