Bogey women

Golf’s Ryder Cup is uniquely irresistible. Like most show-stopping spectaculars, the biennial challenge boasts ‘a full supporting cast’, in this case the two distinctive dolled-up distaff teams — a shapely sorority of Stepford Sindies vs a bevy of Barbies — devoted cheerleaders geeing up their frowning fellows as they go about the sombrely obsessive business with mashie and putter. The phenomenon is a new one to international football, as the English learnt in the World Cup this summer when the late-night antics of the Wags — the players’ wives and girlfriends — were wincingly, shamelessly documented each morning by the London tabloids. But I was surprised this week to discover that America’s golfing Wags (though I assume more maturely and decorously) have a history when, by nice fluke, I came across this telling forecast in an ancient London Evening Standard of June 1937, before the sixth Ryder Cup teed off on the Southport and Ainsdale links.