Blue Wins Again on the Last Hole
October 4, 2026
Blue kept the Concord Cup 10 1/2 to 9 1/2, the fifth time in thirty-three years the thing has been settled by a single point and the second October running. Only the 12-12 tie of 2000 has ever been closer.
The other nineteen matches finished level at 9 1/2 apiece, so it came down to the last pair on the course. Ron George stood on the 18th tee one up on Kelly Turk, a rookie playing off 20, and halved the hole to win the match and the point. Had he lost it the match would have been halved and the Cup would have finished 10-10, which would still have left it with Blue as the side holding it.
Saturday finished 5-5. Blue took the morning Four-Ball 3-2, with three of the five matches decided on the 18th green, and Red took the afternoon Foursomes 3-2. The one-sided result of the day was Mark Williams and Ron George beating Rick Gordon and Matt Haas 5 and 4 in the morning, against a Red pair the betting had made a 2 1/2 to 1 favourite.
Sunday never settled. Red led after the first match reported, Blue were three up inside the hour, and the Cup stood dead level six separate times before the afternoon was out. Blue's high-water mark was four points clear at 11:33 in the morning; forty-three minutes later it was back to one, and by two o'clock it was level again at 10-10.
Four players went unbeaten at 3-0: Brad Juday, Mark Williams, Jon DeAngelis, and Jordan Jabbori on debut. Four took nothing from three - Tom Bres, Dennis Hackett, John Waldron, and Red captain Frank George. Bres and Hackett went in as the best Foursomes partnership in Cup history at 6-1-0 and lost that match 4 and 3.
Over the last five Cups the three best records in the field all belong to Red players, and only one of them played. Vince Olenik is 7-0-1 since 2022, the best mark of anyone with six or more matches in that span, and was on the roster this year without playing a match. Paul Morgan is 8-1-3 over the same stretch and was not on the roster at all. The third is Jon DeAngelis, who played and went 3-0, and who is now 10-2-1 since 2022 with three clean sweeps in five years. Red lost by a single point.
The singles stayed kind to two men in particular. Adam Hackett beat Dennis Hackett 3 and 1 to go to 5-0 in singles play, five matches and five wins since 2022, and Bill George beat Jimmy Gurney 4 and 3 to reach 7-1-2 in ten, the third-best singles mark of anyone with eight or more. It was the fourth Sunday meeting between George and Gurney, and George leads it 3-1.
Ron George's winning match was the 100th of his career, the first man to reach the mark. He is now clear of Dennis Hackett on 96 and Jon DeAngelis on 94. Bob Walters and Ron George Sr. both passed 75 over the weekend, and Will Bass passed 25.
Nine of the twenty matches went the full distance, 45 per cent against a long-run average of 36, with four of those decided by a single hole and one halved. It is the fourth time in five years the figure has sat at or above 40 per cent.
This result left the series dead level over the long haul. Across the last twenty Cups, 2007 through 2026, the two sides have scored 202 1/2 points each, with nothing between them. Blue have won eleven of those twenty Cups to Red's nine. Over the full thirty-three years Blue lead 350 to 315.
Brad Juday and Frank George both captained for a second year, the first time the Cup has had captains return.