THE RYDER CUP

The Ryder Cup is three days of matchplay between twelve professionals from the United States and twelve from Europe, held every second year and alternating between the two: twenty-eight matches from the Friday to the Sunday, played for points, with practice, a junior match and an opening ceremony in the days before. In 2027 it is played from 17 to 19 September at Adare Manor, in County Limerick, the hundredth year of the event and Ireland’s second Ryder Cup. No prize money is paid.

The small golfer on top of the trophy is modelled on Abe Mitchell, the professional Samuel Ryder paid to teach him.

Samuel Ryder

Samuel Ryder was an English businessman who had the idea of selling garden seeds in penny packets. They were posted each Friday so that working men had them for their Saturday afternoons, and the stock was first kept in the garden shed of his house in Folly Lane, St Albans; his seed hall on Holywell Hill is a café now. He took up golf at about fifty, at Verulam, his club in St Albans, and from late 1925 kept Abe Mitchell as his private coach.

The professionals of Great Britain and the United States had already played two matches unofficially, at Gleneagles in June 1921 and at Wentworth in 1926, and Great Britain won both. Ryder held back his cup in 1926. He gave it, a gold trophy, for the first official match, at Worcester Country Club in Massachusetts in 1927, under a Deed of Trust that set down the rules, and paid the last £300 of the British team’s travelling fund himself. In early 1928 it became clear that a match every year was not practical, and from 1929 it was played every second year.

It was a long time one-sided. “From the resumption of competition in 1947 to 1977, Great Britain and Ireland had only managed one win and one tie.” In 1977 Jack Nicklaus and the Earl of Derby discussed the matter, and from 1979 the British and Irish side became Europe. In 1997 Valderrama became the first venue outside Britain and the United States.

It was played in odd years until 1999. The match of 2001 was put off after the attacks of 11 September and played in 2002, and the match of 2020 was put off for the pandemic and played in 2021, which returned it to odd years. On the official count the United States has won twenty-seven times and Europe sixteen.

The Matches

Each side has twelve players and a captain. On the Friday and the Saturday there are four matches of foursomes and four of fourballs, one session in the morning and the other in the afternoon, and on the Sunday twelve singles: twenty-eight matches, each over eighteen holes. Fourteen and a half points win the Cup; the holder keeps it with fourteen. The home captain sets the order of the foursomes and fourballs.

The shape came by degrees: two days of matches over thirty-six holes until 1959, eighteen holes from 1961, three days from 1963, and the twenty-eight matches from 1979. Arnold Palmer, in 1963, was the last captain who also played.

The week begins on the Tuesday, with practice and a community day; the Wednesday has an All Star Match, and on the Thursday the final round of the Junior Ryder Cup is played and the opening ceremony held. The matches start on the Friday morning, with what the organisers call “the legendary 1st tee atmosphere”.

At Royal Birkdale in 1969, with the whole match tied, Jack Nicklaus conceded Jacklin’s putt of two feet on the last green: “I don’t think you would have missed that putt, but in these circumstances I would never give you the opportunity.” The tie kept the Cup in America. Sam Snead was not pleased: “We went over there to win, not to be good ol’ boys.”

At Kiawah Island in 1991, the War on the Shore, Ballesteros said that “Breaking the rules and cheating are two different things”, and Langer missed from six feet on the last to lose it for Europe. At The Country Club, Brookline, in 1999 the Americans came back from ten points to six down, with Justin Leonard holing from forty-five feet on the seventeenth; at Medinah in 2012 Europe did the same to them, and won by fourteen and a half points to thirteen and a half, Kaymer holing the putt that kept the Cup.

There was no Ryder Cup in 2026; it is played in odd years. At Bethpage Black, on Long Island, from 26 to 28 September 2025, Europe under Luke Donald led by eleven and a half points to four and a half after the Saturday, the largest lead for either side since 1979, and won by fifteen to thirteen, the first away side to win since 2012; Shane Lowry’s birdie on the eighteenth against Russell Henley kept the Cup. The crowd was widely criticised. Europe’s players are paid nothing; since 2025 the Americans have had $500,000 each, $300,000 of it to give to charity.

Adare Manor

Adare Manor stands on the River Maigue at Adare, in County Limerick. It was the seat of the Earls of Dunraven, a Tudor Revival house begun in 1832 and finished in 1862, and is called a calendar house: it has 365 windows and fifty-two chimneys. J. P. McManus bought it in 2015, for an estimated thirty million euros. Its restaurant, the Oak Room, holds a Michelin star.

The course was laid out by Robert Trent Jones and redesigned by Tom Fazio, and held the Irish Open in 2007 and 2008. The Ryder Cup comes to it twenty years after The K Club held the match of 2006.

Luke Donald, named in March 2026, captains Europe for the third time in a row; Jim Furyk, named in April, captains the United States. Some two hundred and fifty thousand people are expected through the week, with a record twenty thousand seats in the grandstands. The match goes next to Hazeltine, in Minnesota, in 2029, and to Camiral, on the Costa Brava, in 2031.

What to Know

It is played in September in odd years, alternating between Europe and the United States. In 2027 the matches are from Friday 17 to Sunday 19 September, with practice from Tuesday 14 September.

The ballot for 2027 has closed. Tickets are now to be had in the hotel packages of Ryder Cup Travel Services and in the Premium Experiences, of which few remain; The Green, beside the spectator village, is sold out. A match day costs €499 at the gate, a record for a European venue; the Tuesday and Wednesday €89, and the Thursday, with the opening ceremony, €179. Tickets bought on resale sites may be cancelled.

Nothing is published. Smart casual, as the Court keeps it: a jacket without a tie, proper trousers, and shoes for a day’s walking on grass. Golf shoes and spikes are not worn, and in rain a hat rather than an umbrella while play is on. In hospitality, a blazer.

Fly to Dublin, Shannon, Kerry or Cork. Shuttle trains run from Limerick Junction, an hour and a half from Dublin Heuston, to a station built at Adare Manor for the week, in about forty-five minutes; there is also Park and Ride. The official packages give five nights, from Wednesday 15 to Monday 20 September; there is an official campsite, and the cruise ship Oceania Marina is moored in the Shannon Estuary for those with four-day tickets.

The mistake is to drive. “There is no parking on-site.”

The Court

The Ryder Cup is not the Court’s own. Tickets for the three match days, or a place in the Premium Experiences, are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in County Limerick or aboard the ship in the estuary, and the table afterward. In 2027 the Goodwood Revival falls on the same weekend.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.