Speaker 1: Golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty five.
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Speaker 3: When I talked to most of the surviving players on
Speaker 3: both teams, it's just like today, great honor to play
Speaker 3: on the team. They were excited about playing the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 3: Even America, who expected to win. To make the team,
Speaker 3: was this huge honor. Ken Still said, this is two
Speaker 3: years ago. It's a quote that's in the book, and
Speaker 3: I might not having exactly right, but he said, in fact,
Speaker 3: I might be buried in the blue Ryder Cup jacket. No,
Speaker 3: they got along and they said I would play with
Speaker 3: anyone on the team. Frank Beard told me that it
Speaker 3: wasn't at all like today, where there's just all this
Speaker 3: build up and you know the captain and you're ahead
Speaker 3: of time, and it's talk talk talk, and they're trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what players to put together, and there's
Speaker 3: these sessions of psychological stuff and pep talks. None of
Speaker 3: that in sixty nine, just kind of old school. Here
Speaker 3: we go, here's my lineup. I asked Frank Beard. I said,
Speaker 3: what was sneed like as a captain? He said, well,
Speaker 3: it wasn't like today, he said. We might have had
Speaker 3: one meeting and it might have lasted five minutes.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup Finish that Shocked the World
Speaker 1: with author Neil Sagabut. This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Golf Smarter Podcast. Neil, it's good to be
Speaker 1: with you, Fred, it's good to be with you. It's
Speaker 1: good to be here. It's very good to be here.
Speaker 1: I'll give you more details on that in a minute.
Speaker 1: Before we get started, though, I want to remind everyone
Speaker 1: of the last time you were on the show, episode
Speaker 1: three fifty three and three fiftyfty four, for your great
Speaker 1: book on the nineteen fifty five US Open.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. It seems so long ago, but I
Speaker 3: guess it was only a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, well it was for it came out just
Speaker 1: in time for the twenty twelve US Open that was
Speaker 1: played in San Francisco.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. At the Olympic Club, and I think
Speaker 3: that's the fifth time that they played the Open there,
Speaker 3: and the first time, of course, was in fifty five
Speaker 3: when Jack Fleck upset Ben Hogan and one of the
Speaker 3: greatest upsets in the history of the game.
Speaker 1: And that's what prompted your book, The Longest Shut, Right,
Speaker 1: that's right, and that book is still available on our
Speaker 1: website in our Golfers mart Congratulations. It's gotten great praise
Speaker 1: because it was a really entertaining and timely story. And
Speaker 1: that's what we're going to talk about today because this
Speaker 1: weekend we've got the Ryder Cup happening, and you've gone
Speaker 1: back in history once again to fly shout a story
Speaker 1: that may not have been a big story at the time,
Speaker 1: but the nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup, what you call
Speaker 1: the Draw in the Dunes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think anybody it was an unexpected week
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty nine. This Ryder Cup was not what
Speaker 3: it is today. It had all the elements really that
Speaker 3: it has today, playing for your country, playing match play,
Speaker 3: playing with your teammates, and for a captain, but it
Speaker 3: had been pretty one sided up until that point. In
Speaker 3: America was winning a lot and then we had these
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty nine matches which when I looked into this
Speaker 3: and also even based on what else I've read, this
Speaker 3: was one of the best Ryder Cups ever played. It
Speaker 3: was and it's known. What people know it for is
Speaker 3: the ending, of course, and that's what caught my eye
Speaker 3: when I was thinking about writing another book, that famous
Speaker 3: ending with Nicholas, Jack Nicholas and Tony Jaqueline on the
Speaker 3: final green.
Speaker 1: But no spoiler alerts, don't give out the final ending.
Speaker 1: We're going to get there, okay, but go ahead.
Speaker 3: It was a great Ryder Cup and it was a
Speaker 3: surprise to the American team that went over there. It
Speaker 3: was again a different era. It was a great Britain
Speaker 3: team back then and not a European team. But it
Speaker 3: was a thrilling week and it had everything that you
Speaker 3: could want in a Ryder Cup that would make it
Speaker 3: exciting and great and suspenseful. There was and you know,
Speaker 3: there was some acrimony, so it was quite a dramatic
Speaker 3: week there at Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, so let me let me tell you my
Speaker 1: story about reading your book. I just got back from
Speaker 1: a week vacation. I was going down to Mexico for
Speaker 1: a week and was going to read the book while
Speaker 1: I was there, you know, lay on the beach and
Speaker 1: read a book. How perfect can life be? And so
Speaker 1: I started reading it, and I started getting into the
Speaker 1: background of Tony Jacqueline and how you set up who
Speaker 1: he was and how he became, you know, one of
Speaker 1: the first British players to really make have an impact
Speaker 1: in the United States. I was really enjoying it, and
Speaker 1: I was just starting to get into nineteen sixty nine.
Speaker 1: And I also love the way you incorporate world history
Speaker 1: as place markers to what was going on, to all
Speaker 1: your stories. And then just as I was about to
Speaker 1: get to the Ryder Cup, Hurricane O'Dell hit Cabo San Lucas,
Speaker 1: which was where I was, and we were right in
Speaker 1: the heart of it, and we got stranded. I am
Speaker 1: a I'm a refugee of heran odeal. It was an
Speaker 1: amazing and terrifying event and it took us three days.
Speaker 1: We didn't get out until Wednesday. The hurricane was Sunday night,
Speaker 1: and so I didn't get to finish the book. So
Speaker 1: it's up to you, my friend, to tell me the
Speaker 1: entire story. I want to hear it now.
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, Fred I have to say, I'm
Speaker 3: just glad you're you're back at home and that we're
Speaker 3: having this conversation. Thank you, Thank you and your wife
Speaker 3: are safe and you weren't injured, right.
Speaker 1: No, Luckily none of the windows in the room we
Speaker 1: were staying and imploded like the rest of the resort.
Speaker 1: The resort that we were staying at was pretty much destroyed.
Speaker 1: I would be very surprised if they're open again for
Speaker 1: the Christmas rush, and they were, they were. There were
Speaker 1: people telling us. I talked to a couple of hotel managers.
Speaker 1: They were telling us that it could be three weeks
Speaker 1: to a month before they get any electricity, and there
Speaker 1: was no water, there was no sewage, and the sewage
Speaker 1: was starting to back up in the street, and there
Speaker 1: was looting and rioting and martial law was set. It
Speaker 1: got ugly really fast, but we luckily had each other
Speaker 1: and didn't get injured and were able to make it
Speaker 1: through it. And because both of us worked in media
Speaker 1: in the San Francisco area for a long time, we
Speaker 1: still have a lot of friends who are in it.
Speaker 1: And as we got off the plane in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: there was a news crew waiting for us. So luckily
Speaker 1: they knew that I would be the guy who has
Speaker 1: a lot of video and photos of what happened, and
Speaker 1: so I will post there's a news story from a
Speaker 1: local TV station. There's a news story, and I'll put
Speaker 1: it on our website as well to show our adventure,
Speaker 1: if that's what you want to call it.
Speaker 3: That was that was quite an adventure. And actually I
Speaker 3: saw it right before we started talking today, and I
Speaker 3: was just sort of a gast and and and then
Speaker 3: I saw your email that said safely returned from Mexico,
Speaker 3: and I was so glad to hear that.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Was that I know we're going to talk about this book,
Speaker 3: but was that was that the most terrifying experience of
Speaker 3: your life?
