The 1969 Ryder Cup that Shocked the World with author Neil Sagebiel

GS#455 September 19, 2014 In 1969, The Ryder Cup teetered on the brink of irrelevancy, and perhaps being discontinued. But the historic "Concession" offered by Jack Nicklaus to Tony Jacklin on the final hole at Royal Birkdale changed everything. Author Neil Sagebiel joins us.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Golf Smarter number four hundred and fifty five.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Welcome to Golf Smarter Mulligans, your second chance to gain
insight and advice from the best instructors featured on the
Golf Smarter podcast. Great Golf Instruction never gets old. Our
interview library features hundreds of hours of game improvement conversations
like this that are no longer available in any podcast app.

Speaker 3 (00:27):
When I talked to most of the surviving players on
both teams, it's just like today, great honor to play
on the team. They were excited about playing the Ryder Cup.
Even America, who expected to win. To make the team,
was this huge honor. Ken Still said, this is two
years ago. It's a quote that's in the book, and
I might not having exactly right, but he said, in fact,

(00:49):
I might be buried in the blue Ryder Cup jacket. No,
they got along and they said I would play with
anyone on the team. Frank Beard told me that it
wasn't at all like today, where there's just all this
build up and you know the captain and you're ahead
of time, and it's talk talk talk, and they're trying
to figure out what players to put together, and there's

(01:09):
these sessions of psychological stuff and pep talks. None of
that in sixty nine, just kind of old school. Here
we go, here's my lineup. I asked Frank Beard. I said,
what was sneed like as a captain? He said, well,
it wasn't like today, he said. We might have had
one meeting and it might have lasted five minutes.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup Finish that Shocked the World
with author Neil Sagabut. This is Golf Smarter. Welcome back
to the Golf Smarter Podcast. Neil, it's good to be
with you, Fred, it's good to be with you. It's
good to be here. It's very good to be here.
I'll give you more details on that in a minute.
Before we get started, though, I want to remind everyone

(01:55):
of the last time you were on the show, episode
three fifty three and three fiftyfty four, for your great
book on the nineteen fifty five US Open.

Speaker 3 (02:07):
Yeah, thank you. It seems so long ago, but I
guess it was only a couple of years ago.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah, yeah, well it was for it came out just
in time for the twenty twelve US Open that was
played in San Francisco.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Yeah, that's right. At the Olympic Club, and I think
that's the fifth time that they played the Open there,
and the first time, of course, was in fifty five
when Jack Fleck upset Ben Hogan and one of the
greatest upsets in the history of the game.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
And that's what prompted your book, The Longest Shut, Right,
that's right, and that book is still available on our
website in our Golfers mart Congratulations. It's gotten great praise
because it was a really entertaining and timely story. And
that's what we're going to talk about today because this
weekend we've got the Ryder Cup happening, and you've gone

(02:57):
back in history once again to fly shout a story
that may not have been a big story at the time,
but the nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup, what you call
the Draw in the Dunes.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, I don't think anybody it was an unexpected week
in nineteen sixty nine. This Ryder Cup was not what
it is today. It had all the elements really that
it has today, playing for your country, playing match play,
playing with your teammates, and for a captain, but it

(03:31):
had been pretty one sided up until that point. In
America was winning a lot and then we had these
nineteen sixty nine matches which when I looked into this
and also even based on what else I've read, this
was one of the best Ryder Cups ever played. It
was and it's known. What people know it for is

(03:54):
the ending, of course, and that's what caught my eye
when I was thinking about writing another book, that famous
ending with Nicholas, Jack Nicholas and Tony Jaqueline on the
final green.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
But no spoiler alerts, don't give out the final ending.
We're going to get there, okay, but go ahead.

Speaker 3 (04:16):
It was a great Ryder Cup and it was a
surprise to the American team that went over there. It
was again a different era. It was a great Britain
team back then and not a European team. But it
was a thrilling week and it had everything that you
could want in a Ryder Cup that would make it

(04:39):
exciting and great and suspenseful. There was and you know,
there was some acrimony, so it was quite a dramatic
week there at Royal Birkdale.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
Yeah. Yeah, so let me let me tell you my
story about reading your book. I just got back from
a week vacation. I was going down to Mexico for
a week and was going to read the book while
I was there, you know, lay on the beach and
read a book. How perfect can life be? And so
I started reading it, and I started getting into the

(05:13):
background of Tony Jacqueline and how you set up who
he was and how he became, you know, one of
the first British players to really make have an impact
in the United States. I was really enjoying it, and
I was just starting to get into nineteen sixty nine.
And I also love the way you incorporate world history

(05:37):
as place markers to what was going on, to all
your stories. And then just as I was about to
get to the Ryder Cup, Hurricane O'Dell hit Cabo San Lucas,
which was where I was, and we were right in
the heart of it, and we got stranded. I am

(05:57):
a I'm a refugee of heran odeal. It was an
amazing and terrifying event and it took us three days.
We didn't get out until Wednesday. The hurricane was Sunday night,
and so I didn't get to finish the book. So
it's up to you, my friend, to tell me the

(06:18):
entire story. I want to hear it now.

Speaker 3 (06:22):
Well, first of all, Fred I have to say, I'm
just glad you're you're back at home and that we're
having this conversation. Thank you, Thank you and your wife
are safe and you weren't injured, right.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
No, Luckily none of the windows in the room we
were staying and imploded like the rest of the resort.
The resort that we were staying at was pretty much destroyed.
I would be very surprised if they're open again for
the Christmas rush, and they were, they were. There were
people telling us. I talked to a couple of hotel managers.

(07:00):
They were telling us that it could be three weeks
to a month before they get any electricity, and there
was no water, there was no sewage, and the sewage
was starting to back up in the street, and there
was looting and rioting and martial law was set. It
got ugly really fast, but we luckily had each other

(07:23):
and didn't get injured and were able to make it
through it. And because both of us worked in media
in the San Francisco area for a long time, we
still have a lot of friends who are in it.
And as we got off the plane in San Francisco,
there was a news crew waiting for us. So luckily
they knew that I would be the guy who has

(07:45):
a lot of video and photos of what happened, and
so I will post there's a news story from a
local TV station. There's a news story, and I'll put
it on our website as well to show our adventure,
if that's what you want to call it.

