A century-plus of team match play between two clubs, settled hole by hole.
Explore more than a century of competition, tradition, and friendship between Yahnundasis and Sadaquada. Discover the Cup's history, revisit past results, and search the tournament records preserved across generations.
The oldest continuous interclub match in American golf — told through its record book, its clubhouses, and the players who carried the Cup.
In 1904, a four-man, one-ball match set off across open country from the Yahnundasis first tee, bound for the Sadaquada clubhouse three miles away. A balloon was released to signal the start so spectators waiting at the far club could see the play begin. Each team took a different route, trailed by a member of the rival club serving as both referee and beverage-toter — a toast offered for every good shot, and one offered by the referee for every poor one. When the balls were finally holed, Sadaquada had won, 131 strokes to 150.
The good feeling of that day gave John E. McLoughlin an idea. A founding father of the Yahnundasis and its president in five different years, he offered a handsome silver trophy for an annual match between the two clubs. First contested in 1905, it has been played every year since — believed to be the oldest continuous interclub competition in the United States, perhaps anywhere in golf.
Both clubs took root in the golf boom of the 1890s — one on a farm in the countryside, the other closer to the trolley line and the city. Their friendly rivalry is the whole reason the Cup exists.
Sparked by an 1895 newspaper feature on the new game, William S. Doolittle and Walter Kernan tried golf at the Patten farm on Hart's Hill and were hooked. A six-hole course went in on Senator Kernan's farm in New York Mills, soon grown to nine holes named for the land — Kern, Road, Elms, Corner, Brook, Pond, Oaks, Mills, and Home. British Open winner Willie Parks came to teach that first summer; Horace Rawlings, winner of the very first U.S. Open in 1895, signed on as club pro in 1896 for $60 a month and 75¢ a lesson.
Formed by a group wanting a course closer to the city and reachable by trolley, the Yahnundasis began with sixty-five charter members — only six of whom knew how to play. So many were physicians that it earned the nickname “The Doctor's Club.” After two early moves, the club bought the Sherrill farm in 1905, and by 1911 had built out the first eighteen-hole course in the area. The present clubhouse opened in 1924, alongside a course redesigned by the famed architect Walter J. Travis.
The McLoughlin Cup was never the clubs' only contest. In the game's first decades, nearly every summer Saturday brought a home-and-home match with a neighboring course — some near, many a rail ticket and an overnight away. Sadaquada joined the Central New York Golf League and hosted its first annual tournament in July 1897, a three-day affair drawing teams from Rochester, the Onondaga club of Syracuse, Albany, the Wanoka club of Trenton, Owasco of Auburn, and Jefferson County of Watertown. Otsego of Cooperstown, Binghamton, Mohawk of Schenectady, and Elmira later joined as other teams dropped away.
The first match was hosted by the Yahnundasis at its nine-hole grounds above Proctor Boulevard. Ten-man teams played match play without handicaps, scoring by the number of holes won. Afterward the winners treated the losers to a banquet, and the Cup — filled with champagne — was passed from player to player, each toasting and roasting his rival deep into the night.
The first contest for the handsome trophy offered by John E. McLoughlin drew several hundred spectators to the Yahnundasis links, despite a little rain and wind. The match looked like anybody's at the start, but after the opening round the Yahnundasis men had built a lead that made the result practically certain. A dinner followed in the evening, winners and losers making merry together in the best of fellowship, with Mr. McLoughlin thanked for stimulating the friendly rivalry of Utica's golfers.
Sons of James Schoolcraft Sherman — a congressman who became Vice President of the United States — Tom and Sherrill Sherman were the two finest players in the area in the game's early days. Sherrill, eligible for the first Cup in 1905, went 20–2 in McLoughlin competition; Tom, who had to wait until 1907, finished a perfect 11–0. Tom reached the National Amateur semifinals in 1908 and was ranked among America's best; together the brothers won the American Golf Trophy for team best-ball at the 1915 National Amateur in Detroit. Sherrill later became the first president of the New York State Golf Association.
