Team golf adds a layer to the game that cannot be matched by playing for yourself
For all of golf’s solitudinal ways, nothing fires us up more than the sense of playing for someone other than ourselves. I love a quiet round playing alone, but I’d hate for every golf experience to be solo. And even better than having company on the golf course is having a playing partner to ride the ups and downs with. A step up from that is being part of an entire team of golfers.
I first learned this in the spring of 1991 when, at 15, I saddled up with five teammates to represent our club in a junior competition a rung below the official junior pennant league. You won’t find the Encourage Shield on any list of the top trophies in golf, but for us it was everything – ditto the Peninsula Shield, which was a carbon copy played later in the summer but by a smaller pool of Sydney clubs.
The format was individual handicap matchplay, although you played in fours so had a teammate alongside you, even if you ‘fought’ separate battles. I loved playing No.3 or 4 in our team, as it kept you in touch with the No.5 and reserve in the matches ahead and the top duo toiling behind. Hand signals to indicate the status of a match were common.
We didn’t threaten the semi-finals that first year yet, bound by camaraderie and purpose, the same six of us lined up again a year later. We were better golfers, more experienced and more determined. We just failed to advance in the 1992 Encourage Shield and then won the Peninsula Shield [see panel].
My infatuation with team matchplay was cemented. Alas, soon I was no longer a junior and also never good enough to crack an A grade (scratch) matchplay side, other than one time when I played as a fill-in. I won the first hole with a bogey before being trounced, 6&5.
In later years I enjoyed the amity of team golf by caddieing. Sure, having a caddie in club golf seems like overkill on the surface, but for an opposing team, it somehow feels like a mismatch when you see a side with twice as many people on it, even if it’s the same number who put a peg in the ground.
Support crews, hangers-on and partisan crowds will be a theme this month as the Ryder Cup heads to New York [see page 118], where the boisterous fans are sure to make it the liveliest edition of the biennial teams contest yet. I like how Samuel Ryder’s vision draws interest globally, even during the era of the Presidents Cup and other professional team competitions. Despite involving only a select few nations, the Ryder Cup owns a raw energy to feel and feed off that transcends nationality.
Most Australians cheer for Europe in an anyone-but-America vein, although it’s the atmosphere and the heat of competition we tune in for. Who knew golf could generate such energy? My only wish this year is for a break in what has become very much a ‘home team wins in a landslide’ period of results.
Before the Ryder Cup arrives, LIV Golf’s team championship in Michigan will close the 2025 season for the innovative league. Talk to any of the all-Aussie Ripper GC and they’ll tell you LIV’s team component has heightened their motivation. Having grown up with a steady diet of mainstream teams as part of their sports-loving upbringing – despite choosing to play what is largely an individual sport – each ‘Ripper’ is feeling the infectious solidarity and how much LIV crowds embrace team play. Anyone who was on hand to watch them beat the all-South African Stinger GC side at LIV Golf Adelaide last year will attest to that. I thought grandstands were in danger of toppling, such was the ground movement the raucous crowds generated.
The golf world can be a selfish, eyes-on-one place at times. It’s breakaway weeks like the Ryder Cup and LIV Golf’s team championship that reveal the game’s true intensity.
Alone is rarely ideal, even in golf.
Top 5 teams in golf
*Seve and Ollie: Not a team as such, but the enigmatic Spanish duo of Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal won 12 points from 15 matches together at the Ryder Cup. Their union deserves a mention.
5. Wakehurst Golf Club Peninsula Shield side, 1992-1993: With yours truly as captain, we beat all comers that summer in the junior teams handicap matchplay competition on Sydney’s northern beaches (please forgive the gratuitous gloating!).
4. North Texas ‘Mean Green’: The US college team won four straight NCAA titles in America from 1949 to 1952.
3. Joondalup Country Club: Owns the most Division 1 men’s pennant titles in Australia this century.
2. US Solheim Cup team, 1994-1998: The European side didn’t come within four points of the Americans in three straight attempts.
1. US Presidents Cup team: Beaten only once since the first matches in 1994.