Speaker 3 (08:01):
That was that was quite an adventure. And actually I
saw it right before we started talking today, and I
was just sort of a gast and and and then
I saw your email that said safely returned from Mexico,
and I was so glad to hear that.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
Was that I know we're going to talk about this book,
but was that was that the most terrifying experience of
your life?

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Wow? How crazy is this that I have to think
about it. A couple of years ago, my wife was
a victim of a car accident. She was a pedestrian
hit by a car. And that that may have been
one of the more challenging things in my life because,
you know, we later learned after it was all over

(08:57):
and she made it and stuff, we later learned how
close she was to not make it. But as something
we experienced together, it was. It was really frightening. It
was There were definitely thoughts crossing my mind that may
not make it back to the United States. Definitely that
thought crossed my mind. And I think it would have

(09:18):
been much worse if any of the windows imploded in
our place. They actually the first room we were in,
we were right on top of the beach. It was
on the fifth floor of a sixth story resort, and
we literally were thirty yards from the waves breaking. And
they at three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. We arrived Saturday night,

(09:41):
and by three o'clock Sunday afternoon, they had moved us
to a different room in the complex because they said
it was safe. And we're like, we didn't even know
this was coming. We thought there was going to be
rain on Sunday night. That was the forecast, that was
going to be rain, And so we moved into a
different room and we later went back and you saw

(10:03):
on the video, you saw how we went back into
that room and it was there was glass all over
and it wasn't like tempered glass. It was just you know,
little shards, I mean little pieces of glass. It was
shards of glass. And there was one person from our
hotel who got very bloodied because the glass hit him,
and his wife broke her arm. But if the glass

(10:25):
would have broken in our room, I think we would
have freaked out a bit more than we actually did.
But the sounds of it were incredible. We had one
hundred and thirty five mile an hour sustained winds and
one hundred and fifty mile an hour gusts, and a
lot of the construction there in that area they used

(10:46):
the Spanish tile roofing, and the tiles were flying everywhere,
and they were crashing onto cars, and it sounded like,
you know, bottles breaking NonStop. And then at about and
I'm from California, I'll give me an earthquake any day. Right,
it's a beautiful day. Whoops, the ground is shaking. Okay,
it's over, and it's still a beautiful day. The anticipation,

(11:09):
they said it's coming, So the anticipation for hours drove
us crazy, and then the hours of the hurricane terrified us.
And then at midnight it got quiet and it was
very calm, and then at twelve thirty it picked up again.
So clearly the eye of the hurricane went directly over us.

(11:34):
So yeah, I answer your question. It was pretty terrifying.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Yeah, I can't even imagine it. I know friends who've
been through a hurricane, but I just can't. I wouldn't
want to go through that. I'm sorry you've been through it.
I'm glad. I'm glad you're okay in.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
Well, I don't want to go through it again. I've
been in Atlanta once and in Indianapolis once when Tornado
Watch was happy and we had to you know, in Indianapolis,
we had to evacuate into a bunker underground and that
made me a little bit crazy, but nothing happened. And
you know, a tornado, you can see the path of

(12:11):
a tornado when you know when it does its destruction,
but houses may get you know, run right over, but
the houses on the sides of it don't have as
that kind of damage. An earthquake most of the time
on earthquakes, especially in northern California that's kind of built
for earthquakes that you know, they're prepared for it. You

(12:32):
have isolated instances. When we were in the nineteen eighty
nine earthquake, we were actually a Candlestick park at the
World Series, and when that occurred, we had I think
there were three major areas of destruction during that earthquake,
and that was the Bay Bridge we had just been
on a half hour earlier, the Oakland area, the freeway

(12:54):
that had collapsed, the MacArthur Freeway that collapsed, which we
drove by that night and saw. And in the Marina
district in San Francisco the ball of fire, the fires
that were in downtown and we drove by those that
night as we were leaving the ballpark. But here with
the hurricane, it was everywhere. You didn't miss anything, and

(13:16):
it went right. It surprised them. They thought it was
going to go west and stay off land, but it
came right up the middle of the Baja Peninsula and
went up through La Pause. So there was a tremendous
amount of destruction. At this point, I understand they only
have five confirmed deaths, which is really remarkable, but a

(13:36):
lot of injury and the rioting and the looting that
took place and continued to grow until they had to
declare martial law on Wednesday.

Speaker 3 (13:48):
Incredible.

Speaker 1 (13:48):
Yeah, yeah, but enough of that. I'm safe, I'm here
and it's time for golf. Thank goodness, I get to
do this again. I have this to do, so let's
talk about your book Please Draw in the Dunes, the
nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup and the finish that shocked

(14:11):
the world. So I'm going to just sit back and
I want you to take it from the top and
tell me, set up the story, and then give it
to me.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Please well without giving away the ending right off the bat.
That was what caught my eye, and that was where
I started looking into this, and I thought, why did
that matter so much? Why that was that such a
big deal, Why is it so well remembered, and why

(14:43):
do we still see clips of it? And we'll probably
see clips of it this week during the Ryder coverage
of Nicholas and Jacqueline on that Final Green. And so
when I started researching this topic, I discovered what journalists
called at that time the greatest Ryder Cup that had

(15:04):
ever been played. And I think it's near the top
of a lot of people's list even today. It was.
In some ways it resembles my first book in that
you have a heavy underdog, the Great Britain team, and
you have the Americans who have just been owning them
ever since the early thirties. Great Britain's won once they

(15:28):
won in nineteen fifty seven over there, and in the
Ryder Cup that precedes this nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup.
I go into that and you've probably read that chapter.
It's the second chapter. It's called Champions. I thought it

(15:49):
was important to set up the story, not only give
the context of the era, but talk about what happened
in sixty seven at Houston. And what happened was America
by fifteen points, largest march in the history of the
Ryder Cup. Ben Hogan was captain of the American side.
And this is without Jack Nicholas. They didn't even have

(16:09):
Nicholas on the team. Now, they had a lot of
other great players like Billy Casper and Arnold Palmer So.
And sixty seven was also this young man named Tony
Jacklin's first Ryder Cup as well, and he had a
pretty good debut, even though his side got whipped pretty handily.

