Past captain wonders what might have been

TONY JACKLIN INTERVIEW:Few things illustrate better how far the Ryder Cup has come than the role of European captain, which is now one of the most lucrative unpaid jobs in sport. Richard Gillisreports

TONY JACKLIN sits at his mother-in-law's dining table, Rich Tea in hand, talking about money. More specifically, the topic of conversation is the value of the European Ryder Cup captaincy.

"I would think there's a million pounds in it for anyone doing it now," he says, his familiar face tanned from a weekend in St Tropez, courtesy of his friend and business acquaintance David Whelan, millionaire founder of the JJB Sport retail chain and chairman of Wigan FC, who "has a place there".

"They're setting out their table for the commercial side of these things now," he says of his successors at the helm of the European team - the current incarnation of which Jacklin is credited with creating.

"I just wish someone had set the table out for me. People couldn't believe how important the Ryder Cup was becoming, and by the time they did believe it I had finished.

"Nick (Faldo) has made enough money to be able to set himself up in business. I made enough to trundle along. I didn't make enough to be able to afford to go and get a marketing company to promote me."

This sense of opportunities lost is rarely far from the surface throughout our four or so hours together. Later, we were to have a peculiar conversation about "the Jacklin brand", in which he regretted the failure to enhance his image.

"Jack had the Golden Bear, Greg is the White Shark, you've got Black Knights (Gary Player), even Trevino is SuperMex. What have I got? We tried a British bulldog, but it looked like the one they put on the side of a bloody egg."

Few things illustrate better how far the Ryder Cup has come than the role of European captain, which has evolved from coat-carrying administrator to one of the most lucrative unpaid jobs in sport.

The European Tour pays them "all reasonable expenses", but the media profile enjoyed by the incumbent Faldo and the other recent captains positions them in the market for endorsements, course design work and other commercial hook-ups.

Running parallel to his captaincy duties, Faldo has a thriving course design business and is a global ambassador for adidas, TaylorMade and Maybach, the luxury car maker.

His views are given a platform across the US in his role as analyst for the Golf Channel, and before that on ABC.

"Where it's all gone is mind-boggling and next time it will be more and more and more," says Jacklin.

"The length and breadth of my commercial involvement was with Johnny Walker (then Ryder Cup sponsor). They said, would I get on an aeroplane and go to Italy and talk about the Ryder Cup? But I never got any other commercial opportunities for the whole four times I did it. I might have made £20,000, and they probably sent me a case of whiskey, but nothing else was available at the time."

Until 1983 the role required diplomacy and a nice line in self-deprecation: speeches were less about rallying the troops and more about thanking the Americans for still playing. Between 1927, the year of the inaugural event, and 1983, only three Cups, in 1933, '53 and '69, could be described as close.

The Britain and Ireland team were expanded to include the European players in 1981, and from 1983, Jacklin's first time as captain, the event turned into a genuine contest.

His experience of playing in America in the 1960s and 1970s informed his approach to the job. After winning the British Open in 1969 at Royal Birkdale, he went on to win the US Open the following year by seven shots, and remains the last European player to hold that trophy.

"I'd seen how organised it was over there, so I always felt that we were treated like second-class citizens. Self-esteem is so meaningful. How can you compete on the same level if you are treated badly? We were flying in the back of the bus, not knowing who was paying for the bloody dry cleaning, not being able to take caddies with us, everything was about what we couldn't do.

"The Americans came across on Concorde, so I wanted us to go on Concorde. I wanted the best clothes - we had always just worn anything they would give us: crap. Plastic shoes - my shoe sole came off in one match at Laurel Valley."

The new approach was noted by then US captain Jack Nicklaus in 1983. "When we landed in Concorde they noticed something was up. Nick Faldo put his arm around my shoulder and felt my jacket and said, 'ooh, cashmere' - there was a general sense of, what's going on?"

The charm offensive was allied to a ruthless streak, best illustrated when he sat down next to Gordon J Brand and told him he wouldn't need his clubs until Sunday - this on the plane going over.

THERE'S A school of thought that questions the importance of the Ryder Cup captaincy, claiming its significance has been blown out of proportion. Veteran player Brian Barnes is one such.

"When I look back, I can't say there was one captain I played under who could make me play harder or better," says Barnes.

Unsurprisingly, this is not a view shared by Jacklin. "I've got a film somewhere of Trevino (Jacklin's opposite number as US captain in 1985) saying it doesn't matter who you put with who, "which is bullshit, because it does matter who you put with who. Look at when they put Mickelson and Woods together - it didn't work. It was naïve to think it would. But Hal Sutton still did it when he was captain."

Consecutive American captains failed to make the most of Woods, says Jacklin, drawing parallels with the role of Seve Ballesteros in the 1980s European teams.

"Some players were over-awed when partnered with him," he says. "I put him with (Jose) Rivero in '85 towards the end of the practice round and I thought something's going on, he's not firing, so I took him out and put (Manuel) Pinero with Seve. You're always watching, looking at body language, things they say and what they come back at you with."

