Fear Factor
At most golf tournaments, players worry about keeping
their heads down. At the Ryder Cup, it's their breakfast
When England's Peter Oosterhuis played in the Ryder Cup, from 1971 to '81, "We weren't going, 'Oh, we're going to beat the Americans,'" Oosty says. It was a mismatch.
Even when Peter Jacobsen made his first Ryder Cup team, under U.S. captain Lee Trevino in 1985, the event was not what it is today. "We had a ball with Lee," Jacobsen says.
No one outside the golf world gave the event much thought because the Yanks always won. Then the competitive balance shifted, and with it everything else.
Europe won at The Belfry in England in '85, breaking a three-decade string of U.S. dominance. Then, in '87, Europe won for the first time on U.S. soil, at Muirfield Village in Ohio.
"They had six major winners on that European team," Oosterhuis says. "So they weren't scared."
The most polarizing of those players, Seve Ballesteros, was in his prime, and he met his match, Paul Azinger, in a memorably tense singles match, won by the American, in 1989. Ballesteros and Azinger made no secret of their ill will for one another, and it spilled over when Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal accused Azinger and partner Chip Beck of cheating at Kiawah Island in 1991.
In just six years everything had changed — from the likely outcome, to civility among players and fans, to the ever-mounting pressure. By the time Jacobsen made his second team, in 1995, the Ryder Cup wasn't friendly, it was frightening.
"I was more nervous for the second one," Jacobsen says.
Call it golf 's ultimate stress test, where players are simply trying to remember how to breathe. It's that scary. But don't take it from us, take it from the players who have been there ...
Credit: Illustration by Tammanie Brawn
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