(16:32):
So in the early part of the story, I set
up the what golf is like in this era, what
it's like in America, what it's like in Great Britain.
And now you know, we see we see European players
in America every week they play on the PGA Tour.
There are really no barriers to them other than their

(16:54):
ability to play. But back then it was still very separate.
And as you mentioned early on, Tony Jacqueline was one
of the few players from Great Britain that played on
the American Tour, and it wasn't really a very welcoming
tour in those days. It wasn't really set up for

(17:14):
these foreign guys to come over and play. But Jacqueline
earned his way onto the tour, and this particular story
drawing the Dunes also chronicles his rise in golf. That
year he won the British Open in July, the first

(17:34):
grit to win the British Open in eighteen years. So
he's the star of his team heading into Royal Birkdale,
one of the twelve men and Nicholas. Interestingly, and this
has been a topic for a lot of conversation I've
been having since the book has come out, is playing

(17:56):
his first Ryder Cup even though he's a seven year
veteranan tour and nine eleven teammates are also playing their
first one. So you have a bunch of rookies and
the reason for that is the PGA of America back
in that day had a stipulation that you had to

(18:17):
be a PGA professional a member for five years before
you were eligible to play on the Ryder Cup team.
So Jack barely missed in sixty seven. And now he's
twenty nine years old, He's won seven majors at this
stage in his career, not quite thirty wins on tour,

(18:41):
and he's playing in his first as are ten of
his teammates. And you have five rookies on the Great
Britain team. Just for the I know you've got great
golf fans on your show who really get into this stuff. Red,
I'm probably going into a little bit more detail than

(19:02):
I do on several of my interviews, But the way
the teams were determined in nineteen sixty nine, America was
determined entirely on a points system, so the top twelve
players in the point standings made the team. The captain
was Sam Snead. People recognize that name. Sam had no picks,

(19:28):
and I'm sure it was of no concern at all
to him because America always won. You know, I think
they probably felt like, whether they said it out loud
or not, that they could go over there WITHINNY twelve
and win.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
And the press treated it that way as well, right.

Speaker 3 (19:47):
It was almost a non event over here because you know,
back in that day it was probably seen more as
an exhibition from the American side of things, because, as
I said earlier, it had all these great elements and
all this great potential, and it was pretty pretty neat
and compelling when it started. But what it lacked was competition,

(20:11):
competitive matches at being close, at being exciting. That was missing. So,
you know, there's so many things going on in nineteen
sixty nine, and it's a little bit there are these
little cultural things I put in there to remind people
of what was going on. Then the Vietnam War, Richard

(20:33):
Nixon entering the White House, the moon landing with Neil Armstrong.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
Making a comment about golf when he was on the moon.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
That's right. Yeah, you know, it's funny. I found that
in Golf Illustrat, which is a British was a British
weekly golf magazine. In fact, it's still around.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
I didn't realize it was a British publication.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Yeah, And in doing my research, I can just tell
your audience too that a lot of it came from
the other side of the pond because it just wasn't
covered as heavily over here. It was probably relegated more
to the back pages of the sports page. Now it
was covered. There were New York Times stories, there were

(21:20):
some Golf magazine stories, but it was very heavily covered
in Great Britain, where they really loved their golf and
they had high hopes for their boys, even though they lost.
You know, in America that September, you're in the middle
of a baseball pennant race and the Chicago Cubs are

(21:40):
looking like they're going to win the Pennant, but they don't.
And people who are baseball fans have heard this before
with the Cubs.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
Yeah, a couple of times.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Yeah, And that was the year of the Miracle Mets,
and some people who were around will remember that when
they surprise everyone they won the Pennant and then they
beat the Baltimore Orioles in the World Series.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
So you know, Tom Seaver exactly.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
So it's so many things happened that year. But as
it turned out, it did end up being a pivotal
year in the Ryder Cup because when they got to Burkedale,
they had these great exciting matches. The British guys played

(22:30):
really well and they had a very I don't know
if you've gotten to this part yet, Fred, but their
captain was a Scott named Eric Brown, very fiery, competitive,
win it all costs mentality sort of guy, and he
had been a Ryder Cup player and it actually won

(22:52):
matches in an arrow when his side usually was losing.
He was undefeated in singles, which was kind of an
anomaly for guys on his side, and he brought a
different attitude to the matches. He didn't bow to the Americans.
He was like, come on, guys, we're gonna we can

(23:15):
We can play with these guys, we can beat them.
And that was his attitude. And then you've got kind
of krusty old school Sam Snead who doesn't believe in
things like conceiting putts, which sets up our ending nicely,
and who is as captain twice before. He's been a

(23:38):
captain twice before, and he's making his eighth appearance in
the Ryder Cup. Never lost, never been on a losing team,
and there's never been a tie. So uh, A lot
of really interesting things happened that week at Royal Birkdale.

Speaker 1 (24:01):
If I can take you back a moment, give me
the history of how the ryder Cup began, well.

Speaker 3 (24:08):
I'll give you the you know, I've got that detail
in the book because I wanted to give readers who
aren't that familiar with it some background.

Speaker 1 (24:16):
Yeah, I thought that was so interesting.

Speaker 3 (24:19):
Now I want readers to know. I put that backstory
in there, but I don't think it'll bog them down.
It's in the first chapter, and we peel back to
the beginning and I cover that the origins of it
in about seven pages, and I bring it back forward

(24:39):
to nineteen sixty eight sixty nine, which is where the
book starts, but it started. It got its name ryder
Cup from Samuel Ryder, who was an English seeds tycoon.
He sold seeds by mail. That's how he got started,
and he was very successful, very industrious, and he made

(25:03):
a lot of money. But by the time he turned
fifty his health was poor, and so his doctor said,
you need to get some exercise, you need to get
some fresh air. And a minister friend of his, I
think it's actually his pastor, said why don't you take
up golf? And I think at first writer said, Noah,

(25:25):
I don't want to do that, But then he ended
up taking up golf and he got hooked in a hurry,
and he just couldn't play enough golf.