Speaker 1: Wow? How crazy is this that I have to think
Speaker 1: about it. A couple of years ago, my wife was
Speaker 1: a victim of a car accident. She was a pedestrian
Speaker 1: hit by a car. And that that may have been
Speaker 1: one of the more challenging things in my life because,
Speaker 1: you know, we later learned after it was all over
Speaker 1: and she made it and stuff, we later learned how
Speaker 1: close she was to not make it. But as something
Speaker 1: we experienced together, it was. It was really frightening. It
Speaker 1: was There were definitely thoughts crossing my mind that may
Speaker 1: not make it back to the United States. Definitely that
Speaker 1: thought crossed my mind. And I think it would have
Speaker 1: been much worse if any of the windows imploded in
Speaker 1: our place. They actually the first room we were in,
Speaker 1: we were right on top of the beach. It was
Speaker 1: on the fifth floor of a sixth story resort, and
Speaker 1: we literally were thirty yards from the waves breaking. And
Speaker 1: they at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. We arrived Saturday night,
Speaker 1: and by three o'clock Sunday afternoon, they had moved us
Speaker 1: to a different room in the complex because they said
Speaker 1: it was safe. And we're like, we didn't even know
Speaker 1: this was coming. We thought there was going to be
Speaker 1: rain on Sunday night. That was the forecast, that was
Speaker 1: going to be rain, And so we moved into a
Speaker 1: different room and we later went back and you saw
Speaker 1: on the video, you saw how we went back into
Speaker 1: that room and it was there was glass all over
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like tempered glass. It was just you know,
Speaker 1: little shards, I mean little pieces of glass. It was
Speaker 1: shards of glass. And there was one person from our
Speaker 1: hotel who got very bloodied because the glass hit him,
Speaker 1: and his wife broke her arm. But if the glass
Speaker 1: would have broken in our room, I think we would
Speaker 1: have freaked out a bit more than we actually did.
Speaker 1: But the sounds of it were incredible. We had one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty five mile an hour sustained winds and
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty mile an hour gusts, and a
Speaker 1: lot of the construction there in that area they used
Speaker 1: the Spanish tile roofing, and the tiles were flying everywhere,
Speaker 1: and they were crashing onto cars, and it sounded like,
Speaker 1: you know, bottles breaking NonStop. And then at about and
Speaker 1: I'm from California, I'll give me an earthquake any day. Right,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful day. Whoops, the ground is shaking. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's over, and it's still a beautiful day. The anticipation,
Speaker 1: they said it's coming, So the anticipation for hours drove
Speaker 1: us crazy, and then the hours of the hurricane terrified us.
Speaker 1: And then at midnight it got quiet and it was
Speaker 1: very calm, and then at twelve thirty it picked up again.
Speaker 1: So clearly the eye of the hurricane went directly over us.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I answer your question. It was pretty terrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can't even imagine it. I know friends who've
Speaker 3: been through a hurricane, but I just can't. I wouldn't
Speaker 3: want to go through that. I'm sorry you've been through it.
Speaker 3: I'm glad. I'm glad you're okay in.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't want to go through it again. I've
Speaker 1: been in Atlanta once and in Indianapolis once when Tornado
Speaker 1: Watch was happy and we had to you know, in Indianapolis,
Speaker 1: we had to evacuate into a bunker underground and that
Speaker 1: made me a little bit crazy, but nothing happened. And
Speaker 1: you know, a tornado, you can see the path of
Speaker 1: a tornado when you know when it does its destruction,
Speaker 1: but houses may get you know, run right over, but
Speaker 1: the houses on the sides of it don't have as
Speaker 1: that kind of damage. An earthquake most of the time
Speaker 1: on earthquakes, especially in northern California that's kind of built
Speaker 1: for earthquakes that you know, they're prepared for it. You
Speaker 1: have isolated instances. When we were in the nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: nine earthquake, we were actually a Candlestick park at the
Speaker 1: World Series, and when that occurred, we had I think
Speaker 1: there were three major areas of destruction during that earthquake,
Speaker 1: and that was the Bay Bridge we had just been
Speaker 1: on a half hour earlier, the Oakland area, the freeway
Speaker 1: that had collapsed, the MacArthur Freeway that collapsed, which we
Speaker 1: drove by that night and saw. And in the Marina
Speaker 1: district in San Francisco the ball of fire, the fires
Speaker 1: that were in downtown and we drove by those that
Speaker 1: night as we were leaving the ballpark. But here with
Speaker 1: the hurricane, it was everywhere. You didn't miss anything, and
Speaker 1: it went right. It surprised them. They thought it was
Speaker 1: going to go west and stay off land, but it
Speaker 1: came right up the middle of the Baja Peninsula and
Speaker 1: went up through La Pause. So there was a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of destruction. At this point, I understand they only
Speaker 1: have five confirmed deaths, which is really remarkable, but a
Speaker 1: lot of injury and the rioting and the looting that
Speaker 1: took place and continued to grow until they had to
Speaker 1: declare martial law on Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, but enough of that. I'm safe, I'm here
Speaker 1: and it's time for golf. Thank goodness, I get to
Speaker 1: do this again. I have this to do, so let's
Speaker 1: talk about your book Please Draw in the Dunes, the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup and the finish that shocked
Speaker 1: the world. So I'm going to just sit back and
Speaker 1: I want you to take it from the top and
Speaker 1: tell me, set up the story, and then give it
Speaker 1: to me.
Speaker 3: Please well without giving away the ending right off the bat.
Speaker 3: That was what caught my eye, and that was where
Speaker 3: I started looking into this, and I thought, why did
Speaker 3: that matter so much? Why that was that such a
Speaker 3: big deal, Why is it so well remembered, and why
Speaker 3: do we still see clips of it? And we'll probably
Speaker 3: see clips of it this week during the Ryder coverage
Speaker 3: of Nicholas and Jacqueline on that Final Green. And so
Speaker 3: when I started researching this topic, I discovered what journalists
Speaker 3: called at that time the greatest Ryder Cup that had
Speaker 3: ever been played. And I think it's near the top
Speaker 3: of a lot of people's list even today. It was.
Speaker 3: In some ways it resembles my first book in that
Speaker 3: you have a heavy underdog, the Great Britain team, and
Speaker 3: you have the Americans who have just been owning them
Speaker 3: ever since the early thirties. Great Britain's won once they
Speaker 3: won in nineteen fifty seven over there, and in the
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup that precedes this nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup.
Speaker 3: I go into that and you've probably read that chapter.
Speaker 3: It's the second chapter. It's called Champions. I thought it
Speaker 3: was important to set up the story, not only give
Speaker 3: the context of the era, but talk about what happened
Speaker 3: in sixty seven at Houston. And what happened was America
Speaker 3: by fifteen points, largest march in the history of the
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup. Ben Hogan was captain of the American side.
Speaker 3: And this is without Jack Nicholas. They didn't even have
Speaker 3: Nicholas on the team. Now, they had a lot of
Speaker 3: other great players like Billy Casper and Arnold Palmer So.
Speaker 3: And sixty seven was also this young man named Tony
Speaker 3: Jacklin's first Ryder Cup as well, and he had a
Speaker 3: pretty good debut, even though his side got whipped pretty handily.
Speaker 3: So in the early part of the story, I set
Speaker 3: up the what golf is like in this era, what
Speaker 3: it's like in America, what it's like in Great Britain.
Speaker 3: And now you know, we see we see European players
Speaker 3: in America every week they play on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 3: There are really no barriers to them other than their
Speaker 3: ability to play. But back then it was still very separate.
