Ryder Cup 2025 Series Part 7: One of the Classic Matches of All Time Set up Today’s Rivalry
It was 1953 and the drama of this celebrated contest continued right to the very end and the outcome then resonated for decades
The 10th Ryder Cup - the 1953 match at Wentworth - was the most anticipated since the series began. The world was only eight years clear of World War II and the British population was one year short of the end of rationing. In terms of Britain and the US, the phrase “them and us” had entered the vocabulary. GB golfers were the poor relations of their American cousins and even the best British pros relied on pro-shop salaries, while their counterparts across the Atlantic were full-time tournament professionals with a lucrative countrywide tour offering substantial prize money.
But the green shoots of a British economic recovery were emerging and the nation was bathed in the joy of the Queen’s coronation earlier that year , as well as a British-led expedition that was first to conquer Mount Everest. On the sporting front, England’s cricketers regained the Ashes and footballer Stanley Matthews was in his pomp winning football’s FA Cup with a virtuoso performance. To cap it all, perhaps the Ryder Cup could be won.
The finest British golfer of the mid-20th century, Henry Cotton, was captain and invoked a new attitude after three demoralising post-war defeats. Cotton said: “To be a champion, you must act like one” and insisted on the best of everything for his team (just as Tony Jacklin did 30 years later), including food (despite rationing) and even relaxing entertainment (his players attended the West End musical Guys and Dolls on a practice evening).
The press also did its best to add spice to the contest despite the Americans being overwhelming favourites and arriving with confident smiles and their custom-made golf bags and matching clothing.
Cotton’s young team had few scars from previous defeats. Rookies Peter Alliss (22-years-old) and Bernard Hunt (23) led the way, while the Americans were without Ben Hogan who refused an invitation to play. A large, confident crowd of Londoners would watch two days of action with only 12 points to play for – they felt anything could happen.
However, on the opening day, the match followed a familiar pattern – the Americans led 3-1 (the British had not won the foursomes since 1933) and two of the matches were huge US victories. Cotton’s decision to leave out experienced players like Dai Rees and Max Faulkner and blood his youngsters had rebounded. Cotton is reported to have told his team he would “kick the (their) asses” that night and the rousing words did the trick.
The match would be decided by the eight day two singles matches of 36 holes and Cotton persisted with his young charges – Allis and Hunt were selected for matches 6 and 7, right where the heat of battle would be fiercest if the contest became close. Again, it was a gamble, but a worthy one.
Right on time, the GB team found some form. At lunch after 18 holes, the overall singles scores were even, but then Dai Rees lost a close opening match after leading with six holes to play to put the US three points ahead at 4-1. Nevertheless, the next three Brits all won, levelling things at 4-4 with four points still out on the course.
Britain’s Max Faulkner then lost to Cary Middlecoff and the US led 5-4, but Harry Bradshaw won for GB over Fred Haas and it was 5-5, so the two Brits who would decide the contest were the youngsters, Alliss and Hunt. The level of drama and the excitement was unprecedented.
Both Brits were woefully inexperienced compared to their American opponents. Alliss was only two years out of National Service and was playing Jim Turnesa who was a major champion having won the PGA Championship in 1952, the same year Alliss was contesting an assistant professionals tournament. Hunt was a year older and only a little wiser. He had won three individual titles in 1952, but his opponent Dave Douglas was a major championship regular who had finished 5th in the Masters the previous season. Despite the mis-match in experience, the two contests were deadly close.
After 18 holes, Alliss had shot 4-under par, yet was still 1-down to Turnesa who was 20 years his senior. The Englishman continued to play well and found himself 1-up with three to play. He was now under an immense spotlight.
On the tee at that 34th hole, Turnesa (who was also making his Ryder Cup debut) was suffering from nerves as well and a wayward drive would have probably flown deep into some trees had it not hit a female spectator. Fortune then again favoured the American when Alliss misjudged a pitch onto the green and lost the hole to fall back to level. Showing his rawness in such high pressure situations, the Englishman then drove out of bounds on the next hole to go 1-down with one to play. Soon after, in the match behind, Hunt went 1-up also with one to play.
