To measure how difficult it is to win away in the Ryder Cup, it is worth a chat with Tony Jacklin. He is among the very few Europeans to pull it off, but can still work himself into a state of incredulity about a defeat from long ago.
This particular road leads to Kiawah Island, South Carolina in 1991 and a match ranking among the most acrimonious in 98 years of Cup history. That was the encounter immortalised as ‘The War on the Shore’ and a chunk of ill-feeling persists about what happened on the last hole of the last match of the last day.
Everything was on the line when Hale Irwin of Team USA took his drive on the 18th in his Sunday singles clash against Bernhard Langer. With the pair all-square and Irwin needing half a point for the US to win, his ball hooked sharply towards the sand dunes, only for it to mysteriously appear on the fairway.
Did he indeed get a fortuitous, sizeable bounce off a woman in the gallery? Or did one of the home fans throw it back into favourable territory, as per the suspicions of many European players after Irwin eventually escaped with the half he needed?
Jacklin, 81 now and a guest of Bernard Gallacher’s European team that week, has his view. ‘We won in 1991,’ he tells Daily Mail Sport, before detailing something akin to fresh evidence on the ‘throw’ theory.
‘It happened. The guy who was the producer at NBC told the whole table (at a subsequent function). He saw it on one of his cameras and I don’t know what the hell you do about it now. I called over (US captain Dave) Stockton and he stood there like a dummy. It was clear what had happened.’
Graeme McDowell (left) and Ian Poulter go wild after Team Europe’s remarkable comeback at Medinah in 2012
US team members (from left) Mark O’Meara, Dave Stockton, Payne Stewart and Corey Pavin celebrate their controversial win at the 1991 tournament at Kiawah Island
Old wounds are slow to heal in the Ryder Cup, but that is natural in a forum where an away win is so rare. Since Team Europe was born in 1979, only six of the 22 Cups have been won by the away side, and in the last 30 years it has happened just twice in 13 tries.
Luke Donald, for one, was acutely aware prior to his departure for Bethpage Black that only four European captains have overseen a victory on US soil – Jacklin in 1987, Gallacher in 1995, Langer in 2004 and Jose Maria Olazabal, whose miracle in Medinah in 2012 signifies the last time either side won in the other’s backyard. Everything since has been a landslide win for the home team.
Daily Mail Sport has spoken to those involved in each of those wins and three of the captains to gain an insight into how their battles were won. They all had secrets and quirks behind their success, from Concorde trips and snubbed knighthoods to lockers stuffed with wine and cigars, but agree on one thing – the greatest variable in the modern era is home support.
‘Some disadvantages have changed with time,’ says Langer, who delivered a thumping 18.5-9.5 win at Oakland Hills in Michigan. ‘A big part of the challenge used to be dealing with courses that are unfamiliar and jet lag. Those effects are less now (Donald tackled the former by flying his team to New York 12 days before the opening day, while the spread of Europeans to the PGA Tour has mitigated the latter).
‘The one major challenge that stands is the crowd. It’s hostile, like Liverpool against Manchester United. They’re cheering for their own team and they’re booing you, applauding when you hit a bad shot, which is totally abnormal for golf.’
Among the most infamous episodes featured the booze-fuelled abuse of Colin Montgomerie at Brookline in Europe’s defeat in 1999 – his father, then 70, was so upset he walked off the course after seven holes. Shane Lowry’s wife received ‘dog’s abuse’ at Whistling Straits in 2021.
European fans are not averse to crossing the line themselves, it must be stressed, but the most febrile strands of the genre have tended to occur in the US.
Donald’s methods to navigate a field full of New Yorkers, which could be charged further by the presence of President Trump on the opening day, have included hiring actors to heckle his players during the Team Cup at the start of the year. Further out of left-field, he handed out virtual reality headsets this month to Rory McIlroy and his team-mates, featuring simulated abuse.
Philip Walton embraces captain Bernard Gallacher after Europe’s 14.5-13.5 victory at New York’s Oak Hill in 1995
US supporters run down the 18th fairway at Brookline in 1999, after a Cup marked by booze-fuelled abuse
The European team hold up captain Jose Maria Olazabal after his masterminding of the Miracle at Medinah
For Langer, the approach was more old-fashioned but vindicated by its outcome – his team, which included Donald as a rookie alongside the likes of Montgomerie, Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, adopted a hearts and minds mission.
‘We knew we had to warm the crowd towards us,’ Langer says. ‘In the practice rounds, we made a big thing of signing autographs and having pictures with the American fans. In 2004, the US (led by Hal Sutton and featuring Tiger Woods) decided not to do a lot of that. It added an hour to what we were doing, but it worked very, very well.’
Having endured the furnace of 1991 and then lost at home in 1993, Gallacher was braced for further hostility at the match when he had his third go in 1995, which Europe won 14.5-13.5 at Oak Hill in New York. An abundance of caution worked to their advantage.
‘There had been dirty tricks in 1991,’ says Gallacher, whose team at Kiawah had been subjected to phone calls in the middle of the night by a local radio station that had obtained their numbers at the team hotel. When no such antics reoccurred in ’95, it felt sedate by comparison and therefore easier.
‘I had gone with a very experienced team,’ Gallacher adds. ‘You need people who know what to expect and I had Monty, Langer, Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, Sam Torrance, Seve (Ballesteros). It wasn’t as hostile as we expected but in those away matches, experience is so important – it was key then and now.’