Speaker 3: And as you mentioned early on, Tony Jacqueline was one
Speaker 3: of the few players from Great Britain that played on
Speaker 3: the American Tour, and it wasn't really a very welcoming
Speaker 3: tour in those days. It wasn't really set up for
Speaker 3: these foreign guys to come over and play. But Jacqueline
Speaker 3: earned his way onto the tour, and this particular story
Speaker 3: drawing the Dunes also chronicles his rise in golf. That
Speaker 3: year he won the British Open in July, the first
Speaker 3: grit to win the British Open in eighteen years. So
Speaker 3: he's the star of his team heading into Royal Birkdale,
Speaker 3: one of the twelve men and Nicholas. Interestingly, and this
Speaker 3: has been a topic for a lot of conversation I've
Speaker 3: been having since the book has come out, is playing
Speaker 3: his first Ryder Cup even though he's a seven year
Speaker 3: veteranan tour and nine eleven teammates are also playing their
Speaker 3: first one. So you have a bunch of rookies and
Speaker 3: the reason for that is the PGA of America back
Speaker 3: in that day had a stipulation that you had to
Speaker 3: be a PGA professional a member for five years before
Speaker 3: you were eligible to play on the Ryder Cup team.
Speaker 3: So Jack barely missed in sixty seven. And now he's
Speaker 3: twenty nine years old, He's won seven majors at this
Speaker 3: stage in his career, not quite thirty wins on tour,
Speaker 3: and he's playing in his first as are ten of
Speaker 3: his teammates. And you have five rookies on the Great
Speaker 3: Britain team. Just for the I know you've got great
Speaker 3: golf fans on your show who really get into this stuff. Red,
Speaker 3: I'm probably going into a little bit more detail than
Speaker 3: I do on several of my interviews, But the way
Speaker 3: the teams were determined in nineteen sixty nine, America was
Speaker 3: determined entirely on a points system, so the top twelve
Speaker 3: players in the point standings made the team. The captain
Speaker 3: was Sam Snead. People recognize that name. Sam had no picks,
Speaker 3: and I'm sure it was of no concern at all
Speaker 3: to him because America always won. You know, I think
Speaker 3: they probably felt like, whether they said it out loud
Speaker 3: or not, that they could go over there WITHINNY twelve
Speaker 3: and win.
Speaker 1: And the press treated it that way as well, right.
Speaker 3: It was almost a non event over here because you know,
Speaker 3: back in that day it was probably seen more as
Speaker 3: an exhibition from the American side of things, because, as
Speaker 3: I said earlier, it had all these great elements and
Speaker 3: all this great potential, and it was pretty pretty neat
Speaker 3: and compelling when it started. But what it lacked was competition,
Speaker 3: competitive matches at being close, at being exciting. That was missing. So,
Speaker 3: you know, there's so many things going on in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, and it's a little bit there are these
Speaker 3: little cultural things I put in there to remind people
Speaker 3: of what was going on. Then the Vietnam War, Richard
Speaker 3: Nixon entering the White House, the moon landing with Neil Armstrong.
Speaker 1: Making a comment about golf when he was on the moon.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I found that
Speaker 3: in Golf Illustrat, which is a British was a British
Speaker 3: weekly golf magazine. In fact, it's still around.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was a British publication.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And in doing my research, I can just tell
Speaker 3: your audience too that a lot of it came from
Speaker 3: the other side of the pond because it just wasn't
Speaker 3: covered as heavily over here. It was probably relegated more
Speaker 3: to the back pages of the sports page. Now it
Speaker 3: was covered. There were New York Times stories, there were
Speaker 3: some Golf magazine stories, but it was very heavily covered
Speaker 3: in Great Britain, where they really loved their golf and
Speaker 3: they had high hopes for their boys, even though they lost.
Speaker 3: You know, in America that September, you're in the middle
Speaker 3: of a baseball pennant race and the Chicago Cubs are
Speaker 3: looking like they're going to win the Pennant, but they don't.
Speaker 3: And people who are baseball fans have heard this before
Speaker 3: with the Cubs.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was the year of the Miracle Mets,
Speaker 3: and some people who were around will remember that when
Speaker 3: they surprise everyone they won the Pennant and then they
Speaker 3: beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.
Speaker 1: So you know, Tom Seaver exactly.
Speaker 3: So it's so many things happened that year. But as
Speaker 3: it turned out, it did end up being a pivotal
Speaker 3: year in the Ryder Cup because when they got to Burkedale,
Speaker 3: they had these great exciting matches. The British guys played
Speaker 3: really well and they had a very I don't know
Speaker 3: if you've gotten to this part yet, Fred, but their
Speaker 3: captain was a Scott named Eric Brown, very fiery, competitive,
Speaker 3: win it all costs mentality sort of guy, and he
Speaker 3: had been a Ryder Cup player and it actually won
Speaker 3: matches in an arrow when his side usually was losing.
Speaker 3: He was undefeated in singles, which was kind of an
Speaker 3: anomaly for guys on his side, and he brought a
Speaker 3: different attitude to the matches. He didn't bow to the Americans.
Speaker 3: He was like, come on, guys, we're gonna we can
Speaker 3: We can play with these guys, we can beat them.
Speaker 3: And that was his attitude. And then you've got kind
Speaker 3: of krusty old school Sam Snead who doesn't believe in
Speaker 3: things like conceiting putts, which sets up our ending nicely,
Speaker 3: and who is as captain twice before. He's been a
Speaker 3: captain twice before, and he's making his eighth appearance in
Speaker 3: the Ryder Cup. Never lost, never been on a losing team,
Speaker 3: and there's never been a tie. So uh, A lot
Speaker 3: of really interesting things happened that week at Royal Birkdale.
Speaker 1: If I can take you back a moment, give me
Speaker 1: the history of how the ryder Cup began, well.
Speaker 3: I'll give you the you know, I've got that detail
Speaker 3: in the book because I wanted to give readers who
Speaker 3: aren't that familiar with it some background.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought that was so interesting.
Speaker 3: Now I want readers to know. I put that backstory
Speaker 3: in there, but I don't think it'll bog them down.
Speaker 3: It's in the first chapter, and we peel back to
Speaker 3: the beginning and I cover that the origins of it
Speaker 3: in about seven pages, and I bring it back forward
Speaker 3: to nineteen sixty eight sixty nine, which is where the
Speaker 3: book starts, but it started. It got its name ryder
Speaker 3: Cup from Samuel Ryder, who was an English seeds tycoon.
Speaker 3: He sold seeds by mail. That's how he got started,
Speaker 3: and he was very successful, very industrious, and he made
Speaker 3: a lot of money. But by the time he turned
Speaker 3: fifty his health was poor, and so his doctor said,
Speaker 3: you need to get some exercise, you need to get
Speaker 3: some fresh air. And a minister friend of his, I
Speaker 3: think it's actually his pastor, said why don't you take
Speaker 3: up golf? And I think at first writer said, Noah,
Speaker 3: I don't want to do that, But then he ended
Speaker 3: up taking up golf and he got hooked in a hurry,
Speaker 3: and he just couldn't play enough golf.
Speaker 1: I know it well.
Speaker 3: And here's what's amazing, Fred, and you know it because
Speaker 3: you've read this. The man's fifty years old. He takes
Speaker 3: up the game. He hires this fellow named Abe Mitchell,
Speaker 3: who's he hired someone else first, but he ended up
Speaker 3: hiring this fellow named Abe Mitchell, a top player over there,
Speaker 3: a professional, and I think he pays him something like
Speaker 3: a thousand pounds a year to be his personal instructor.
