Hlas: Yes, Iowa, there is a Ryder Cup

CEDAR RAPIDS - There has been a Ryder Cup trophy for 90 years, but it had never been to Iowa until the last couple days.

'There's a first for everything,” Zach Johnson said Monday at Elmcrest Country Club.

The host of the day's Zach Johnson Foundation Classic wound up his round by using the trophy as a rather oversized ball-marker.

'My guess is it's the first time it's been on the 18th green at Elmcrest Country Club, too,” Johnson said.

The Ryder Cup has become a traveling trophy in the truest sense of the term since the United States beat Europe 17-11 last September in Minnesota to snap a three-match losing streak to the Europeans in the biennial event.

Everyone on the winning American team will get a week with the cup before the next edition of the competition is in Paris next year. U.S. players Jimmy Walker and Brandt Snedeker and team captain Davis Love III have had their turns, and this week is Johnson's.

He had it on display at his foundation's annual gala Sunday night in Cedar Rapids, and it was accessible to the public Monday at Elmcrest.

Former Iowa Hawkeye football players Dallas Clark and Nate Kaeding were photographed with the cup. Kaeding's sons Jack and Wyatt, Johnson and the trophy were together in another photo.

Today, the 17-inch-high, 9-inch-wide, 4-pound cup will begin spending the rest of the week at the PGA Tour's John Deere Classic in Silvis, Ill., where Johnson and Love will compete, as will 2016 Ryder Cup star and defending JDC champion Ryan Moore.

Bob Denney, a native Iowan and former Gazette sports writer, is the PGA historian/public relations for the PGA of America. He is doing something less bookish this week in making this week's swing through the Midwest with the Ryder Cup.

'It's a two-year operation (until the next Ryder Cup, in Paris),” Denney said. 'Brandt Snedeker brought it to center ice before the start of a Nashville Predators playoff game.”

That was fitting, because the Ryder Cup's current tour is similar to the one the NHL's Stanley Cup takes in the offseason with the players from the championship team.

Snedeker, a Vanderbilt graduate from Nashville, also took the trophy to a Vanderbilt baseball game.

Individual championships define these players' careers, but being part of Ryder Cup-champions really seems to fire them up.

Last year was Johnson's fifth Ryder Cup, but his first time on a winner. He won two of the three matches he played, and has an 8-7-2 career record in the event.

He played in Saturday morning's foursomes last year, but wasn't in the lineup for the afternoon session's four-ball matches. So he and Snedeker got in a little practice, and then ...

'We went up into the crowd at the first tee, which is like an amphitheater, a mini-stadium,” Johnson said. 'We got in there with the crazies and had a good time.”

Then Johnson had a commanding victory over Europe's Matthew Fitzpatrick in Sunday's singles as the U.S. secured its first victory since 2008. The party was on, and the players on the winning team are still reveling in the triumph.

'It's little,” Johnson said about the trophy, 'but it has a lot of weight to it.”

l Comments: (319) 368-8840; mike.hlas@thegazette.com