Hole in someone’s wallet
A boxful of Ryder Cup souvenirs dating back to the early days of the tournament has fetched a small fortune at auction. John Vincent reports.
The year is 1949 and American Ryder Cup golfers arrive in Scarborough laden with half a ton of meat to sustain them during their stay in a grey, bankrupt Britain still recovering from the Second World War. As older readers will know only too well, meat was in short supply in those grim days of rationing so the visitors could be excused for bringing their own. Even so, the move by the Americans, just a year after the London Olympics dubbed the Austerity Games, made headline news.
The extra meat may have made a difference, however, as the United States ran out 7-5 winners at Ganton over a British team which featured Max Faulkner, winner of the Open in 1951, and Dai Rees, who captained the team which memorably defeated the US at Lindrick, also in Yorkshire, in 1957.
Fast-forward to the 21st century and the gold cup donated by English seed merchant
Samuel Ryder before the first official tournament in 1927, now held between the US and Europe of course, is just as keenly contested, with sky-high prices for memorabilia relating to the event now par for the course.
So auctioneer CW Harrison & Son was naturally delighted when a cardboard box full of many thousands of pounds worth of signed programmes, dinner menus, photographs, reports, handwritten scores and other ephemera dating back to the early days of the trophy turned up unexpectedly at its Ossett saleroom.
Among the cornucopia of artefacts attracting global interest was an official souvenir of that match at Ganton, played on September 16 and 17, 1949 and signed by players including US stars Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, along with Rees and Fred Daly, the first Irishman to win the Open two years earlier. Best price, of £3,450, was for a batch of items including programme, signed dinner menus and photos, from the 1935 Ryder Cup at Ridgewood, New Jersey, followed by £2,990 for a rare copy of a magazine giving details of the 1959 tournament at Eldorado Country Club, Palm Desert, California, for which no programme was printed.
A final word on the Ryder Cup itself. The first, at Worcester Country Club, Massachusetts, in 1927, was won convincingly by the US 9-2, with British captain Ted Ray citing the Americans’ “superior putting” as the main difference between the teams. The second championship was staged in 1929 at Moortown, Leeds, the first to be held on European soil, with Britain running out 7-5 winners.