Let’s be honest about what happened here at Bethpage Black in the dying days of September.
Let’s be honest about three days of bullying, abuse, poison, taunting, misogyny and bear-baiting thinly disguised as a grand old golf competition.
The difficulty for visiting teams to secure a victory on US soil doesn’t stem from the exceptional skill of American players.
It explains why it had been 13 years since Europe last managed it at the Miracle of Medinah. Additionally, after dominating for two days, Europe’s players were so worn out by Sunday that they narrowly resisted an impressive American comeback.
The reason is simple: the event at Bethpage Black wasn’t merely a match of 12 individuals against 12. It was 12 European athletes pitted against a US team accompanied by what seemed like an army of rowdy supporters.
This contest was masked as a legitimate game but was truly a show of organized intimidation. It was anything but fair. Twelve European players faced an atmosphere so hostile and abusive that they required the protection of state troopers and police dogs.
The hostility from American fans targeted at the European team and their loved ones, especially Rory McIlroy and his wife Erica Stoll, in New York was severe enough to necessitate intervention by the State Police.
McIlroy gives some stick back to American supporters during the Saturday afternoon fourballs
“I wish they would have let the dogs off the leashes,” McIlroy commented Sunday evening, partially in jest. Perhaps that’s the solution. I find myself only partially joking as well.
If the USPGA could make a few more dollars out of it, they could probably be persuaded to make it part of the weekend. Because, let’s face it, the spectacle that the Ryder Cup has become could hardly get any more animalistic if it tried.
I walked the course with McIlroy every day of the three days of competition at this course on the outskirts of New York and it was a sobering experience.
Thousands of grown men yelling insults at a golfer and at his wife, who was walking down the side of the fairways behind the playing group to offer support to her husband. Grown men relentlessly trying to put McIlroy off his game, taunting him, shouting out what they fondly imagined were witticisms as he prepared to play.
Even an announcer, supposedly a comedienne, orchestrating chants of ‘F*** you, Rory,’ from the thousands of spectators in the giant grandstand behind the 1st tee.
This is what the Ryder Cup has become. An excuse to get wasted and behave like a moron. I asked McIlroy a few minutes after he and his team-mates had clinched victory whether the level of abuse he had taken at Bethpage was sustainable for golf or whether it was just something the sport had to accept.
‘Look,’ McIlroy said, ‘I don’t think we should ever accept that behaviour in golf. I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week.
‘Golf has the ability to unite people. Golf teaches you very good life lessons. It teaches you etiquette. It teaches you how to play by the rules. It teaches you how to respect people.
McIlroy, teamed with Tommy Fleetwood, blows kisses to American supporters on the first tee ahead of the Saturday morning foursomes
Stoll (right), with Wendy Lowry, wife of Shane, was subjected to horrific abuse while watching her husband Rory McIlory during the Ryder Cup
‘Sometimes this week we didn’t see that. So no, this should not be what is acceptable in the Ryder Cup. We will be making sure to say to our fans in Ireland in 2027 that what happened here this week is not acceptable, and for me, it’s, you know, come and support your home team. Come and support your team.
‘If I were an American, I would be annoyed that people…I didn’t hear a lot of shouts for Scottie (Scheffler) today, but I heard a lot of shouts against me. It’s like, support your players. That’s the thing.’
You know what’s most dispiriting about it? The part some of the American golfers played in whipping their fans into such a frenzy that they thought screaming abuse at McIlroy and Co was acceptable.
Collin Morikawa had exhorted fans to cause ‘absolute chaos’ and absolute chaos is what he got. To think that some of the American players call some of their European counterparts friends. With friends like that…
Boil it all down and the unfortunate but inescapable conclusion is that the Ryder Cup is not an equal contest any more. That is what made Europe’s 15-13 victory all the more remarkable.
Concentrate less on the fact that America staged a fightback and concentrate more on how well Europe had had to play to get so far ahead in the first place.
Concentrate more on how they had to have astonishing mental fortitude to put themselves in a position to establish such a commanding lead that the Americans could not quite recover on Sunday.
I asked Justin Thomas about the behaviour of the American fans, too. He had also done his bit to turn them into coiled springs. ‘I mean, I don’t think anyone’s safety was necessarily in danger,’ Thomas said. ‘Words hurt, too. There was definitely some nasty things said, but I don’t think anybody was necessarily fearing for their life.
McIlroy appears to make an offensive gesture to abusive American fans during the first day of the Ryder Cup
McIlroy consoles his wife Erica during the second day of the Ryder Cup
Europe went on to silence the American supporters by winning the Ryder Cup 15-13
‘There were some things said, and yeah, Cam (Young) and I said it to Shane and Rory yesterday that we felt for them. It was unfortunate. Cam and I just wished that we gave them something to cheer for instead of people to cheer against. That was kind of the main consensus of the last two days, that we weren’t giving them enough to cheer for, and they were just trying to help us win. I guess that’s the New York fans for you.’
Is it just the New York fans, or is it the way the Ryder Cup wants it to be? Has extreme behaviour become the Ryder Cup’s unique selling point? Is the footballisation of golf the way the sport is heading?
The Ryder Cup has become the event where anything goes. It has become permission for men to behave like thugs. It has become the face of the ugly American and its boorishness is no longer a selling point but a liability.
It has to change from being a forum for a genius like Rory McIlroy to be abused and hounded for three days straight. Either that, or its appeal will die.
