If the British entertained any thoughts of winning in Worcester -- buoyed perhaps by the thrashing they'd administered at Wentworth -- it took one day's play to change their minds. Led by captain Walter Hagen, the United States won three of four-hole foursomes. The following day, it won six of eight-hole singles matches and halved another (until 1961 the format was always four-hole foursomes followed by eight 36-hole singles matches). Final score: 91/221/2 The British team could have been forgiven had it expressed regret for having shown up.

Truth be told, they nearly didn't. In accepting the invitation to play, the British PGA didn't take into account the cost of sending a team across the Atlantic. To its rescue came Golf illustrated, which launched a drive to raise $3,000. Not only did its editor George Philpot use the magazine to tout the value of subsidizing the team, but he also appealed to each of 1,750 British golf clubs. Only 216 responded. After counting in a few corporate gifts and a $106 donation from Sam Ryder, the appeal came up $500 short, and Philpot and his magazine plugged the gap themselves.

Granted, it was only a few years earlier that club professionals had first been allowed inside many clubhouses, but the threadbare approach to the Ryder Cup would handicap the British sides for decades. The United States, meanwhile, did things with gusto. When the British team docked in New York in May 1927 after a stormy six-day crossing -- minus Abe Mitchell, who'd come down with appendicitis -- they were greeted by a welcome party made up of PGA of America officials and US, captain Walter Hagen. A police escort rushed them across midtown Manhattan to the Biltmore Hotel, where they dropped their luggage before being whisked north to the Westchester Biltmore (which much later became the Westchester Country Club, a longtime stop on the PGA Tour) for a welcome dinner and a floodlit putting tournament! All these arrangements would be quite normal today -- except perhaps the putting tournament -- but to the British this was another world. Even their garb made them look second class next to the flash Yanks -- another trend that would haunt the British for years. As the New York Times noted after the first day's play, "There was a time when the British were anything but fashionable in their dress. They have perked up. But they still have a long way to go to catch up with the Americans, who are Beau Brummels plus."

Same story for the 1929 matches at Moortown, in the north of England. The United States raised a war chest of $10,000 while a second Golf Illustrated fund-raiser gathered £800 and change. But at least Britian won the cup, erasing a one-point deficit after the foursomes by winning five singles matches and halving a sixth.

More important, the matches caught the fans' attention, as a trail of cars waiting to park stretched one mile back from the club, and galleries of up to ten thousand stood ten deep trying to get a glimpse of the golf Reported the Associated Press, "The gallery, which often was entirely out of control of the 200 officials and 50 uniformed policemen, fairly fought to get a close-up of play."

The 1931 matches at Scioto Country Club in Columbus, Ohio, were something of a foregone conclusion when the British had to play without three of their top players. Two were victims of a rule that said team members had not only to be British natives but also residents of Britain.

Although Henry (later "Sir Henry") Cotton was invited to play, he got into a dispute with the British PGA, who insisted he return to the United Kingdom with the rest of the team when he wanted to stay on and play some exhibition matches, and that every member of the squad would get an equal cut of exhibition-match revenue, when Cotton wanted to conduct his own.

The actual matches ended with a 9-3 victory for the United States, but a meteorological victory for the Brits. Although a brief storm offered temporary respite, the matches were played in Ohio in June, and temperatures approached triple digits.

So hot that the British PGA insisted that, although scheduling the Ryder Cup in June allowed the players to enter the US. Open on the same trip, they would no longer play in the height of summer The Ryder Cup thereafter moved to its familiar autumn dates.

Cotton was the victim of the residents-only rule when the Ryder Cup went to Southport and Ainsdale ...