Donald has followed the same blueprint. His only rookie is Rasmus Hojgaard, and even he was pre-emptively deployed as an assistant in Rome in 2023. But there is no defined science in the risk of fielding a debutant. Langer had five in his team and Jacklin blooded Olazabal in 1987 – his three points signalled the dawn of a spectacular partnership with Ballesteros.
In keeping with a great many things in Ryder Cup captaincy, small details are either of great value or items of gimmickry overplayed in their importance. As the first European captain to orchestrate an away win, Jacklin has a nice summary: ‘Good golfers play good golf. Not rocket science.’
But he was a pioneer in a number of ways, with his 15-13 victory over Jack Nicklaus’s Americans in 1987 falling in the heart of a decisive era for the Cup.
Few golfers are more synonymous with the Ryder Cup than the much-missed Seve Ballesteros
Ballesteros toasts a rare European victory on US soil back in 1995
Sam Torrance was one of several older heads who Gallacher would rely on at Oak Hill
History correctly records Jacklin as the man who ‘saved’ the event, owing to the tide-turning results of his captaincy across four editions from 1983 through 1989. With one narrow defeat, two wins and one tie, he made the Cup competitive after decades of unchecked American dominance. It could be argued that the two-time major winner’s greatest strokes were played in the political battles he fought at home to make any of it possible.
Having orchestrated Europe’s win at the Belfry in 1985, and thereby the first US defeat since the success of a Great Britain team in Yorkshire in 1957, Jacklin rallied against a landgrab from the British PGA. They were seeking to snatch a greater share of the profits from an event that suddenly had renewed appeal and possibilities.
The situation became so fraught that the British PGA’s president, Lord Derby, a cousin of the Queen, threatened to send a team of club pros to play in that 1987 match over the likes of Ballesteros, Faldo, Langer and Sandy Lyle. Jacklin battled his way to a more sensible compromise, but does believes the episode ‘probably cost me a knighthood’.
With those stars in his team, they delivered the first European win in the US, maintaining an upward trajectory from his first captaincy in 1983. Looking back now, he ascribes much of it to treating the players better than they had been before.
‘In ’83, we flew Concorde, had nice suits and a team room,’ he says. ‘Self-esteem is vital in elite sport and we wanted the boys to feel special.
‘When I was playing in Ryder Cups (six defeats, one tie), I was once handed plastic shoes that fell apart and I remember the embarrassment. We wanted it to be different and we fought for that. By 1987, we had a good environment for a group of top-level players, major winners, and that helped us deliver the win.’
Asked for the secret of winning away, Jacklin isn’t convinced that one exists. ‘A lot of it is just common sense,’ he says. ‘You can manage the bits around the side, the details, and Luke Donald does that very well, but a lot of it is overdone. Pick your best players, match them well in the foursomes, look after them, and let them go out and do what they do best.’
He laughs about the challenge of leading Ballesteros, a temperamental genius, and it echoes with Langer’s approach to Darren Clarke in 2004. ‘There were some players I had a better relationship than others,’ Langer says.
Bernhard Langer (centre) guided a European team featuring a young Luke Donald to victory in Michigan in 2004
Donald poses with his opposite number, US captain, Keegan Bradley ahead of next week’s tournament
‘I didn’t ever have a whole lot to do with Darren Clarke in those days. It is much better now but back then he hung out with Lee Westwood and guys who weren’t really in my circle on tour. I did some research and found out he was good friend with Thomas Bjorn so I made Thomas a vice-captain to help me with that. There are a lot of little details.’
If we subscribe to the view that they matter – and Donald swears by them – then it stands to reason that they count double in a tough environment. For Langer, now an ambassador for Mercedes-Benz, that meant stocking Miguel Angel Jimenez’s locker with rioja, cigars and olive oil. He and Clarke teamed up for Europe’s first point of the match. ‘Anything that helps,’ says Langer.
Of course, results determine the narrative. Did Bjorn’s soft touch and Jimenez’s smoke make a difference?
Or was it down to Sutton’s mindless punt on pairing Woods and Phil Mickelson together when they had little affinity between them?
‘I never would have put have put them out in a pair unless everyone else was hurt!’ adds Langer.
As ever, sport comes down to the big and small calls and elements of luck. Olazabal, for instance, is in rarefied company, but lost two sessions and drew the other two across the Friday and Saturday at Medinah.
Was he a master leader and orator who inspired a comeback from 10-6 down? Or was he bailed out by the heroics of Ian Poulter and a draw for the Sunday singles that suited his golfers?
Would a detail-centric captain like Langer or Donald have allowed the chaos of McIlroy almost missing his tee-time in the singles because his alarm was set to the wrong time zone?
American fans are known for creating a hostile atmosphere for their European opponents
Justin Rose gives Olazabal credit for how he evoked the memory of Ballesteros during his team talks in 2012, with his close friend having passed away a year earlier
Justin Rose, for one, gives Olazabal credit, not least for how he regularly evoked the memory of Ballesteros in his private speeches, with his close friend having passed away a year earlier.
‘We were all driven by that and knowing what Seve meant,’ he told me. ‘We had a lot of emotion in that team room and a lot of fight in us.’
It’s a lovely thought. And maybe the right one. It might also be true that none of the above can stack up favourably against ball-tossers, mischievous radio stations, hecklers and a team of golfers who happen to be playing better than those they are up against. As Jacklin puts it: ‘If you win you’re a genius, and if you lose, you’re a schmuck.’
He might have just let the only meaningful secret out of the bag.