Speaker 3: He plays and plays and plays. He plays every day,
Speaker 3: I think except Sunday or practices in his you know,
Speaker 3: at his state. And in a year he's a six
Speaker 3: handicap and he starts at fifty. Now that's pretty incredible. Well,
Speaker 3: anyway rider starts, he hasn't this acute interest in golf,
Speaker 3: and somehow he ends up at these international matches, these
Speaker 3: informal matches where when the Americans come over to play
Speaker 3: in the Open Championship, which we call the British Open,
Speaker 3: they go out and play some rounds with some of
Speaker 3: the British players, and they have these sort of informal matches,
Speaker 3: but they have this international flavor. These guys that get
Speaker 3: together to play only once a year. And writer observed
Speaker 3: this and said, this is really a great thing, that
Speaker 3: it'd be good if there was some sort of you know,
Speaker 3: that this could be on a regular base and there
Speaker 3: could be, you know, something more official structure to it.
Speaker 3: And this is what ended up being becoming the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 3: And it's called the Ryder Cup because he donated the trophy.
Speaker 1: And that was all he donated, was a trophy.
Speaker 3: He donated the trophy. But he also I think in
Speaker 3: the early stages, I think he might have and it's
Speaker 3: in my book, so I need to read my own book,
Speaker 3: but I think he might have donated some money to
Speaker 3: help the team get to America for the first official
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup, which was in nineteen twenty seven. But just
Speaker 3: to kind of tie a bow on this thing with
Speaker 3: his instructor, the man who sits atop the Ryder Cup
Speaker 3: trophy is Abe Mitchell, his instructor that he hired, and
Speaker 3: Abe Mitchell was really touched that he's on the trophy.
Speaker 3: He didn't really feel that he was deserved as a
Speaker 3: griping entner for it. But so it's all start in
Speaker 3: twenty seven and the officials there's you know, there was
Speaker 3: kind of this other sort of false start in the
Speaker 3: early twenties, but the official start, if you look back
Speaker 3: at the history, is nineteen twenty seven, and they trade
Speaker 3: the first four, each team winning on their home soil,
Speaker 3: and then that's when it turns into this one sided
Speaker 3: affair and America goes on a rampage and wins twelve
Speaker 3: of thirteen heading into the sixty nine Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: And what was the difference. Why did the American team
Speaker 1: dominate so well.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm I think they were just better players.
Speaker 3: I do. I think golf really caught on in America.
Speaker 3: You had more people, the game really flourished, and I
Speaker 3: have to think that they were just better. But I
Speaker 3: don't know for sure, but that's certainly the case as
Speaker 3: we approached nineteen sixty nine, and you look at the
Speaker 3: fifties and the sixties, it's very clear that they were
Speaker 3: better players and they had I think they had better competition,
Speaker 3: they had a better tour. There were all kinds of
Speaker 3: theories and I go into this too in the book
Speaker 3: and the lead up to the sixty nine Ryder Cup,
Speaker 3: and there were a lot of theories about why the
Speaker 3: British players were not that competitive with the American players.
Speaker 1: And some of it was it style of play. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously the Parkland courses versus you know, the Why am
Speaker 1: I blanking on because my brain's Fried Links Links, Thank
Speaker 1: you Links Golf. Yeah, park Yeah, that was Link's style.
Speaker 3: No, that's very perceptive, Fred. That was one of the reasons.
Speaker 3: And I got to spend time with Tony Jacqueline, which
Speaker 3: was a lot of fun.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: He understood the history of this because well he's he
Speaker 3: was born just after World War Two and he grew
Speaker 3: up watching these great British players and he idolized them.
Speaker 3: But he said, he told me, he said, when he
Speaker 3: came to play the American Tour, he was trying to
Speaker 3: change his swing technique. For one thing. The courses are
Speaker 3: different here, but you also have you can play, you
Speaker 3: can play all year round somewhere in America. The season
Speaker 3: is short over in the United Kingdom and Great Britain,
Speaker 3: and the weather is not as good. And Tony told
Speaker 3: me that that affected things like swing technique. And at
Speaker 3: one point in history, the USGA and the Royal and
Speaker 3: Ancient Golf Club, they they adopted a different ball and
Speaker 3: I don't know some of your your audience who are
Speaker 3: old enough to remember there was a smaller British ball,
Speaker 3: and there was a lot of talk about the Americans
Speaker 3: being better because they could play They played with a
Speaker 3: bigger ball, which was harder to control, and then when
Speaker 3: they would switch to the British ball for the Ryder Cup,
Speaker 3: they hit it farther, straighter. They were just better. So
Speaker 3: there were a lot of theories about why America won
Speaker 3: all the time, but I think if you just had
Speaker 3: to choose one thing, their players were better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I have to ask you about I was
Speaker 1: so fascinated about the conversation about the ball in the
Speaker 1: book because it's not that long ago that they standardized
Speaker 1: the ball. I mean it was in the nineteen sixties. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's fifty years or whatever it is ago, but still
Speaker 1: in the history of golf, it's like there was debate
Speaker 1: on the type of ball. You know, things are now
Speaker 1: so rich and standard for everything. It just made me
Speaker 1: think about all this conversation that is happening today about
Speaker 1: how do we get more people to play golf, what
Speaker 1: things can we introduce, and the conversation the most humorous
Speaker 1: and yet has some legs to it to introduce and
Speaker 1: bring in new people to the game. Is this concept
Speaker 1: of the fifteen inch hole, right, I'm sure you've read
Speaker 1: about this, people saying, yeah, sure, fifteen inch hold, it'll
Speaker 1: cut strokes, it'll cut down the amount of time, and
Speaker 1: more people will succeed and they'll have more fun. And
Speaker 1: then I'm reading about a smaller ball and thought, well,
Speaker 1: why don't they try that? Yeah, I mean they've already
Speaker 1: had a smaller ball, it's already been play it was on,
Speaker 1: you know, being used in Europe, and maybe that would
Speaker 1: be a way. And wouldn't a smaller ball fly farther anyway?
Speaker 1: And if they used head A's technology with a little
Speaker 1: bit smaller and it wasn't It was not significantly smaller.
Speaker 1: Was what six one hundredths of an inch smaller?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was one point six to two inches in
Speaker 3: diameter versus one point six's eight.
Speaker 1: Which is the standard for today, right, Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: so that's six one hundreds So it's not that much smaller.
Speaker 1: But would that have an impact? Would that be a
Speaker 1: successful way to make score scores lower?
Speaker 3: I don't know that that would have enough impact for
Speaker 3: your average player.
Speaker 1: Not like a fifteen inch hole would.
Speaker 3: No, no, not at all. And frankly, the balls today,
Speaker 3: even with them being bigger, are are a lot better
Speaker 3: I think, and a lot less susceptible to weather conditions
Speaker 3: than back in the old days when you had those
Speaker 3: blott of balls and wound balls.
Speaker 1: But the scores are not that much different.
Speaker 3: No, that isn't that interesting. And the equipment's better. M hm.
Speaker 3: So that must say something about us.
Speaker 1: Ah, I'm not going there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well I meant I met the universal US, all
Speaker 3: the scolars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we don't. We don't have our lives don't
Speaker 1: allow us to practice as much as we'd like. And
Speaker 1: some players, but most players are not getting better, which
Speaker 1: is kind of crazy because we have all this technology
Speaker 1: behind us, and we have all this mental game which
Speaker 1: didn't exist in the sixties. You know, swing coaches were
Speaker 1: about it. Getting back to your story, what was the
Speaker 1: relationship back to nineteen sixty nine of the US team
Speaker 1: members because you had successful players and you had a coach,
Speaker 1: you know, the one who is cold sneed coaching the team,
Speaker 1: who you know, refused to lose and wanted to get
Speaker 1: it done his way. Were there any animosity, contention, competition
Speaker 1: among the American teammates that created any issues.
