The Ryder Lions: The Story of Britain’s 1957 Ryder Cup Victory

By Brian Belton

‘The Ryder Lions’ celebrates perhaps the greatest achievements of British Golf and one of the great moments in the world history of the sport.

At a time when the United Kingdom was still recovering from the ravages of war, a massively strong group of American golfers landed in England with the aim of retaining a trophy they had come to see as their own.

The Americans had humbled the men from the British Isles on nine occasions; the Cup had not been out of US hands for almost a quarter of a century.

But over a few days in 1957, the unthinkable happened, and one of the great transatlantic sporting confrontations erupted into a seminal moment in the annals of the greens.

Although Great Britain and Ireland would never again win the Ryder Cup, the ‘Lions of Lindrick’ had proved a point.

The men of ’57, Americans, British and Irish, were motivated by more than just hitting a ball with a stick. They each built their own philosophy from golf and adapted it to all other areas of their lives.