Speaker 1 (25:35):
I know it well.

Speaker 3 (25:37):
And here's what's amazing, Fred, and you know it because
you've read this. The man's fifty years old. He takes
up the game. He hires this fellow named Abe Mitchell,
who's he hired someone else first, but he ended up
hiring this fellow named Abe Mitchell, a top player over there,
a professional, and I think he pays him something like

(26:00):
a thousand pounds a year to be his personal instructor.
He plays and plays and plays. He plays every day,
I think except Sunday or practices in his you know,
at his state. And in a year he's a six
handicap and he starts at fifty. Now that's pretty incredible. Well,

(26:21):
anyway rider starts, he hasn't this acute interest in golf,
and somehow he ends up at these international matches, these
informal matches where when the Americans come over to play
in the Open Championship, which we call the British Open,
they go out and play some rounds with some of

(26:42):
the British players, and they have these sort of informal matches,
but they have this international flavor. These guys that get
together to play only once a year. And writer observed
this and said, this is really a great thing, that
it'd be good if there was some sort of you know,
that this could be on a regular base and there
could be, you know, something more official structure to it.

(27:04):
And this is what ended up being becoming the Ryder Cup.
And it's called the Ryder Cup because he donated the trophy.

Speaker 1 (27:12):
And that was all he donated, was a trophy.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
He donated the trophy. But he also I think in
the early stages, I think he might have and it's
in my book, so I need to read my own book,
but I think he might have donated some money to
help the team get to America for the first official
Ryder Cup, which was in nineteen twenty seven. But just
to kind of tie a bow on this thing with

(27:34):
his instructor, the man who sits atop the Ryder Cup
trophy is Abe Mitchell, his instructor that he hired, and
Abe Mitchell was really touched that he's on the trophy.
He didn't really feel that he was deserved as a
griping entner for it. But so it's all start in

(27:57):
twenty seven and the officials there's you know, there was
kind of this other sort of false start in the
early twenties, but the official start, if you look back
at the history, is nineteen twenty seven, and they trade
the first four, each team winning on their home soil,

(28:17):
and then that's when it turns into this one sided
affair and America goes on a rampage and wins twelve
of thirteen heading into the sixty nine Ryder Cup.

Speaker 1 (28:29):
And what was the difference. Why did the American team
dominate so well.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
You know, I'm I think they were just better players.
I do. I think golf really caught on in America.
You had more people, the game really flourished, and I
have to think that they were just better. But I

(28:57):
don't know for sure, but that's certainly the case as
we approached nineteen sixty nine, and you look at the
fifties and the sixties, it's very clear that they were
better players and they had I think they had better competition,
they had a better tour. There were all kinds of

(29:20):
theories and I go into this too in the book
and the lead up to the sixty nine Ryder Cup,
and there were a lot of theories about why the
British players were not that competitive with the American players.

Speaker 1 (29:33):
And some of it was it style of play. I mean,
obviously the Parkland courses versus you know, the Why am
I blanking on because my brain's Fried Links Links, Thank
you Links Golf. Yeah, park Yeah, that was Link's style.

Speaker 3 (29:50):
No, that's very perceptive, Fred. That was one of the reasons.
And I got to spend time with Tony Jacqueline, which
was a lot of fun.

Speaker 4 (29:58):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (29:59):
He understood the history of this because well he's he
was born just after World War Two and he grew
up watching these great British players and he idolized them.
But he said, he told me, he said, when he
came to play the American Tour, he was trying to
change his swing technique. For one thing. The courses are

(30:24):
different here, but you also have you can play, you
can play all year round somewhere in America. The season
is short over in the United Kingdom and Great Britain,
and the weather is not as good. And Tony told
me that that affected things like swing technique. And at

(30:46):
one point in history, the USGA and the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club, they they adopted a different ball and
I don't know some of your your audience who are
old enough to remember there was a smaller British ball,
and there was a lot of talk about the Americans

(31:10):
being better because they could play They played with a
bigger ball, which was harder to control, and then when
they would switch to the British ball for the Ryder Cup,
they hit it farther, straighter. They were just better. So
there were a lot of theories about why America won
all the time, but I think if you just had

(31:31):
to choose one thing, their players were better.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah, yeah, I have to ask you about I was
so fascinated about the conversation about the ball in the
book because it's not that long ago that they standardized
the ball. I mean it was in the nineteen sixties. Sure,
it's fifty years or whatever it is ago, but still
in the history of golf, it's like there was debate

(31:56):
on the type of ball. You know, things are now
so rich and standard for everything. It just made me
think about all this conversation that is happening today about
how do we get more people to play golf, what
things can we introduce, and the conversation the most humorous

(32:19):
and yet has some legs to it to introduce and
bring in new people to the game. Is this concept
of the fifteen inch hole, right, I'm sure you've read
about this, people saying, yeah, sure, fifteen inch hold, it'll
cut strokes, it'll cut down the amount of time, and
more people will succeed and they'll have more fun. And
then I'm reading about a smaller ball and thought, well,

(32:43):
why don't they try that? Yeah, I mean they've already
had a smaller ball, it's already been play it was on,
you know, being used in Europe, and maybe that would
be a way. And wouldn't a smaller ball fly farther anyway?
And if they used head A's technology with a little

(33:03):
bit smaller and it wasn't It was not significantly smaller.
Was what six one hundredths of an inch smaller?

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah? It was one point six to two inches in
diameter versus one point six's eight.

Speaker 1 (33:15):
Which is the standard for today, right, Yeah, all right,
so that's six one hundreds So it's not that much smaller.
But would that have an impact? Would that be a
successful way to make score scores lower?

Speaker 3 (33:31):
I don't know that that would have enough impact for
your average player.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Not like a fifteen inch hole would.

Speaker 3 (33:37):
No, no, not at all. And frankly, the balls today,
even with them being bigger, are are a lot better
I think, and a lot less susceptible to weather conditions
than back in the old days when you had those

(33:58):
blott of balls and wound balls.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
But the scores are not that much different.

