The eyes of the golfing world will be on Gleneagles this month as Ryder Cup gets underway. What few people know is that six years before St Albans seed merchant Samuel Ryder put his name to the bi-annual slug-fest between professionals from Britain and America, this quiet corner of Perthshire played host to a similar match.
Long forgotten to all but the Right Honourable Alex Salmond, First Minister of Scotland, he made reference to it in a speech prior to the memorable 2012 match at Medinah Country Club near Chicago. In it he described how much he looked forward to the match returning to its “spiritual” home of Scotland two years later. “For it was in Gleneagles in 1921,” he proclaimed with fervent nationalistic passion, “that the first international match was played that inspired the Ryder Cup ...”
What Mr Salmond failed to mention is what a complete and utter calamity it proved and how it would be many years before someone felt brave enough to reintroduce the format we enjoy today. Not so much the “Miracle of Medinah” but more the “Curse of Gleneagles,” the story of that first match involved a half-built hotel, railway carriages substituting as sleeping quarters and a barely playable golf course. No wonder it took another six years before Old Sam Ryder uttered those immortal words: “we must do this again ...”
Details are sketchy but most historians credit Ohio businessman Sylvanus P Jermain with coming up with original idea for an international match for professionals. Instrumental in getting British stars Harry Vardon and Edward Ray to compete in the 1920 US Open at his home Club of Inverness, he even commissioned a silver trophy in the hope it would happen one day.
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