On a fall day in 1896, a group of Yale students, caught up in a new sports craze called golf, traveled from their New Haven, Conn., campus by train and stagecoach to a course north of New York City — one of the few clubs in the country at the time — to take on some chaps from Columbia.
In what became the first intercollegiate match in the country, Yale swept Columbia, with all six golfers winning their matches.
Earlier this month, after 125 years, Columbia finally got its rematch.
“This is an extraordinary day for our game — the collegiate game was born 125 years ago,” Columbia’s current coach, Rich Mueller, said to the two teams gathered on the practice green of the Saint Andrew’s Golf Club in Hastings-on-Hudson, N.