This competition has been played every other year since it began in 1927 between golfers in Great Britain and the United States with few exceptions (it was not held in 1937 thru 1947 because of World War II and it was not held in 2001 because of the terrorist activities against the United States); both single match play and foursomes have been part of it from the beginning. However, the teams, formats and even the competition levels have done some changing over the years.
The official beginning of the Ryder Cup was in 1927 but there were informal matches between American and British teams beginning years earlier. In 1921 at Gleneagles course located in Scotland is one such match where the Britain’s won 9 to 3. The next year saw the beginning of the Walker Cup which is where amateur Brits and Americans are pitted against each other.
It was the Walker Cup that started the talk of having something similar for professional golfers and in 1925 there was a London paper that reported a gentleman named Samuel Ryder, an avid golfer himself, had proposed forming the annual competition. The following year the idea began to really take hold and Ryder had even commissioned a trophy to be awarded to the champion.
Even though there were matches played in 1926 they were still regarded as unofficial and no trophy was awarded that year; one reason for this is that there were several members of the American team that were not actually American. After this it was determined that both sides of the teams members would need to be native born in order to be eligible (this was changed to actually obtaining citizenship later).
It was in June of 1927 that the team from Britain set sail on the Aquitania for a voyage that took six days to reach the United States; most of this cost has been covered by donations from those people that read a British magazine called Golf Illustrated. This time the U.S. won the match in a 9 ½ to 2 ½ victory, the Ryder Cup was awarded and the first official competition finally went on the records.