As it stood, the overall match was tied and the dream scenario was still possible - Alliss to win the 36th hole to get a half and Hunt to hold his nerve and maintain his winning position which would mean a rare and famous victory for GB. No previous match had reached such a searing climax.
Turnesa hit a bad drive on 18 and a buzz went around the Wentworth crowd. Alliss knew he was now in the box seat and a safe par-5 to would win the hole. The Englishman was trying to emulate his father Percy Alliss who played in the last GB team to win the Cup back in 1933. The sports writers were already busy with father-and-son victory angles for their back page reports.
Alliss the younger had the crucial half-point within his grasp: he was short and left of the last green after two shots and could take three more for his par, while Turnesa was heading for an almost certain bogey. Then came disaster.
Alliss’s description of what happened comes from his autobiography My Life. It is characteristically revealing. “As I walked round the ball, even as I stood by it, my mind was full of nothing but feet – brogues, moccasins, sneakers, boots, shoes, spikes, rubbers, the shoes of the people perched on the front seats of the grandstand. All those boots and shoes kept popping idiotically in and out of my mind.”
He had a relatively simple wedge to the green, but nerves caused him to fluff the shot with a sand wedge and the ball bumbled short of the green. It was still his turn to play. Although his next chip with a 9-iron was about three feet from the pin, he missed the putt for a bogey six, the same score as Turnesa who had now won their match 1-up. Alliss’s pain lived on inside him to his final days. Decades later he talked of the fateful chip to the 36th green: “I made an awful bodge of it…I feel I’ve had to live my whole life with the guilt of messing up that chip.” Anyone who doubts the momentousness of the Ryder Cup need only read that quote.
The match score was now 6-5 to the Americans, but if Hunt kept his winning position then a very creditable draw would still be an amazing result for Britain.
Hunt had been buoyant winning the 12th, 13th, 16th and 17th holes to be dormie-one, but he then heard the groans ahead of him when Alliss lost. On 18, Hunt's second shot was in the trees yet he managed to get his third shot to the back of the green and putted to 4 feet. The tall, lean Douglas used all his experience to score a par 5 and left Hunt needing that final par short putt to drop for his win and to tie the match overall. The Englishman missed it. The USA had won 6½ to 5½.
It was the US team’s sixth straight win including three away from home. GB’s only compensation was that the close call re-invigorated the matches for the rest of the decade and more. The spectacle at Wentworth would become known as one of the most dramatic of all-time and be a springboard for the enmity between today’s teams.
Extra, extra! The drama and the passion of that 1953 GB team set a new level of intensity for the Ryder Cup rivalry, something that continued to grow. Ten years after Alliss and Hunt failed to deliver victory, Welshman Brian Huggett debuted in the 1963 match and summed up the passion that the British (and now Irish) felt for the Cup and also how difficult it was from them to win. “Making the Ryder Cup was the next best thing to winning the Open. It wasn’t the same for the Americans. They won quite easily and it wasn’t a great competition back then. I always felt that if it all went really well, we could have won. But looking back, we had no bloody chance. We only had half a team that thought like me, that we could win. There were some players who got the blazer and thought that they could walk around and live off that for the rest of their lives. They didn’t care enough if we won or lost. I was naïve to think we could win, especially away from home.”
Huggett would boil with anger at his team’s inability to turn the tide. The Welshman’s feelings for his opponents were clear. “The Americans tried to make you feel inferior. And we were. They loved to give us a whacking. They were very tough about the matches in those days. They never took it easy. It’s bloody lovely for us to win now. They might pull out if they get whacked too often. They were bloody arrogant. I got 12 Ryder Cup points and I enjoyed every one of those buggers.” The Wentworth match was undoubtedly the one which launched those kinds of extreme feelings that so many European players still feed off today.
How the Sunday Express reported the GB loss in 1953 with an arrow pointing out the unlucky Bernard Hunt