Editor's note: This story was originally published September 10, 2025, on The First Call's Substack platform.
The biggest goat in Ryder Cup history has long since been forgotten. And that’s goat as in bungling loser, not slang for Greatest Of All Time. (Just wanted to clarify that, Mr. Woods.)
Meet Denny Shute, playing for Team USA in the 1933 Ryder Cup at Southport & Ainsdale Golf Club. Shute had a 15-foot birdie putt in the final singles match to win the Ryder Cup, two putts for a tie. He gunned his first effort past the hole, missed the ensuing par putt and just that quick, America went from possibly winning the Cup to losing it.
That’s an all-time Ryder Cup moment worth remembering. There are plenty more fascinating Ryder Cup backstories in “Ryder Cup Rivals: The Fiercest Battles for Golf's Holy Grail,” a new book by long-time New York Daily News golf writer Hank Gola. It is a fun read for golf fans who want to understand why this rivalry is so strong and has lasted so long.
Gola chose the 13 most important Ryder Cups over the last 98 years and brought them back to life, from the blowout 1947 Ryder Cup in Portland to the Jack Nicklaus concession to Bernhard Langer’s infamous miss and to the miracles at Brookline and Medinah.
It never gets old reading Ryder Cup adventures and Gola’s reporting and succinct writing in “Ryder Cup Rivals” makes these historic matches feel fresh and new again.
And in Shute’s defense, Gola reports that Shute didn’t know the team score or where the match stood. He was simply trying to make the first putt to win his own match.
“That’s why he gunned that first putt,” Gola says. “Walter Hagen was the U.S. playing captain and he was in the clubhouse entertaining the Prince of Wales. They were sitting by this big bay window watching. Hagen wanted to get out there to tell Shute the situation but he couldn’t politely get away from the Prince. So Hagen had to watch his guy three-putt to lose the Cup. Basically, the Prince of Wales won the Ryder Cup for Great Britain.”
Imagine a player three-putting to lose the Cup in today’s televised world with social media and derisive memes? He might have to apply to the FBI’s witness protection program.
There is one thread that weaves through nearly every Ryder Cup match.
Controversy. Bad or boorish behavior, on both sides of the Atlantic, is a close second.
It began even before the Ryder Cup. Blame Hagen, the American golfing legend and personality. “I never wanted to be a millionaire,” he once said, “I just want to live like one.”
Hagen crossed the ocean to play in the 1920 British Open at Royal Cinque Ports and upon arrival at the course, was denied access to the club and told to use the pro shop, where there was one hook on the wall. Golf pros were considered lower class types not intended to mingle with members in those days.
Hagen, 28 and brash, arrived in a limo every day the rest of the week and donned his fine golf shoes in the back seat to call attention to the situation. Hagen proceeded to win four British Opens in the 1920s. At the 1927 Open, Hagen shot off his mouth about why there were so few good British golfers, blaming laziness. So by the time the first Ryder Cup began later that year, Hagen had already established himself as The Ugly American.
The first Ryder Cup in 1927 in Worcester, Massachusetts, proved Hagen was at least correct about the quality gap between the U.S. and Great Britain in golf. The Americans crushed their foes by a 9.5-2.5 margin.
The Brits marveled at the wonderful treatment and reception they were accorded but, of course, there was gamesmanship from the start. Ted Ray and Hagen were the respective captains and there were heated discussions about playing four-ball matches instead of foursomes — Hagen’s idea since the Brits were more accustomed to alternate shot. Hagen wanted those four-ball matches to count for two points instead of just one. Ray rejected that idea and also Hagen’s suggestion that matches ending in ties be played to a conclusion.
Also, their lineups were supposed to be announced simultaneously, but Hagen delayed announcing his and was accused of making alterations in order to give the Americans an advantage. “Walter Hagen outwitted us,” grumbled George Duncan, a British team member.
The shenanigans and hard feelings have continued ever since.
Gola was at the landmark event at Brookline in 1999 when the U.S. rallied from a 10-6 deficit the final day to win, sparked by Justin Leonard’s famous putt, which in turn sparked a premature celebration on the 17th green.
“I happened to be kneeling at the back of the 17th green just to the side of that whole stampede,” Gola says. “It was started by the American wives. I won’t mention her name, but one wife was kneeling next to me and then (when the putt dropped) she took off across the green like Jesse Owens out of the starting blocks. Everybody else just followed and the whole thing turned into chaos. And the Europeans were already complaining about the behavior of the American fans before that.
“Boston fans are pretty passionate and the fans will be just as passionate in New York this year. But I always wondered why Mark James, that European captain, didn’t take his team to Fenway Park and stick them in the bleachers for a Yankees series or something a few weeks ahead of the Ryder Cup. They would have gotten a preview of what was in store. How were they surprised that Boston fans would act like idiots?”
