{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
With the Walker Cup still fresh on the mind and the uniforms worn by both sides being tasteful and smart, there is no point in writing about those widely pilloried American Ryder Cup shirts from the last day of the 1999 match at Brookline, the ones which were famously likened to tablecloths in a fast-food chain. A single picture says it all.
The thing is that uniforms have made for trouble since the beginning of Ryder Cup time, with the same applying to the Solheim Cup when that began in 1990.
Dealing first with the Ryder Cup, after GB&I had lost the inaugural match of 1927, they levelled the score two years later when George Duncan, the GB&I captain, opened with a verbal victory over Walter Hagen. (Thus buoyed, he went on to win his single against Johnny Farrell by 10 and 8.)
When Hagen, a flamboyant soul if ever there was one, was asked by the media what his team would be wearing, he replied, “The finest dark blue knicker suits you ever saw.” When the same question was directed at Duncan, the Scot made plain that he had no truck with such trivia. “The Ryder Cup,” he said, curtly, “is a golf match, not a mannequin parade.”
That GB&I might not have had the money for uniforms at that stage was probably no bad thing in that when they did go down that route, they looked like the poor relations. Neil Coles, one of the most lauded British players of all time, has no trouble remembering his first Ryder Cup at Lytham and St Annes in 1961. His uniform, such as it was, had been laid out in the locker-room and it included just the one sweater for the four days. Sensing at once that it was the wrong size, Coles made the effort to try it on. “It was pitifully small,” he said.
CLICK HERE TO READ THIS UNLOCKED STORY AT GGP+SIGN UP TODAY AND SUPPORT PREMIUM GOLF JOURNALISM FOR JUST $1 A WEEK