Speaker 3: Not that they told me later. Uh. The only the
Speaker 3: only real controversy was what came at the end. And
Speaker 3: there were several players on the team that were disappointed
Speaker 3: because they felt like Tony had a missible putt, he
Speaker 3: probably would have made it. He would tell, are you.
Speaker 1: Giving away the ending now we haven't even gotten into
Speaker 1: the tournament?
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, but there wasn't. Yeah. When I talked to
Speaker 3: the players, and I talked to most of the surviving
Speaker 3: players on both teams, they can just it's just like today,
Speaker 3: great honor to play on the team. They were excited
Speaker 3: about playing the Ryder Cup. Even America, who expected to win.
Speaker 3: To make the team, was this huge honor. Ken still
Speaker 3: said it was the biggest honor in his life. And
Speaker 3: he said, he told me this is two years ago.
Speaker 3: It's a quote that's in the book, and I might
Speaker 3: not be having exactly right, but he said, in fact,
Speaker 3: I might be buried in the blue Ryder Cup jacket.
Speaker 3: They know they got along, and they said most of
Speaker 3: them said I would play with you know, anyone on
Speaker 3: the team. Frank Beard told me that it's not it
Speaker 3: wasn't at all like today where there's just all this
Speaker 3: build up and you know, the captain of year ahead
Speaker 3: of time, and it's talk talk talk, and they're trying
Speaker 3: to figure out what players to put together, and there's
Speaker 3: these sessions of you know whatever, psychological stuff and pep talks.
Speaker 3: None of that in sixty nine just kind of old
Speaker 3: school let's go, you know, here we go, here's my lineup.
Speaker 3: I asked Frank Beard, I said, what was Sneed like
Speaker 3: as a captain. He said, well, it wasn't like today.
Speaker 3: He said, we might have had one meeting and it
Speaker 3: might have lasted five minutes. He said he wanted to
Speaker 3: know one thing, and he said he had all of
Speaker 3: us write down on a piece of paper if there
Speaker 3: was someone on the team we didn't want to play with, so.
Speaker 1: He kept it anonymous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but there wasn't. So there wasn't a lot of
Speaker 3: Now on the other side, Eric Brown approached a little
Speaker 3: bit differently, but Sam Snead was just sort of you know,
Speaker 3: is a different era. I think men related differently. They
Speaker 3: went about their business differently, and it was like we're
Speaker 3: going to go over there and we're going to play,
Speaker 3: and there wasn't a lot of handholding, you know, it
Speaker 3: was but getting back to your question about how did
Speaker 3: the guys get along. I think they got along fine.
Speaker 3: I don't know that anybody had a problem with their teammates.
Speaker 3: But I do know Frank Beard, who was a really
Speaker 3: good player. He was the top. He was a leader
Speaker 3: on the money list that year on the American Tour.
Speaker 3: Very good player. He was intimidated by the whole atmosphere
Speaker 3: the Ryder Cup match play playing with a teammate. He
Speaker 3: was paired with Billy Casper, who he idolized it was
Speaker 3: hard on him and he told me that, And I
Speaker 3: loved his transparency and there's some great comments from Frank
Speaker 3: Beard about what it was like playing in his first
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup. He did not feel comfortable at all. He
Speaker 3: played okay, but he told me, he said, not really
Speaker 3: feel good about playing with Billy Casper. Because people might
Speaker 3: not know this, but at that stage in the sixties,
Speaker 3: Casper was winning and was as every bit as good
Speaker 3: as anybody else on tour, including Nicholas, including player Palmer,
Speaker 3: you name it. Billy Casper was a great player and
Speaker 3: Beard was ten years younger, and it's like, oh, I've
Speaker 3: got to play with Casper in alternate shot. Oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: I'm worried about letting this guy down and what he's
Speaker 3: going to think of me, and so all of these
Speaker 3: things are really interesting. When you talk to these players
Speaker 3: who were great players, made a lot of money on
Speaker 3: their tours one tournament, how the Ryder Cup affects them
Speaker 3: is just really interesting.
Speaker 1: So if everyone was able to get along, well, you know,
Speaker 1: I find that that fascinating, going from an a sport that's,
Speaker 1: you know, all individuals all the time, to a team
Speaker 1: sport and making it work, making the chemistry work, which
Speaker 1: they didn't care. It was just like points system, you're
Speaker 1: on or you're not. There were no picks. Tell me
Speaker 1: who you got to spend time with in the research
Speaker 1: of your book. Of the players, who did you get
Speaker 1: to interview?
Speaker 3: I really got to interview everybody I would have possibly
Speaker 3: hoped to interview, except except Forately Trevino, who was also
Speaker 3: on that team.
Speaker 1: And why not Trevino.
Speaker 3: He just declined. I went through his agent and they
Speaker 3: he said no. And this was early in the process.
Speaker 3: And later on, when I'd interviewed pretty much everybody else,
Speaker 3: including Jack Nicholas, which was huge for me, I went
Speaker 3: back and I asked again, and I never heard anything.
Speaker 3: So that's the only one I really person I really
Speaker 3: missed that. That would have been nice to talk to.
Speaker 3: But I talked to Nicholas, of course. I talked to
Speaker 3: him toward the end. Frank Beard Kin Still, Billy Casper,
Speaker 3: Raymond Floyd, who is also a Hall of Famer. That
Speaker 3: was his first Ryder Cup and he is a vice
Speaker 3: captain this year for Tom Watson, Jeane Letler and Tommy Aaron.
Speaker 3: So Dan Sykes was on that team. Some of your
Speaker 3: audience might remember him. He's deceased, and so was Dave Hill.
Speaker 3: And Dave Hill he died a couple of years ago,
Speaker 3: maybe two or three years ago. People are going to
Speaker 3: they're going to love the stories about Dave Hill in
Speaker 3: this book. Dave Hill is quite a character and very
Speaker 3: temperamental guy. And there's some things that happen. You haven't
Speaker 3: got to them yet in the book yet, Fred, But
Speaker 3: in this Ryder Cup you probably have the most acrimonious
Speaker 3: match in the history of the Ryder Cup. Really yeah,
Speaker 3: And I won't go into it, oh, but I can say, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know how much you want me to give away,
Speaker 3: but I can tell you this. There was almost a
Speaker 3: fistfight on Friday in a four ball match between and
Speaker 3: that's not and I'm not embellishing. It almost came to blows.
Speaker 3: There were a series of incidents in this match between
Speaker 3: Dave Hill and kin Still for the Americans and Brian
Speaker 3: Huggett and Bernard Gallaher for Great Britain. Now Huggitt and
Speaker 3: Gallaher they're still around. In fact, I don't know about
Speaker 3: this year, but Bernard Gallaher does commentary for the Ryder
Speaker 3: Cup over there, and he was a great Ryder Cup captain.
Speaker 3: He followed Tony Jacqueline in the eighties and he was
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup captain I think three times for his side.
Speaker 3: So he was a great player. But in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: he's a twenty year old. He's the youngest man to
Speaker 3: ever play in the Ryder Cup in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: and he's almost kind of a rary type figure, although
Speaker 3: I wouldn't say he's quite at that level, but he
Speaker 3: comes onto the scene in nineteen sixty nine and he's
Speaker 3: winning tournaments and he's kind of brash and he's a
Speaker 3: really good player. So anyway, you have these four guys.