Speaker 3 (34:02):
No, that isn't that interesting. And the equipment's better. M hm.
So that must say something about us.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Ah, I'm not going there.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Yeah, well I meant I met the universal US, all
the scolars.

Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, well we don't. We don't have our lives don't
allow us to practice as much as we'd like. And
some players, but most players are not getting better, which
is kind of crazy because we have all this technology

(34:41):
behind us, and we have all this mental game which
didn't exist in the sixties. You know, swing coaches were
about it. Getting back to your story, what was the
relationship back to nineteen sixty nine of the US team
members because you had successful players and you had a coach,

(35:03):
you know, the one who is cold sneed coaching the team,
who you know, refused to lose and wanted to get
it done his way. Were there any animosity, contention, competition
among the American teammates that created any issues.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Not that they told me later. Uh. The only the
only real controversy was what came at the end. And
there were several players on the team that were disappointed
because they felt like Tony had a missible putt, he

(35:41):
probably would have made it. He would tell, are you.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Giving away the ending now we haven't even gotten into
the tournament?

Speaker 3 (35:46):
Yeah, okay, but there wasn't. Yeah. When I talked to
the players, and I talked to most of the surviving
players on both teams, they can just it's just like today,
great honor to play on the team. They were excited
about playing the Ryder Cup. Even America, who expected to win.

(36:08):
To make the team, was this huge honor. Ken still
said it was the biggest honor in his life. And
he said, he told me this is two years ago.
It's a quote that's in the book, and I might
not be having exactly right, but he said, in fact,
I might be buried in the blue Ryder Cup jacket.

(36:29):
They know they got along, and they said most of
them said I would play with you know, anyone on
the team. Frank Beard told me that it's not it
wasn't at all like today where there's just all this
build up and you know, the captain of year ahead
of time, and it's talk talk talk, and they're trying

(36:51):
to figure out what players to put together, and there's
these sessions of you know whatever, psychological stuff and pep talks.
None of that in sixty nine just kind of old
school let's go, you know, here we go, here's my lineup.
I asked Frank Beard, I said, what was Sneed like
as a captain. He said, well, it wasn't like today.

(37:14):
He said, we might have had one meeting and it
might have lasted five minutes. He said he wanted to
know one thing, and he said he had all of
us write down on a piece of paper if there
was someone on the team we didn't want to play with, so.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
He kept it anonymous.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
Yeah, but there wasn't. So there wasn't a lot of
Now on the other side, Eric Brown approached a little
bit differently, but Sam Snead was just sort of you know,
is a different era. I think men related differently. They
went about their business differently, and it was like we're

(37:53):
going to go over there and we're going to play,
and there wasn't a lot of handholding, you know, it
was but getting back to your question about how did
the guys get along. I think they got along fine.
I don't know that anybody had a problem with their teammates.
But I do know Frank Beard, who was a really

(38:14):
good player. He was the top. He was a leader
on the money list that year on the American Tour.
Very good player. He was intimidated by the whole atmosphere
the Ryder Cup match play playing with a teammate. He

(38:35):
was paired with Billy Casper, who he idolized it was
hard on him and he told me that, And I
loved his transparency and there's some great comments from Frank
Beard about what it was like playing in his first
Ryder Cup. He did not feel comfortable at all. He
played okay, but he told me, he said, not really

(39:01):
feel good about playing with Billy Casper. Because people might
not know this, but at that stage in the sixties,
Casper was winning and was as every bit as good
as anybody else on tour, including Nicholas, including player Palmer,
you name it. Billy Casper was a great player and

(39:23):
Beard was ten years younger, and it's like, oh, I've
got to play with Casper in alternate shot. Oh my gosh,
I'm worried about letting this guy down and what he's
going to think of me, and so all of these
things are really interesting. When you talk to these players
who were great players, made a lot of money on

(39:44):
their tours one tournament, how the Ryder Cup affects them
is just really interesting.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
So if everyone was able to get along, well, you know,
I find that that fascinating, going from an a sport that's,
you know, all individuals all the time, to a team
sport and making it work, making the chemistry work, which
they didn't care. It was just like points system, you're
on or you're not. There were no picks. Tell me

(40:14):
who you got to spend time with in the research
of your book. Of the players, who did you get
to interview?

Speaker 3 (40:24):
I really got to interview everybody I would have possibly
hoped to interview, except except Forately Trevino, who was also
on that team.

Speaker 1 (40:33):
And why not Trevino.

Speaker 3 (40:36):
He just declined. I went through his agent and they
he said no. And this was early in the process.
And later on, when I'd interviewed pretty much everybody else,
including Jack Nicholas, which was huge for me, I went
back and I asked again, and I never heard anything.

(40:59):
So that's the only one I really person I really
missed that. That would have been nice to talk to.
But I talked to Nicholas, of course. I talked to
him toward the end. Frank Beard Kin Still, Billy Casper,
Raymond Floyd, who is also a Hall of Famer. That

(41:19):
was his first Ryder Cup and he is a vice
captain this year for Tom Watson, Jeane Letler and Tommy Aaron.
So Dan Sykes was on that team. Some of your
audience might remember him. He's deceased, and so was Dave Hill.