Tiger's absence this time doesn't diminish America's chances, he says. "They're coming into this like we did in the early 80s, they're on home ground, Azinger wants more than anything in his life to stop the rot. I thought there was more camaraderie in the last Presidents Cup than in any other American team I've seen ever. If they can bring that to the Ryder Cup they will be a real threat."

Azinger will take no prisoners, according to Jacklin, who is a regular playing partner of the American captain.

"I remember going up to him in 1989 to shake his hand and he was quite reticent to do it, he would have been very happy to go the 'we're not talking to them' route. He's shaking up their side the same as I did, he's saying, 'five losses out of six, something's up guys'. He recognised they didn't have their 12 best on show last time - (Vaughan) Taylor and (Brett) Wetterich were weak links. He now has four picks, which could be very important. I always thought you could achieve a ninth or 10th place on the team by just playing a lot, not necessarily winning a lot."

AS A player, Jacklin's relationship with the Ryder Cup was sealed during the famous 1969 tied match at Royal Birkdale, which ended with Nicklaus conceding a two-foot putt to him on the 18th green.

That year, the Britain and Ireland non-playing captain was the Scot Eric Brown, whose approach was summed up when he announced to the team on the first day that "if their ball goes in the rough under no circumstance do you help them look for it".

"I was thinking f*** off, Eric, I'm not about to approach it like that. But there was no love lost between him and Sam Snead (the American captain)."

Jacklin's views of his opponents that day are borne of his time spent on the US Tour. "You've got to remember these guys were hard cases and you tend to forget what tough nuts these old geezers were, they didn't give a s**t whether they talked to you or not, and there were a few mean-spirited guys on that American team in '69: Dave Hill, Dan Sykes, who is long gone now was a mean b*****d, Gardiner Dickinson was horrible.

"When I got drawn with them in the States I used to think of withdrawing, they never spoke a bloody word to me, they'd try to make you feel as uncomfortable as you could feel, and it was difficult to play along side that kind of mentality."

There was a difference, he says, between the old guard, who never played outside of the States, and the younger generation of Americans, such as Nicklaus, Johnny Miller or Trevino. "They would say, bring 'em on - if you think you can beat me come and have a go."

After a sustained period of European dominance in the Ryder Cup, today's generation of fans may not appreciate the gulf that existed between the American and post-war British and Ireland teams. "Hogan, Snead, these guys were megastars. Britain was still trying to find its sea legs after the war. They were from a different world, there was a halo around them. We didn't have television, we read magazines and followed their progress from afar. There was no European Tour, it was just Britain and Ireland, in the pissing rain and gales. They had Las Vegas and Palm Springs and sunshine and flash cars."

The relationship with Nicklaus has endured since '69, and they have recently worked together on The Concession, a new course near Jacklin's adopted home in Florida, which is named in honour of the the match.

However, says Jacklin, that iconic moment in Ryder Cup history nearly didn't take place.

"They (the PGA of Britain and Ireland) couldn't get anyone to underwrite the 1969 match, and it's often forgotten that Brian Park, who was a tool manufacturer in Birkdale, came in with the money. He said, 'for Chrissakes what you playing at, get on with it'. It cost him £25,000, a lot of money."

So Brian Park saved the 1969 Ryder Cup? "I don't know if it would have happened or not without that money, they are probably all dead the people you could ask. It's fascinating to see where it's gone when you see where it was."

The Ryder Cup business

The 1985 Ryder Cup was the first to break even, returning a profit of £300,000 - the previous European event, at Walton Heath in 1981, made a £50,000 loss.

The escalation of TV rights values through the 1990s meant the European Tour were able to claim profits approaching €10.5 million in 2002 and close to €12.25 million in profit at The K Club last time out.

The US PGA own the rights to the "American years", so for this year's event, the US PGA benefits from being able to sell the property into their huge domestic market and keep most of the profits: the money is divided on a ratio of 5:1 in favour of the US PGA.

The last American event, held at Oakland Hills in 2004, made an estimated €50 million in revenue for the US PGA. By comparison, the US Open garners €35 million and the Masters about €30 million, though both must pay players' purses.

In 1989, American network NBC bought the TV rights that year for €140,000. By 2004, the same network paid €13 million.

Viewing figures for the "Battle of Brookline" in 1999 were reported to be 55 million, but concerns over the enduring popularity of the Cup were signalled by a drop off in ratings last time out, when a figure of less than half that were recorded in 2004.

In Europe, the TV rights to the cup are bundled with those of the European Tour as a whole: in a Ryder Cup year, Sky are thought to pay €25 million, compared to €12 million in a non-Ryder Cup year.

Ratings for the 2006 Ryder Cup peaked at 4.6 million in the US, due to the time difference, 1.1 million on Sky in Britain and 600,000 in Ireland.