There was intrigue in 1991 at Kiawah Island when Bernhard Langer missed a par putt that would’ve given the Europeans a tie. Langer bounced back to win his next event in Germany but it was the kind of finish that lives on in Ryder Cup lore.
Hale Irwin had hit an errant drive on the last hole of their singles match but it somehow ended up in a decent lie near the fairway. Conspiracy theories have abounded for years. Replays showed his drive hitting a female PGA of America official in the back and then no one could ever quite determine how Irwin’s ball got where it did.
“As far as I know, it hit her (the official) in the back and bounced toward the fairway,” Gola recalls. “She was actually escorting the head of the PGA of America with the Ryder Cup trophy at the time. She was bringing the trophy to the 18th hole for the presentation.”
There may have been a “foot wedge” involved with Irwin’s golf ball — by a fan, perhaps. Nothing was ever proven. Gola wrote, “Although Langer didn’t mention it in his 2002 book, ‘Bernhard Langer, My Autobiography,’ he was later adamant that something other than (the official’s) back intentionally redirected the shot.”
Also forgotten, though understandable, was how Irwin and Langer struggled under the pressure on that final hole. After the break on the tee shot, Irwin hit a fairway wood shot that came up short of the green while Langer’s 3-iron shot faded right in the breeze and was just off the putting surface. Wrote Gola: “Irwin fluffed the run-up shot, leaving himself 35 feet for par. All Langer needed was a good lag. The roll-out got him. It was six feet past. Langer still thought he had it”
Especially when Irwin left his must-make par putt 18 inches short and Langer, in astounding sportsmanship (and later controversial among his teammates), conceded the bogey. You know the rest. Langer missed the putt to win the hole and salvage a tie for Europe and the U.S. wobbled to victory.
He sent me a Christmas card of himself and the U.S. winning team, which I threw in the fire. What happened at Kiawah was deplorable. The level of aggression was something I’d never experienced in any previous Ryder Cup.
Gola wrote that European captain Bernard Gallacher held a long-time grudge against his counterpart, U.S. captain Dave Stockton, and said in 2018 he had still never spoken to Stockton. From the book: “He sent me a Christmas card of himself and the U.S. winning team, which I threw in the fire,” Gallacher said. “What happened at Kiawah was deplorable. The level of aggression was something I’d never experienced in any previous Ryder Cup.”
There’s always something at the Ryder Cup.
The British won the Cup back in 1957 for the first time since 1933 but hard feelings surfaced. U.S. captain Jack Burke requested that Ted Kroll, his No. 2 man in the singles lineup, be replaced because Kroll suffered severe chafing from the coarse team-issued pants he wore in the previous session and was unable to play. The Brits found that tough to swallow because Kroll fought in World War II and earned three Purple Hearts during the Anzio landing.
Burke ended up playing in Kroll’s place and got badly defeated by little-known Peter Mills as the Brits staged a brilliant rally for the win. Among bad behavior, America’s Tommy Bolt jumped to a 3-up lead over Eric Brown. Bolt, according to Gola’s research, began to slow-play Brown, who sent a caddie to bring him a folding chair, which he sat in when it was Bolt’s turn to play. That infuriated the mercurial Bolt and Brown went on to win the match. Wrote Gola: “There was no handshake. ‘Can’t say I enjoyed the game,’ Bolt told Brown. ‘I imagine not,’ Brown retorted. Bolt took it out on his 6-iron. He broke it over his knee, steel shaft and all, and headed to the locker room.” And when a British locker room attendant tried to express his condolences, Gola wrote that Burke wasn’t buying that line of bull and that the attendant was happy the Americans lost. Very possibly true.
Well, most reasonable observers agree that the Ryder Cup has gotten too vitriolic and strayed from its fundamental mission of sportsmanship envisioned by founder Samuel Ryder. The fans, media, players and respective team entourages are all guilty as charged, to some degree.
Gola’s “Ryder Cup Rivals” arrives just in time to get us in the mood for the next edition at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course. There is zero chance that there won’t be some bad behavior and boorish comments from New York fans, and some kind of odd controversy like what happened in France two years ago when Rory McIlroy lost his cool about an American caddie waving a hat before he was about to putt. The caddie’s actions were related to an alleged pay-for-play protest by hatless Patrick Cantlay.
Stuff happens. Feelings get hurt. Match play always gets personal and the Ryder Cup proves it every two years.
Expect sore losers and worse winners at Bethpage Black and as Gola’s book reminds us, no matter who wins, the patriotic mayhem and controversy that makes up the Ryder Cup will be glorious, as usual.
