By Alex Podlogar

“We don’t really have any connection to the Ryder Cup.”

Nine years ago, a few weeks before the 2016 Ryder Cup at Hazeltine, that was The Home of Golf’s Laurie Watson on an international line. He was already in late afternoon and light was dwindling fast.

I was in my office of the main clubhouse at Pinehurst Resort, our workday just getting started, but my nerves necessarily frayed.

I had had an idea.

A pretty outlandish one, but an idea nonetheless.

So I sent an email to Laurie, at the time the communications chief at St Andrews. Laurie is good at his job, exceptionally good, and has only risen at the home of The Old Course in the near decade since. That email prompted a reply and an ask for a call.

“We don’t really have any connection to the Ryder Cup,” Laurie had indeed said of the idea.

And then he paused.

“But I like it.”

Pinehurst, as you may well know, does have a bit of a connection to the Ryder Cup, though it is only in the sense that No. 2 hosted it once, way back in 1951, when it was – to put it kindly – a very different sort of competition, a very different sort of consumption. There had been rumors of the PGA considering No. 2 in the 1990s for another Ryder Cup, but that decision ultimately came and went in its own form of legend.

So, not all that much of a connection, really. And, honestly, not all that much more than The Home of Golf.

But Pinehurst and St Andrews have always had a little something of a kindred spirit. The Home of Golf. The Cradle of American Golf. Over the last 130 years since Pinehurst’s inception, that spirit has thrived, and sand from The Old Course has found its way into the burrows of the bunker guarding the 18th green of No. 2. Ceremonies have been held at times, words carefully chosen, a starter house built in appreciation behind the first tee of No. 2, and a respect shared to and from abroad.

Those are the stately things.

This, though, was meant to be a fun one.

And it has been.

With the Ryder Cup played at Bethpage Black this year, it also marks the fifth time St Andrews and Pinehurst have engaged in a Ryder Cup Wager. The wager is simple:

  • If Team USA wins the Ryder Cup, St Andrews will fly a pin flag from Pinehurst No. 2 on the 18th hole of The Old Course the following Monday for that day’s round of play.
  • If Team Europe wins the Ryder Cup, Pinehurst flies an 18th-hole pin flag from The Old Course on the 18th hole of Pinehurst No. 2 the following Monday for that day’s round of play.

During that mad call in 2016, the idea was presented with less than two weeks ahead of the 2016 Ryder Cup. The call wrapped, the wager agreed to, and golf course superintendents were quickly notified of the idea. Flags were pulled from a couple of pins and placed in FedEx boxes marked for priority international shipping. With a day or two to spare, each pin flag was in the hands of its friendly rival, awaiting Sunday’s result in Minnesota.

In 2016, No. 2’s flag proudly waved in the Scottish breeze on the 18th hole of The Old Course. In 2018, the Old Course flag stood sentinel under a Carolina blue sky on No. 2. The wager was again fulfilled in 2021. Then 2023.

And now, we come to 2025.

Nine years might feel like an odd anniversary of sorts to celebrate, but perhaps the more sturdy “5th” adds appropriate weight. What this really is, though, is a thank you to St Andrews and its eager willingness to engage in something purely for the fun of the game between friends.

As Old Tom Morris’s apprentice once said, “Golf should be a pleasure, not a penance.”

The Ryder Cup Wager has been an absolute pleasure.

Win or lose.