(41:42):
And Dave Hill he died a couple of years ago,
maybe two or three years ago. People are going to
they're going to love the stories about Dave Hill in
this book. Dave Hill is quite a character and very
temperamental guy. And there's some things that happen. You haven't
got to them yet in the book yet, Fred, But

(42:03):
in this Ryder Cup you probably have the most acrimonious
match in the history of the Ryder Cup. Really yeah,
And I won't go into it, oh, but I can say, well,
I don't know how much you want me to give away,
but I can tell you this. There was almost a
fistfight on Friday in a four ball match between and

(42:25):
that's not and I'm not embellishing. It almost came to blows.
There were a series of incidents in this match between
Dave Hill and kin Still for the Americans and Brian
Huggett and Bernard Gallaher for Great Britain. Now Huggitt and
Gallaher they're still around. In fact, I don't know about

(42:47):
this year, but Bernard Gallaher does commentary for the Ryder
Cup over there, and he was a great Ryder Cup captain.
He followed Tony Jacqueline in the eighties and he was
Ryder Cup captain I think three times for his side.
So he was a great player. But in nineteen sixty nine,

(43:09):
he's a twenty year old. He's the youngest man to
ever play in the Ryder Cup in nineteen sixty nine,
and he's almost kind of a rary type figure, although
I wouldn't say he's quite at that level, but he
comes onto the scene in nineteen sixty nine and he's
winning tournaments and he's kind of brash and he's a

(43:31):
really good player. So anyway, you have these four guys.
For as Brian Huggett told me in his interview. He
said he called all of them, including himself, feisty, and
they have quite this match on Friday. All kinds of
things go on. You just you couldn't make it up.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
Were there any of the people that you had the
chance to speak to, Were there any surprises or any
it's the word I'm looking for here, stories that were
they conflicted with one another that you needed some more substantiations. Likette,
you're telling me one story and you're telling me a
completely different story.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
There's always some of that, I think when you do
a historical sure Sure book, and I learned that when
I did the Longest Shot. I think the hardest thing
to sort out was this match. I'm sorry to talk
about that people will read about because even to this day,
the players in this four ball match that that that

(44:46):
became a big disagreement. They still don't really agree on
what happened. And so you know, I interviewed both I
interviewed Ken Still, and I couldn't interview Dave Hill, and
I interviewed Brian Hugget and Bernard Gallaher, and I thought,
and then I had the reporting from nineteen sixty nine

(45:09):
of what happened. And I remember when I was writing
that chapter, I was thinking, how am I going to
write this, because there's a part of you that wants
to get to some account that you say, I think
this is what happened, but you don't know. So I
ended up putting it all together and just reporting on

(45:29):
what was reported at the time and what the players
said later.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
And.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
It's really it's really interesting. The other thing that you
have going on when you do books like this, and
I had this with Jack Fleck, is you're dealing you
talk to players forty years later and their memories of
it don't always coincide with what the reporting was at

(45:58):
the time, and so then you have to figure out
how to write it. Lots of times what happens is
they don't remember. You know, they've played a lot of
golf through the years, and they don't remember but maybe
a few things that happened that week. But you'll find

(46:19):
some players who have very vivid memories. Kin still remembered
a lot. It was his only Ryder cup and it
was it was one of the big moments in his
whole life. You could just tell from talking to him.
So it's interesting and challenging to sort all of that

(46:40):
out when you try to put together your narrative.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Sure. Sure, And that was the only place that there
was like people had different different views of what actually happened.

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Yeah, it really was. I didn't really run into any
other areas where I thought it's a big problem area.
I was really glad. One of the things about this book,
and it's in my author's note at the beginning, and
it's been written up in some of the reviews that
have come out on the book. The Wall Street Journal

(47:17):
reviewed it a week or so ago, congratulations, thank you. Yeah,
that was nice, and some other golf magazines and publications
ever reviewed it. And one of the things they pointed out,
because I have this in the book, there was only
three minutes of footage that survived. This event was televised

(47:41):
by the BBC and it was also on radio, and
after writing the longer shot, which took place in nineteen
fifty five, there was very little film of that, which
was not surprising because TV wasn't golf on TV was
just getting started. When I picked up this story, I thought,
oh boy, I'm going to be able to watch a

(48:03):
lot of this because it was televised. I inquired with
the BBC. They pointed me to IMG, the big agency
that represents athletes. They owned the rights to that particular
Ryder Cup. Somehow they acquired the right, so I had
to go through them and try to find any archived

(48:24):
footage of the nineteen sixty nine Ryder Cup matches televised
by the BBC. Well, what I come to find out
is there's there are only three minutes, and I was
surprised by that. So I had the challenge again of
putting this together without the benefit of really any television coverage.

(48:48):
But the good thing about it was the three minutes
that they have was the ending. And by being able
to watch the ending, which is the climactic moment in
the book, I can really sort of slow things down.
And I picked out a lot of the details that

(49:09):
I watched on film to describe what happened. And when
you can see things on film, you can you know
that's true, that's factual. You're not relying on someone's memory,
you know. Jack Nicholas told me he picked his ball
out of the cup on the eighteenth hole, which was

(49:30):
the way he remembered it. I mean, that's what players
normally do. When I watched the film. He didn't do that.
He didn't pick his ball up. He sank a five
foot pot and then he instead of reaching over and
picking his ball out of the cup, he reached over
and he reached down and picked up Tony Jaquelin's marker
for that famous concession. And I don't know who got

(49:53):
his ball, But you know, it's nice when you have
some of that because you can actually describe what happened
and know that that's that was factual.

Speaker 1 (50:05):
And had you watched the footage before you got to
do that interview.

Speaker 3 (50:09):
I think I had seen that footage, and of course
I didn't try to correct Jack's memory. But in the
cases where I had some other source, you kind of
weigh your sources and you have to you have to decide, well,
what do I think really happen here? Or in some

(50:30):
cases you just report both versions and let the reader decide.
You know, the readers are smart, and you give them
you just give them enough and they can draw their
own conclusions from situations.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
All right, So let's go back now and go over
the matches, not each individual match, but each day of
what happened and how it got to the point where
it was that close and had that dramatic of an ending.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Well, I'll I'll just quickly tell the format. It was
the same as today. You started with foursomes on the
first day, which is alternate shot. I think your audience
will know what that is. The second day was four
ball matches, which is better ball, best ball, and the
last day was single So that is just like it

(51:23):
is today. This was the first Ryder Cup to have
twelve man teams. We have twelve man teams today, but
in nineteen sixty nine was the first year of twelve
man teams. Before that, they had ten man teams. But
what was different about nineteen sixty nine is when people
read the score of that match. Of course it ended

(51:44):
in a tie. That's why it's called drawing the dones.
It was the first time in the history of Ryder
Cup the score was sixteen to sixteen, and that'll strike
people as a little love. They'll say, well, wait a minute,
thirty two points. I thought the Ryder Cup is twenty
eight points and it is now. In sixty nine, they
had two sets of singles on the final day, the

(52:06):
morning session in the afternoon session. Eight matches in the morning,
eight in the afternoon. So you had thirty two points
in that day instead of twenty eight. What happened just
as this fiery Great Britain captain Eric Brown had hoped for.