Speaker 3: For as Brian Huggett told me in his interview. He
Speaker 3: said he called all of them, including himself, feisty, and
Speaker 3: they have quite this match on Friday. All kinds of
Speaker 3: things go on. You just you couldn't make it up.
Speaker 1: Were there any of the people that you had the
Speaker 1: chance to speak to, Were there any surprises or any
Speaker 1: it's the word I'm looking for here, stories that were
Speaker 1: they conflicted with one another that you needed some more substantiations. Likette,
Speaker 1: you're telling me one story and you're telling me a
Speaker 1: completely different story.
Speaker 3: There's always some of that, I think when you do
Speaker 3: a historical sure Sure book, and I learned that when
Speaker 3: I did the Longest Shot. I think the hardest thing
Speaker 3: to sort out was this match. I'm sorry to talk
Speaker 3: about that people will read about because even to this day,
Speaker 3: the players in this four ball match that that that
Speaker 3: became a big disagreement. They still don't really agree on
Speaker 3: what happened. And so you know, I interviewed both I
Speaker 3: interviewed Ken Still, and I couldn't interview Dave Hill, and
Speaker 3: I interviewed Brian Hugget and Bernard Gallaher, and I thought,
Speaker 3: and then I had the reporting from nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 3: of what happened. And I remember when I was writing
Speaker 3: that chapter, I was thinking, how am I going to
Speaker 3: write this, because there's a part of you that wants
Speaker 3: to get to some account that you say, I think
Speaker 3: this is what happened, but you don't know. So I
Speaker 3: ended up putting it all together and just reporting on
Speaker 3: what was reported at the time and what the players
Speaker 3: said later.
Speaker 4: And.
Speaker 3: It's really it's really interesting. The other thing that you
Speaker 3: have going on when you do books like this, and
Speaker 3: I had this with Jack Fleck, is you're dealing you
Speaker 3: talk to players forty years later and their memories of
Speaker 3: it don't always coincide with what the reporting was at
Speaker 3: the time, and so then you have to figure out
Speaker 3: how to write it. Lots of times what happens is
Speaker 3: they don't remember. You know, they've played a lot of
Speaker 3: golf through the years, and they don't remember but maybe
Speaker 3: a few things that happened that week. But you'll find
Speaker 3: some players who have very vivid memories. Kin still remembered
Speaker 3: a lot. It was his only Ryder cup and it
Speaker 3: was it was one of the big moments in his
Speaker 3: whole life. You could just tell from talking to him.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting and challenging to sort all of that
Speaker 3: out when you try to put together your narrative.
Speaker 1: Sure. Sure, And that was the only place that there
Speaker 1: was like people had different different views of what actually happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it really was. I didn't really run into any
Speaker 3: other areas where I thought it's a big problem area.
Speaker 3: I was really glad. One of the things about this book,
Speaker 3: and it's in my author's note at the beginning, and
Speaker 3: it's been written up in some of the reviews that
Speaker 3: have come out on the book. The Wall Street Journal
Speaker 3: reviewed it a week or so ago, congratulations, thank you. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that was nice, and some other golf magazines and publications
Speaker 3: ever reviewed it. And one of the things they pointed out,
Speaker 3: because I have this in the book, there was only
Speaker 3: three minutes of footage that survived. This event was televised
Speaker 3: by the BBC and it was also on radio, and
Speaker 3: after writing the longer shot, which took place in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty five, there was very little film of that, which
Speaker 3: was not surprising because TV wasn't golf on TV was
Speaker 3: just getting started. When I picked up this story, I thought,
Speaker 3: oh boy, I'm going to be able to watch a
Speaker 3: lot of this because it was televised. I inquired with
Speaker 3: the BBC. They pointed me to IMG, the big agency
Speaker 3: that represents athletes. They owned the rights to that particular
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup. Somehow they acquired the right, so I had
Speaker 3: to go through them and try to find any archived
Speaker 3: footage of the nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup matches televised
Speaker 3: by the BBC. Well, what I come to find out
Speaker 3: is there's there are only three minutes, and I was
Speaker 3: surprised by that. So I had the challenge again of
Speaker 3: putting this together without the benefit of really any television coverage.
Speaker 3: But the good thing about it was the three minutes
Speaker 3: that they have was the ending. And by being able
Speaker 3: to watch the ending, which is the climactic moment in
Speaker 3: the book, I can really sort of slow things down.
Speaker 3: And I picked out a lot of the details that
Speaker 3: I watched on film to describe what happened. And when
Speaker 3: you can see things on film, you can you know
Speaker 3: that's true, that's factual. You're not relying on someone's memory,
Speaker 3: you know. Jack Nicholas told me he picked his ball
Speaker 3: out of the cup on the eighteenth hole, which was
Speaker 3: the way he remembered it. I mean, that's what players
Speaker 3: normally do. When I watched the film. He didn't do that.
Speaker 3: He didn't pick his ball up. He sank a five
Speaker 3: foot pot and then he instead of reaching over and
Speaker 3: picking his ball out of the cup, he reached over
Speaker 3: and he reached down and picked up Tony Jaquelin's marker
Speaker 3: for that famous concession. And I don't know who got
Speaker 3: his ball, But you know, it's nice when you have
Speaker 3: some of that because you can actually describe what happened
Speaker 3: and know that that's that was factual.
Speaker 1: And had you watched the footage before you got to
Speaker 1: do that interview.
Speaker 3: I think I had seen that footage, and of course
Speaker 3: I didn't try to correct Jack's memory. But in the
Speaker 3: cases where I had some other source, you kind of
Speaker 3: weigh your sources and you have to you have to decide, well,
Speaker 3: what do I think really happen here? Or in some
Speaker 3: cases you just report both versions and let the reader decide.
Speaker 3: You know, the readers are smart, and you give them
Speaker 3: you just give them enough and they can draw their
Speaker 3: own conclusions from situations.
Speaker 1: All right, So let's go back now and go over
Speaker 1: the matches, not each individual match, but each day of
Speaker 1: what happened and how it got to the point where
Speaker 1: it was that close and had that dramatic of an ending.
Speaker 3: Well, I'll I'll just quickly tell the format. It was
Speaker 3: the same as today. You started with foursomes on the
Speaker 3: first day, which is alternate shot. I think your audience
Speaker 3: will know what that is. The second day was four
Speaker 3: ball matches, which is better ball, best ball, and the
Speaker 3: last day was single So that is just like it
Speaker 3: is today. This was the first Ryder Cup to have
Speaker 3: twelve man teams. We have twelve man teams today, but
Speaker 3: in nineteen sixty nine was the first year of twelve
Speaker 3: man teams. Before that, they had ten man teams. But
Speaker 3: what was different about nineteen sixty nine is when people
Speaker 3: read the score of that match. Of course it ended
Speaker 3: in a tie. That's why it's called drawing the dones.
Speaker 3: It was the first time in the history of Ryder
Speaker 3: Cup the score was sixteen to sixteen, and that'll strike
Speaker 3: people as a little love. They'll say, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: thirty two points. I thought the Ryder Cup is twenty
Speaker 3: eight points and it is now. In sixty nine, they
Speaker 3: had two sets of singles on the final day, the
Speaker 3: morning session in the afternoon session. Eight matches in the morning,
Speaker 3: eight in the afternoon. So you had thirty two points
Speaker 3: in that day instead of twenty eight. What happened just
Speaker 3: as this fiery Great Britain captain Eric Brown had hoped for.
Speaker 3: He exhorted his players. He knew that in the past
Speaker 3: they'd always gotten behind and he wanted to get out
Speaker 3: fast every morning. Well, this is what happened. The first day.