The rivalry spilled well past the fairway. A few dispatches the papers thought worth printing:
A four-man team crossed open country from the Yahnundasis clubhouse to the Sadaquada — E.L. Munson, W.G. Doolittle, H.E. Trevvett and W.H. Taylor against A.S. Brinkerhoff, E.P. Wilkin, Henry Quinn and Edward Kernan. Fences and cornfields did not count. Sadaquada made the distance in 131 strokes to the Yahnundasis's 150.
In the return cross-country run, E.L. Munson sent his ball clear across the West Shore Railroad tracks, where it struck a telegraph pole and dropped neatly into good position on the highway. His side went round in 79 strokes to their rivals' 85 — one opponent needing six swings just to escape a fence.
Mr. Putnam of Waterville drove from the first tee at the Yahnundasis, only to watch his 75-cent ball hook into the road and bounce onto a passing trolley bound for Clinton. Someone hopped off, pocketed it, and reboarded. He acknowledged, dryly, that he had been robbed by trolley.
The earliest matches (1905–1913) were scored simply by the number of holes a player won from his opponent. In 1914 the clubs adopted the Nassau system still used today: a point for the front nine, a point for the back nine, and a point for the overall match, with ties splitting a half-point each. The host alternates by the calendar — Yahnundasis in even years, Sadaquada in odd — and the date long ago moved from the last Saturday of July to the third Thursday in August. In 1985, a separate Handicap Division was added in the same format, doubling the friendly combat.
The earliest golfers here played a “feathery” — a leather pouch stuffed with boiled feathers, sewn tight and painted. It flew poorly, soaked through in the rain, and rarely survived a full round. The gutta-percha ball, in use from 1848, changed the game; players soon noticed that a nicked, scarred ball actually flew truer than a smooth one, and makers began cutting patterns into the surface on purpose — the ancestor of the dimpled ball we know today.
On two occasions — in 1918 and again in 1926 — the clubs even experimented with an “Individual & Best Ball” format. No one is quite sure how it worked, though the Yahnundasis, who won nearly every match played under it, were rather fond of the arrangement.
Nine holes take shape on the Kernan farm in New York Mills.
Sixty-five charter members; soon nicknamed “The Doctor's Club.”
A three-mile wager Sadaquada wins, 131–150 — and the idea for an annual cup is born.
Yahnundasis take the opener, 31–9, at their grounds above Proctor Boulevard.
Yahnundasis completes the first full eighteen-hole course in the area.
Scoring shifts from holes-won to the three-point Nassau format used ever since.
The present Yahnundasis clubhouse opens; Walter J. Travis redesigns the course.
A second competition joins the tradition, played with handicaps.
One hundred uninterrupted years of the Quest for the Cup.
| Decade | Yahnundasis | Sadaquada | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1905–1909 | 4 | 1 | — |
| 1910–1919 | 9 | 1 | — |
| 1920–1929 | 8 | 2 | — |
| 1930–1939 | 6 | 3 | 1 |
| 1940–1949 | 6 | 3 | — |
| 1950–1959 | 7 | 3 | — |
| 1960–1969 | 5 | 5 | — |
| 1970–1979 | 6 | 4 | — |
| 1980–1989 | 4 | 6 | — |
| 1990–1999 | 5 | 5 | — |
| 2000–2009 | 6 | 4 | — |
| 2010–2019 | 9 | 1 | — |
| 2020–2026 | 6 | 1 | — |
| Totals | 81 | 39 | 1 |
Much of what survives of this history was saved by one devoted member. Beginning in 1896 — about a year after he first took up golf — R. H. Brown kept meticulous scrapbooks, three volumes of some 120 pages each, pasting in newspaper clippings, cartoons, and photographs of anything to do with the game. His last volume closes in September 1920, and a great deal of the record shown here traces back to his pages.
The Centennial history from which this exhibit draws was compiled for the Cup's hundredth year, 1905–2004.
| Today | Yesterday |
|---|---|
| 1 Wood | Driver |
| 2 Wood | Brassie |
| 3 Wood | Spoon |
| 4 Wood | Cleek |
| 5 Wood | Baffy |
| 2 Iron | Midiron |
| 4 Iron | Mashie Iron |
| 5 Iron | Mashie |
| 7 Iron | Mashie Niblick |
| 8 Iron | Pitching Niblick |
| 9 Iron | Niblick |