(52:28):
He exhorted his players. He knew that in the past
they'd always gotten behind and he wanted to get out
fast every morning. Well, this is what happened. The first day.
Great Britain got out in the first session. They were
after the end of the first session of the morning.

Speaker 4 (52:47):
They were ahead, I think three and a half to
a half point and he was just he could he
was beside himself with joy.

Speaker 3 (52:57):
They were way out ahead, in front, and so this
established really the pattern for the week. Great Britain got
out ahead. In the afternoon, the Americans were playing catchup,
and in the afternoon of foursomes, America came back and
they at the end of the first day it was

(53:22):
four and a half to three and a half. The
Americans won the second fourth session on Thursday. They go
out on Friday and again Great Britain wins that session
two and a half to one and a half and
they're ahead seven to five. But then in the afternoon

(53:45):
four balls, America wins that session three to one. So
we go into the final day and it's all tied
up eight to eight and America's kind of got the
pressure on it now. It's like these guys are they
might beat us. They're playing really well. You have more

(54:08):
matches that are going to the final hole, probably than
ever in the history of the Ryder Cup, and I
think in total there were seventeen of the thirty two
that went to the final hole, in five that finished
on the seventeenth. So these are really close tense matches.
The last day you have the singles and in the morning,
just like the previous days, Great Britain wins the morning

(54:33):
session five to three. They're head thirteen to eleven. The
galleries now are really they're really fired up because they
think we can win the Cup. You go into the
afternoon and they need three and a half out of
a possible eight points to take back the Cup for

(54:56):
the first time since nineteen fifty seven and for only
the second time since the Great Depression. America's backs are
to the wall and you have Tony Jacqueline and Jack
Nicholas playing the anchor match, and this is both in
the morning session and the afternoon session. In the morning session,

(55:18):
Jacqueline beats him four and three. Jacqueline is the best
player at Royal Birkdale. This week. Jack Nicholas misses a
bunch of short puts in that morning session, not really
at the top of his game, so they anchor the
match the second session as well, and it comes down

(55:41):
to their match, and it comes down to the final hole.
Everything is tied and their match is tied. So it
comes down to the very very end.

Speaker 1 (56:01):
Yeah yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:03):
So we know what happens. I mean, people who pick
up this book, who've heard about this, they know that
something happened on this final green. It's known as the Concession.
It's a famous moment in golf and sports, this great
act of sportsmanship. So the context for that. Now we
have some of the context for that. These close matches,

(56:26):
some acrimony.

Speaker 4 (56:29):
We have.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
I haven't really talked much about this, but it was
for the Americans. They felt like the galleries at time
were hostile. It's been a tough it's been a tough week.
Now you have Necklace and Jacqueline coming down the final fairway,
you have both teams gathered around the green and their captains,
and you have ten thousand spectators. It's the winds blowing

(56:52):
and it's spitting rain, and it's about six o'clock in
the evening at Royal Birkdale after this long week, and
they hit their it's a par five hole. It plays
down when easily easily reachable in two and they hit
their approach shots up on the green. Jacqueline his farther away.

(57:12):
He puts first. He has about a thirty footer for
an eagle, and he rolls it up. It's tracking right
for the hole and it stops about two feet short.
He marks his ball. Jack's got about a twenty footer
and his putt now is to win the Ryder Cup.
It's also for an eagle. Jack is a very deliberate player,

(57:36):
as some people will remember, and he took his time
and it's very tense. People around the green are just
waiting for Jack to hit this pot. He hits it,
and this is part of it that what's on film.
It misses, and unlike Jack, he hit it pretty hard

(57:57):
and it rolls almost five feet by the hole, so.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
He's still away. He's still hitting, still away.

Speaker 3 (58:05):
Now. When I'm in Jack Nicholas's office interviewing him, I
asked him about that pot. I said, Jack, you knocked
that five feet by the hole. I said, what happened
on that putt? Do you remember anything? You know where
did you see Tony come up short and you just
you were trying to make it and you hit it
too hard. And he kind of laughed and he said
it was probably just stupidity. He said, you don't want

(58:29):
to leave a putt like that for the whole The
whole match is hanging on a putt like that. Now
he's missed, He's missed the number of putts shorter than
that in the morning match. So Jack is really taking
his time looking this one over, and people in the

(58:50):
gallery are one person faints. That's how nerve wracking it was.
So then we have the big Jack grinds over this
pot and he finally gets over it, and you know,
like the Golden Bear did when he needed one, he

(59:11):
knocked it in. And then in that moment he reached
down and he processed all this sort of the I
guess what was happening and what he realized what was
at stake, the fact that Jacqueline's putt was for a tie,
not a win, and the fact that with a tie,

(59:33):
America retains the cup, and the fact that Tony Jacqueline
was a new British Open champion and the hero over there,
and if he somehow didn't get that two foot or in,
as Jack has said, it might kill his career. Jack
somehow calculates all this in the moment.

Speaker 1 (59:53):
It would kill Jacqueline's career exactly.

