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Seeing double

Tuesday, 16 September 2008
Paula Benn
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For the first time in the history of the competition, there will be not one, but two, Ryder Cups in Kentucky this week for this year’s US v. Europe contest at Valhalla.

One of golf’s better-kept secrets is that a second Ryder Cup exists. It’s a permanent part of the silverware at Moortown Golf Club in Leeds. It was commissioned and presented to the club’s lady members by Sam Ryder at the close of the Ryder Cup held at Moortown in 1929 - the first time the competition had been held in Britain and the first to be won by Britain.

The cup was presented as a mark of Sam Ryder’s appreciation for the Moortown ladies’ hard work and hospitality during the then 2-day competition. The cup has been competed for annually ever since and now, seventy nine years later, the replica is heading to America on its first-ever journey outside Leeds whose US “sister city” of Louisville, Kentucky, is hosting this year’s Ryder Cup.

A 5-strong official delegation from Moortown Golf Club, representing the club and the city of Leeds, fly out tomorrow (Tuesday Sep 16) as guests of Louisville’s civic leaders, taking with them the replica of the original Ryder Cup, now known as the Ryder Commemoration Cup. Thirteen inches tall on a 3 inch pedestal, it is identical to the one presented to the ladies by Samuel Ryder and which is now kept in a bank vault in Leeds because it is irreplaceable.

Together with the club’s collection of historic photos of the 1929 event, the cup will be on display at the Louisville Visitors Center throughout the competition. While the photographer who documented the Ryder Cup in 1929 is unknown, the original photographs are permanently displayed with other memorabilia in the Moortown Clubhouse.

Club Chairman, David Sheret, said today: "It's a wonderful honour for the Club to be asked by the city of Louisville to play a part in its Ryder Cup celebrations and it confirms Moortown’s unique place in the history of one of the world's greatest sporting events."