The Match

Born Alberto Diaz Gutierrez in Havana in 1928, Korda was employed as a photographer for the official State newspaper Revolucion. Ever present at Castro’s side, he was called upon to photograph a hastily arranged golf match at Colinas de Villareal Golf Club in Havana. Producing a collection of relaxed images of Fidel and Guevara going head-to-head on the links, Korda himself dated them "March 1961" though this has since been disputed. In an interview for Korda: A Revolutionary Lens by Mark Sanders, he did at least offer a brief background to the photos.

"Fidel was in a meeting with El Che looking through the American newspapers when he stumbled across a headline about President Eisenhower playing a good round of golf. Fidel couldn’t believe that, in a world where children were dying of starvation and men were killing each other in war, the American newspapers would cover anything so trivial. Then he turned to Che Guevara and asked him, ‘Do you know how to play golf?’, and Che replied, ‘Yes’ – El Che had worked as a caddie in Argentina. Fidel said, ‘Okay, tomorrow you and I are going to play a round of golf.’ The following morning they both went to a golf course outside of Havana and Che played in such a way as to let Fidel win. Next day Revolucion published my photographs with the headline that said Fidel had made a better player than Eisenhower. In fact Fidel had never played golf before ..."

In the 2007 biographical work Cuba by Korda, the photographer recalled being berated for the way he looked during the match: "‘Chico, with your cameras around your neck you look like a Yankee!’ Che joked when I started to photograph him playing golf. ‘Do you realise how much we cost the country for all the films spilling out of your pockets?’ I didn’t reply, but thought to myself: ‘What’s the problem? I paid for all the film myself!’"

Korda’s assertion that Che had somehow let Castro win was also disputed most notably by Castro’s personal biographer, José Lorenzo Fuentes. In a decision that reputedly cost him his job at the Cuban Granma newspaper, he reported how Guevara had beaten his Commander-in-Chief with a score of 127 against 150. Whatever the accuracy of the story, it so incensed Castro that he demanded that Fuentes be fired immediately.

Fuentes also questioned the March, 1961 date given by Korda. Now living in Florida he gave an interview with the Independent newspaper in 2009 in which he suggested the match was played shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of November, 1962. "Castro told me that the headline of the story the next day would be 'President’ Castro challenges President Kennedy to a friendly game of golf,’" he recalled.

With Cuban records unable to confirm an exact date, the idea that Castro responded to such a groundbreaking moment in history with a game of golf is an unlikely scenario. Equally if the match had taken place in the weeks before, the danger involved in such political posturing is obvious. Moreover, with the world on the edge of a nuclear holocaust could a game of golf really tipped it over the edge?

Quite why Fuentes would offer such an inaccurate date is also unsure. He certainly harboured a grudge against the Castro regime having been (falsely in his opinion) accused of working for the CIA and imprisoned in Cuba in 1969. "The day I was sent to prison was the day I lost faith in the revolution," he is reported as saying.