Speaker 3: Great Britain got out in the first session. They were
Speaker 3: after the end of the first session of the morning.
Speaker 4: They were ahead, I think three and a half to
Speaker 4: a half point and he was just he could he
Speaker 4: was beside himself with joy.
Speaker 3: They were way out ahead, in front, and so this
Speaker 3: established really the pattern for the week. Great Britain got
Speaker 3: out ahead. In the afternoon, the Americans were playing catchup,
Speaker 3: and in the afternoon of foursomes, America came back and
Speaker 3: they at the end of the first day it was
Speaker 3: four and a half to three and a half. The
Speaker 3: Americans won the second fourth session on Thursday. They go
Speaker 3: out on Friday and again Great Britain wins that session
Speaker 3: two and a half to one and a half and
Speaker 3: they're ahead seven to five. But then in the afternoon
Speaker 3: four balls, America wins that session three to one. So
Speaker 3: we go into the final day and it's all tied
Speaker 3: up eight to eight and America's kind of got the
Speaker 3: pressure on it now. It's like these guys are they
Speaker 3: might beat us. They're playing really well. You have more
Speaker 3: matches that are going to the final hole, probably than
Speaker 3: ever in the history of the Ryder Cup, and I
Speaker 3: think in total there were seventeen of the thirty two
Speaker 3: that went to the final hole, in five that finished
Speaker 3: on the seventeenth. So these are really close tense matches.
Speaker 3: The last day you have the singles and in the morning,
Speaker 3: just like the previous days, Great Britain wins the morning
Speaker 3: session five to three. They're head thirteen to eleven. The
Speaker 3: galleries now are really they're really fired up because they
Speaker 3: think we can win the Cup. You go into the
Speaker 3: afternoon and they need three and a half out of
Speaker 3: a possible eight points to take back the Cup for
Speaker 3: the first time since nineteen fifty seven and for only
Speaker 3: the second time since the Great Depression. America's backs are
Speaker 3: to the wall and you have Tony Jacqueline and Jack
Speaker 3: Nicholas playing the anchor match, and this is both in
Speaker 3: the morning session and the afternoon session. In the morning session,
Speaker 3: Jacqueline beats him four and three. Jacqueline is the best
Speaker 3: player at Royal Birkdale. This week. Jack Nicholas misses a
Speaker 3: bunch of short puts in that morning session, not really
Speaker 3: at the top of his game, so they anchor the
Speaker 3: match the second session as well, and it comes down
Speaker 3: to their match, and it comes down to the final hole.
Speaker 3: Everything is tied and their match is tied. So it
Speaker 3: comes down to the very very end.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So we know what happens. I mean, people who pick
Speaker 3: up this book, who've heard about this, they know that
Speaker 3: something happened on this final green. It's known as the Concession.
Speaker 3: It's a famous moment in golf and sports, this great
Speaker 3: act of sportsmanship. So the context for that. Now we
Speaker 3: have some of the context for that. These close matches,
Speaker 3: some acrimony.
Speaker 4: We have.
Speaker 3: I haven't really talked much about this, but it was
Speaker 3: for the Americans. They felt like the galleries at time
Speaker 3: were hostile. It's been a tough it's been a tough week.
Speaker 3: Now you have Necklace and Jacqueline coming down the final fairway,
Speaker 3: you have both teams gathered around the green and their captains,
Speaker 3: and you have ten thousand spectators. It's the winds blowing
Speaker 3: and it's spitting rain, and it's about six o'clock in
Speaker 3: the evening at Royal Birkdale after this long week, and
Speaker 3: they hit their it's a par five hole. It plays
Speaker 3: down when easily easily reachable in two and they hit
Speaker 3: their approach shots up on the green. Jacqueline his farther away.
Speaker 3: He puts first. He has about a thirty footer for
Speaker 3: an eagle, and he rolls it up. It's tracking right
Speaker 3: for the hole and it stops about two feet short.
Speaker 3: He marks his ball. Jack's got about a twenty footer
Speaker 3: and his putt now is to win the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 3: It's also for an eagle. Jack is a very deliberate player,
Speaker 3: as some people will remember, and he took his time
Speaker 3: and it's very tense. People around the green are just
Speaker 3: waiting for Jack to hit this pot. He hits it,
Speaker 3: and this is part of it that what's on film.
Speaker 3: It misses, and unlike Jack, he hit it pretty hard
Speaker 3: and it rolls almost five feet by the hole, so.
Speaker 1: He's still away. He's still hitting, still away.
Speaker 3: Now. When I'm in Jack Nicholas's office interviewing him, I
Speaker 3: asked him about that pot. I said, Jack, you knocked
Speaker 3: that five feet by the hole. I said, what happened
Speaker 3: on that putt? Do you remember anything? You know where
Speaker 3: did you see Tony come up short and you just
Speaker 3: you were trying to make it and you hit it
Speaker 3: too hard. And he kind of laughed and he said
Speaker 3: it was probably just stupidity. He said, you don't want
Speaker 3: to leave a putt like that for the whole The
Speaker 3: whole match is hanging on a putt like that. Now
Speaker 3: he's missed, He's missed the number of putts shorter than
Speaker 3: that in the morning match. So Jack is really taking
Speaker 3: his time looking this one over, and people in the
Speaker 3: gallery are one person faints. That's how nerve wracking it was.
Speaker 3: So then we have the big Jack grinds over this
Speaker 3: pot and he finally gets over it, and you know,
Speaker 3: like the Golden Bear did when he needed one, he
Speaker 3: knocked it in. And then in that moment he reached
Speaker 3: down and he processed all this sort of the I
Speaker 3: guess what was happening and what he realized what was
Speaker 3: at stake, the fact that Jacqueline's putt was for a tie,
Speaker 3: not a win, and the fact that with a tie,
Speaker 3: America retains the cup, and the fact that Tony Jacqueline
Speaker 3: was a new British Open champion and the hero over there,
Speaker 3: and if he somehow didn't get that two foot or in,
Speaker 3: as Jack has said, it might kill his career. Jack
Speaker 3: somehow calculates all this in the moment.
Speaker 1: It would kill Jacqueline's career exactly.
Speaker 3: It would kill Jacqueline's career, or it would do It
Speaker 3: would do serious dam image to him to miss a
Speaker 3: lot like that on his home soil to tie the
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup. And Tony is resolute. He will tell you
Speaker 3: he would have made that putt, and I bet he
Speaker 3: would have, and all his teammates it was a two footer,
Speaker 3: give or take maybe a couple of inches. But what
Speaker 3: all the players were unanimous on was he probably would
Speaker 3: have made it. But it was missible under the circumstances.
Speaker 3: It was not a gimme. If it were a gimme,
Speaker 3: then the concession really doesn't mean anything, and it wouldn't
Speaker 3: be the big deal it is today. So Nicholas concedes
Speaker 3: the putt and they shake hands. Jack has some nice
Speaker 3: words for Tony on that green, and they walk off
Speaker 3: the green arm in arm. The gallery's applauding Henry Longhurst
Speaker 3: is announcing on BBC and you know, fade out. It
Speaker 3: was this great moment in golf. But as we talked
Speaker 3: a little bit of I think maybe we alluded to earlier,
Speaker 3: it was controversial with some of his teammates and certainly
Speaker 3: as captain at that time.
Speaker 1: Sure sure, what was the relationship between at the time,
Speaker 1: between Jacqueline and Jack.