Speaker 3 (59:55):
It would kill Jacqueline's career, or it would do It
would do serious dam image to him to miss a
lot like that on his home soil to tie the
Ryder Cup. And Tony is resolute. He will tell you
he would have made that putt, and I bet he
would have, and all his teammates it was a two footer,

(01:00:19):
give or take maybe a couple of inches. But what
all the players were unanimous on was he probably would
have made it. But it was missible under the circumstances.
It was not a gimme. If it were a gimme,
then the concession really doesn't mean anything, and it wouldn't
be the big deal it is today. So Nicholas concedes

(01:00:41):
the putt and they shake hands. Jack has some nice
words for Tony on that green, and they walk off
the green arm in arm. The gallery's applauding Henry Longhurst
is announcing on BBC and you know, fade out. It
was this great moment in golf. But as we talked

(01:01:04):
a little bit of I think maybe we alluded to earlier,
it was controversial with some of his teammates and certainly
as captain at that time.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
Sure sure, what was the relationship between at the time,
between Jacqueline and Jack.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Well, that's an interesting part of it too, I should
tell say that one of the great I mean, including
spending time with them, A great part of this project
for me too was asking and having them collaborate on
the forward for this story, which is in Draw on

(01:01:46):
the Dune. So the forward of the book is by
Jack Nicholas and Tony Jacqueline, and in that they they say,
and you know how they were friends. They were friends.
And this is the interesting thing about Jack Nicholas. He's
this great competitor who who would played to win and

(01:02:07):
won a lot, but he also had this maturity about
him and this grace to where he had. He did
something on that green that I don't know if any
of the other players would have thought of to do,
and that was to concede that putt, and he felt
like that was the right thing to do and that

(01:02:29):
the Ryder Cup inning in a tie was a good thing.
And I think he turned out to be right about that,
although you know, people are certainly it's debatable, you know,
I've I've been asking the question and social media and elsewhere,
you know, and Samsoney didn't believe in giving a pup
like that that someone could have missed, they still could

(01:02:51):
have won. But I think for the Ryder Cup and
for reviving interest, for tapping into that spirit of sportsmanship,
I think is a part of how the whole thing
got started with Samuel Ryder, the international goodwill. I think
that what Jack Nicholas did was indeed a great gesture,

(01:03:14):
and I think that's why it's still remembered and talked
about today.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
It's an amazing story. I am so glad that you
dug it up and flushed it out the way you have.
It really is a phenomenal story. Is there a record
of how Sam Snead felt about the concession, knowing that
he wanted to win as the captain.

Speaker 3 (01:03:46):
Yeah, there is. He never liked it, Wow, And I
talked to Jack about that. Jack knew it, the other
players knew it. Of course, Sam died in two thousand
and two. So I was never able to talk to him.
But there is a quote in the book, in the
aftermath chapter that's attributed to Sam that was, you know,

(01:04:09):
I picked up from another source, and it's a well
known quote. I've seen it in other places where he
just he said, I wasn't I we didn't come over here.
It's something like, and I don't have it handy right now,
but it's something like, we didn't come over here to
be good old boys. And I would never give a
putt like that to anyone except maybe my brother. That's

(01:04:30):
the gist of it. It just went against his philosophy.
And Jack understood that. He told me when I interviewed
him last year, he said, you know, that was just
Sam's mode. He said, I accept that Sam was a
great player and a great competitor. He said, Now I
don't know that when it was all over and it
was a tie, I don't know that I felt like

(01:04:51):
he should have been as upset about it as he was.
But the Sam, you know, the captain and the players,
even then, even with their disappointment, I think they had
a lot of respect for Jack Nicholas, Because Jack said
Sam never said a word to him about it. Not
one word at that time or until he died. Sam

(01:05:16):
never said anything to him, and Jack's teammates never took
him aside and said, Jack, what were you thinking? Why
did you do that? They were you know, they they
admitted they were disappointed. Tommy Aaron told me that he said,
I was shocked. Billy Casper told me that he said,

(01:05:37):
we were disappointed at the time, but he said, you know,
they all eventually got to a place through the years
where they could look back on that and say that
was a good thing, and that was a good thing
for the Ryder Cup.

Speaker 1 (01:05:50):
Oh that's nice. Thank you for this story, this and
thank you for bringing it out as much as you have.
I appreciate it because I know you want people to
read the book, but I think at tease like this
is going to make them want to pick up this
two hundred and eighty page book and read it, especially
this week, you know, to put it all in context
with watching the Ryder Cup. What what do you think

(01:06:13):
is your next project?

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
You know, I don't know really, I well, Fred, but
I hope there is another one because I really enjoyed this.
And one thing, I you know, we started talking about
the players. Uh, and I really got off on the
American team. But I think one of the things too
that people will like about this is the the British

(01:06:38):
players are not as well known, but you get to
know them in this book. So absolutely they people know
of Tony Jacquelin, but some of the other players that
they'll meet in this story they may have heard of,
they may have known that they were captains at one point.

Speaker 4 (01:06:55):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
One player in particular that a lot of people who
are golf fans will know he's still around is Peter Alice,
the great commentator for the BBC. He is in this
Ryder Cup. It's his last one on the British side.
And you have some other great players like Neil Coles
and Christy O'Connor. Of course I mentioned Brian Huggett, so

(01:07:19):
I think Brian Barnes some people might recognize that name.
So I think the get for me getting to know
the players was a lot of fun. And I didn't
know the British side as well until I interviewed them
and wrote about them. But I hope to do another
book and if anybody has some ideas in my way will.

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Do send him to me and I'll make sure that
Neil gets them. That's a great way to go. Well,
the video of that final haul is available, and I
will put that on the website as well to tease
you just a little bit more about this story.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
That's a great I'm sorry, go ahead, Yeah, that's that's great.
And I got right to the eighteenth hole with Nicholas
and Jacqueline coming down to the end. But there are
some things that happen in that final half hour forty
five minutes that are pretty amazing and people will get

(01:08:20):
into them. There's a player who thinks he has a
putt to win the Ryder Cup before Jacqueline and Nicholas
get to that final green, and he has good reason
to think that. There's some drama. There's a lot of
drama in that final hour of the nineteen sixty nine
Ryder Cup, and I detailed that and draw on the
Dunes awesome.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Well again, it's Drawing the Dunes nineteen sixty nine Ryder
Cup in the finish that Shocked the World by Neil Sagabel. Neil,
I not only appreciate you alerting me that this is
happening and getting it to me before the book came
out to the public. Unfortunately books interrupt us by our hurricane,

(01:09:03):
but I hope everyone comes to the Golfer's mart on
our website and go into our book section. You will
find this and you will find Neil's other book about
the Longest Shot. Neil was great to talk to you.
Thank you so much for your time, and I look forward.
I hope it's not another two years before we get
to tell another story.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Me too. I really enjoy it. Fred, thanks for having
me on and enjoy the Ryder Cup, and I hope
the US can win this time