By the time Europe finished the job, finally, on Sunday, the golf had the last word. But, until the thrilling denouement, the lasting memory of this Ryder Cup threatened not to be a single swing of the club so much as the ugly backdrop: galleries that drifted from partisan into venomous and the organizers who let the line slide until it snapped.
It didn’t happen all at once. For the first day and a half of golf’s most intense rivalry, it was New York-loud without being unruly. Then Saturday afternoon arrived and the tenor shifted. Rory McIlroy, the visiting lightning rod, kept stepping off shots as volleys of abuse landed in the quiet of his pre-shot routine. Shane Lowry played teammate and minder. Justin Thomas, not exactly a shrinking violet, began shushing his own end of the grandstand so his opponents could putt.
There’s a difference between atmosphere and interference, and Bethpage spent too much of the weekend blurring the two. Boos during practice swings and the sing-song “YEW-ESS-AY! YEW-ESS-AY!” after a European miss were tiresome, but survivable. What crept in on Saturday was different: insults aimed at players’ wives, homophobic slurs, cheap shots at McIlroy’s nationality dripping with tiresome stereotypes, gleeful reminders of Pinehurst the moment McIlroy crouched over anything inside five feet.
Europe answered with performance. So much for home advantage: for two years the Bethpage sales pitch was the snarling, uniquely American cauldron that would rattle Europe. Message received, but the idiots took it literally. Add the optics of Donald Trump’s fly-in on Friday – fist bumps, photo-ops, galleries dotted with Maga hats and a certain politics of humiliation playing to its base – and the swagger slid easily into license. That doesn’t make the Ryder Cup a referendum. It does explain how quickly the rope line starts to feel like a boundary you’re invited to test.
Given the guest of honor’s well-known aversion to losing gracefully, it was hardly a shock that the ugliest behavior broke out just as America’s chances were slipping away. But the tournament’s response to the ugly crowd behavior on Saturday was woeful. Extra security and a phalanx of New York state troopers materialized around McIlroy’s match at the turn. A couple of spectators were ejected near the main grandstands. The PGA of America said it bolstered policing and pushed more frequent spectator etiquette messages on the big screens. Fine, as far as it goes. But once a thousand people have decided a backswing is their cue, you can’t manage it with a graphic and a frown. Enforcement has to be swift, visible and consequential or it becomes permission by another name.
Sunday brought a tacit admission that the line had been crossed. The first-tee master of ceremonies, the comedian Heather McMahan, stepped down from her role after video showed her leading a chant of “Fuck you Rory!” on Saturday morning. The PGA announced her departure and apology before the singles. If the MC is amplifying the worst instincts in the building, that’s not “energy”; it’s an institutional failure.
Luke Donald chose his words carefully as he praised his team’s “anti-fragile” temperament and drew a firm boundary between “raucous” and “personal”. Keegan Bradley, the USA captain, bristled at any suggestion the US room had licensed the excess. He called the fans passionate and pointed – not incorrectly – to his team’s flat play as a trigger for their restlessness. But that defense only goes so far. You can be partisan without being toxic. You can fill a grandstand without emptying your standards.
It’s also true that many Americans tried to keep the thing on the rails. Thomas kept waving for hush. Cameron Young never took the bait. Plenty of fans actually supported their own rather than savaging the other lot. Too often, though, they were drowned out by the performative tough guys in flag suits and plastic chainswho treat the Ryder Cup like a tailgate with better lawn care.
But treating Bethpage as a one-off misses the larger point. What happened here didn’t invent the tone of American life so much as reflect what’s been an incremental breakdown in public behavior. The country now lives in all-caps, from school-board meetings that sound like street rallies and comment sections that have spilled into the street. The algorithm bankrolls outrage, the put-down is political vernacular and the culture applauds “saying the quiet part out loud”. In 2025 you can say almost anything in public and be cheered for it (unless you’re Jimmy Kimmel). Put a rope line and a microphone in front of that mix and you get exactly what you got at the Ryder Cup: people testing boundaries not because the moment needs them to, but because they’ve been told volume is virtue. Some might argue golf, in the US particularly, has always been a sport for white conservatives, but it’s hard to remember galleries calling opposing players “faggots” and openly deriding their wives until recently. What could have changed?
Europe didn’t need rescuing. They rescued themselves. That could be seen on Saturday, when McIlroy and Lowry won their afternoon match two up in the eye of the storm. Rose and Fleetwood then dispatched Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau 3&2 after a tense exchange about who had the stage; then they took the stage and won. Donald’s players came to New York expecting a test of nerve and got it at full blast
Sunday gave us a memorable finish. But this week will also be remembered for the noise that wasn’t passion, the hostility that wasn’t edge and the adults who mistook the difference. Next time the cup crosses the Atlantic, at Hazeltine in 2029, whether during Trump’s third term or not, the hosts will have a choice to make about what kind of event they want to run – and what kind of country they want it to reflect.