Speaker 3: Well, that's an interesting part of it too, I should
Speaker 3: tell say that one of the great I mean, including
Speaker 3: spending time with them, A great part of this project
Speaker 3: for me too was asking and having them collaborate on
Speaker 3: the forward for this story, which is in Draw on
Speaker 3: the Dune. So the forward of the book is by
Speaker 3: Jack Nicholas and Tony Jacqueline, and in that they they say,
Speaker 3: and you know how they were friends. They were friends.
Speaker 3: And this is the interesting thing about Jack Nicholas. He's
Speaker 3: this great competitor who who would played to win and
Speaker 3: won a lot, but he also had this maturity about
Speaker 3: him and this grace to where he had. He did
Speaker 3: something on that green that I don't know if any
Speaker 3: of the other players would have thought of to do,
Speaker 3: and that was to concede that putt, and he felt
Speaker 3: like that was the right thing to do and that
Speaker 3: the Ryder Cup inning in a tie was a good thing.
Speaker 3: And I think he turned out to be right about that,
Speaker 3: although you know, people are certainly it's debatable, you know,
Speaker 3: I've I've been asking the question and social media and elsewhere,
Speaker 3: you know, and Samsoney didn't believe in giving a pup
Speaker 3: like that that someone could have missed, they still could
Speaker 3: have won. But I think for the Ryder Cup and
Speaker 3: for reviving interest, for tapping into that spirit of sportsmanship,
Speaker 3: I think is a part of how the whole thing
Speaker 3: got started with Samuel Ryder, the international goodwill. I think
Speaker 3: that what Jack Nicholas did was indeed a great gesture,
Speaker 3: and I think that's why it's still remembered and talked
Speaker 3: about today.
Speaker 1: It's an amazing story. I am so glad that you
Speaker 1: dug it up and flushed it out the way you have.
Speaker 1: It really is a phenomenal story. Is there a record
Speaker 1: of how Sam Snead felt about the concession, knowing that
Speaker 1: he wanted to win as the captain.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there is. He never liked it, Wow, And I
Speaker 3: talked to Jack about that. Jack knew it, the other
Speaker 3: players knew it. Of course, Sam died in two thousand
Speaker 3: and two. So I was never able to talk to him.
Speaker 3: But there is a quote in the book, in the
Speaker 3: aftermath chapter that's attributed to Sam that was, you know,
Speaker 3: I picked up from another source, and it's a well
Speaker 3: known quote. I've seen it in other places where he
Speaker 3: just he said, I wasn't I we didn't come over here.
Speaker 3: It's something like, and I don't have it handy right now,
Speaker 3: but it's something like, we didn't come over here to
Speaker 3: be good old boys. And I would never give a
Speaker 3: putt like that to anyone except maybe my brother. That's
Speaker 3: the gist of it. It just went against his philosophy.
Speaker 3: And Jack understood that. He told me when I interviewed
Speaker 3: him last year, he said, you know, that was just
Speaker 3: Sam's mode. He said, I accept that Sam was a
Speaker 3: great player and a great competitor. He said, Now I
Speaker 3: don't know that when it was all over and it
Speaker 3: was a tie, I don't know that I felt like
Speaker 3: he should have been as upset about it as he was.
Speaker 3: But the Sam, you know, the captain and the players,
Speaker 3: even then, even with their disappointment, I think they had
Speaker 3: a lot of respect for Jack Nicholas, Because Jack said
Speaker 3: Sam never said a word to him about it. Not
Speaker 3: one word at that time or until he died. Sam
Speaker 3: never said anything to him, and Jack's teammates never took
Speaker 3: him aside and said, Jack, what were you thinking? Why
Speaker 3: did you do that? They were you know, they they
Speaker 3: admitted they were disappointed. Tommy Aaron told me that he said,
Speaker 3: I was shocked. Billy Casper told me that he said,
Speaker 3: we were disappointed at the time, but he said, you know,
Speaker 3: they all eventually got to a place through the years
Speaker 3: where they could look back on that and say that
Speaker 3: was a good thing, and that was a good thing
Speaker 3: for the Ryder Cup.
Speaker 1: Oh that's nice. Thank you for this story, this and
Speaker 1: thank you for bringing it out as much as you have.
Speaker 1: I appreciate it because I know you want people to
Speaker 1: read the book, but I think at tease like this
Speaker 1: is going to make them want to pick up this
Speaker 1: two hundred and eighty page book and read it, especially
Speaker 1: this week, you know, to put it all in context
Speaker 1: with watching the Ryder Cup. What what do you think
Speaker 1: is your next project?
Speaker 3: You know, I don't know really, I well, Fred, but
Speaker 3: I hope there is another one because I really enjoyed this.
Speaker 3: And one thing, I you know, we started talking about
Speaker 3: the players. Uh, and I really got off on the
Speaker 3: American team. But I think one of the things too
Speaker 3: that people will like about this is the the British
Speaker 3: players are not as well known, but you get to
Speaker 3: know them in this book. So absolutely they people know
Speaker 3: of Tony Jacquelin, but some of the other players that
Speaker 3: they'll meet in this story they may have heard of,
Speaker 3: they may have known that they were captains at one point.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 3: One player in particular that a lot of people who
Speaker 3: are golf fans will know he's still around is Peter Alice,
Speaker 3: the great commentator for the BBC. He is in this
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup. It's his last one on the British side.
Speaker 3: And you have some other great players like Neil Coles
Speaker 3: and Christy O'Connor. Of course I mentioned Brian Huggett, so
Speaker 3: I think Brian Barnes some people might recognize that name.
Speaker 3: So I think the get for me getting to know
Speaker 3: the players was a lot of fun. And I didn't
Speaker 3: know the British side as well until I interviewed them
Speaker 3: and wrote about them. But I hope to do another
Speaker 3: book and if anybody has some ideas in my way will.
Speaker 1: Do send him to me and I'll make sure that
Speaker 1: Neil gets them. That's a great way to go. Well,
Speaker 1: the video of that final haul is available, and I
Speaker 1: will put that on the website as well to tease
Speaker 1: you just a little bit more about this story.
Speaker 3: That's a great I'm sorry, go ahead, Yeah, that's that's great.
Speaker 3: And I got right to the eighteenth hole with Nicholas
Speaker 3: and Jacqueline coming down to the end. But there are
Speaker 3: some things that happen in that final half hour forty
Speaker 3: five minutes that are pretty amazing and people will get
Speaker 3: into them. There's a player who thinks he has a
Speaker 3: putt to win the Ryder Cup before Jacqueline and Nicholas
Speaker 3: get to that final green, and he has good reason
Speaker 3: to think that. There's some drama. There's a lot of
Speaker 3: drama in that final hour of the nineteen sixty nine
Speaker 3: Ryder Cup, and I detailed that and draw on the
Speaker 3: Dunes awesome.
Speaker 1: Well again, it's Drawing the Dunes nineteen sixty nine Ryder
Speaker 1: Cup in the finish that Shocked the World by Neil Sagabel. Neil,
Speaker 1: I not only appreciate you alerting me that this is
Speaker 1: happening and getting it to me before the book came
Speaker 1: out to the public. Unfortunately books interrupt us by our hurricane,
Speaker 1: but I hope everyone comes to the Golfer's mart on
Speaker 1: our website and go into our book section. You will
Speaker 1: find this and you will find Neil's other book about
Speaker 1: the Longest Shot. Neil was great to talk to you.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward.
Speaker 1: I hope it's not another two years before we get
Speaker 1: to tell another story.
Speaker 3: Me too. I really enjoy it. Fred, thanks for having
Speaker 3: me on and enjoy the Ryder Cup, and I hope
Speaker 3: the US can win this time