Ryder Cup 2025

[GolfLug]

Certainly embarrassed for golf fans in general but it's not necessarily a NY thing. I have been visiting NYC once every two months in the last year and a half and over 50 times in the last three decades. I don't find New Yorkers to be random 'jerks' anymore than anywhere else. They aren't overly warm handing out lemonades to random strangers or anything, but have yet to experience arbitrary rudeness of the like of the RC heckling.

Not that I have actual stats but safe to say there were plenty of non-New Yorkers attending BPB. And some of these 'standouts' visiting may have felt that being in Rome empowered them to 'do as Romans do'. People are often their worst when they are outside their element. We will never know. 

Congratulations to Europe. Tough one for the US. This was the ONE place they were expected to prevail. 

Edited September 29 by GolfLug

[iacas]

10 hours ago, ScouseJohnny said:

Or. In the event of a non-playing Captain and a man drops out, Captain has to play in his place. You choose. Bring a 13th man or Captain plays.

That's dumb. The captain has other things to do, and will not have hit a meaningful golf shot for literally weeks or months leading up to Sunday singles.

[Ty_Webb]

18 hours ago, saevel25 said:

Yeah, they were given Sergio Garcia hell for how long stood over the ball and waggled. I believe a few of them said something like, while we’re younger anytime now or something like that, while he was over the ball.

It was Sergio - I think what they did was started counting off each time he regripped and it got loud and probably made it worse as well. 

[Elmer]

On 9/28/2025 at 2:50 AM, Zeph said:

The heckling in these tournaments has come to a point where it’s off-putting and makes me less likely to want to watch.

I watched for a bit with the sound off and some music on. "off-Putting" is an understatement.
This is golf, not wrestle mania!

9 hours ago, turtleback said:

Stupid to have the Ryder Cup at BP Black.  New Yorkers are jerks and I say that as a former NYer.

 

You assume that the crowd was predominantly NY'ers!
Next your going to declare that only people from Georgia attend the Masters.

 We all know very well golf spectators travel. 
The issue with the crowd is not where they are from,
It is the "us" vs "them" mentality.

5 hours ago, GolfLug said:

Certainly embarrassed for golf fans in general but it's not necessarily a NY thing. I have been visiting NYC once every two months in the last year and a half and over 50 times in the last three decades. I don't find New Yorkers to be random 'jerks' anymore than anywhere else. They aren't overly warm handing out lemonades to random strangers or anything, but have yet to experience arbitrary rudeness of the like of the RC heckling.

Not that I have actual stats but safe to say there were plenty of non-New Yorkers attending BPB. And some of these 'standouts' visiting may have felt that being in Rome empowered them to 'do as Romans do'. People are often their worst when they are outside their element. We will never know. 

When in Rome!
The MC on sat did not help setting the tone with her chant on the first tee of "F--- you, Rory,"

I have gone to plenty of Yankee - Red Sox games, there is plenty of heckling. Some of it crosses the line, but that is baseball. Same with Football, Basketball and Hockey.

But golf is supposed to civilized. We have the honor system, we wear collared shirts and respect the rule of the course or the private club we are at.
We call penalties on ourselves, even when no one saw it.
Golf spectators should be better than what we witnessed this weekend.

And remember we have to go over there for the next Ryder cup.
what are the chances they will give it back to us ten fold?

 

Ryder Cup MC steps down after leading vulgar Rory McIlroy chants - ESPN

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A master of ceremonies has stepped down from her role at the Ryder Cup after joining the Bethpage Black crowd in directing expletive-laced chants toward...

 

[boogielicious]

1 hour ago, Elmer said:

I have gone to plenty of Yankee - Red Sox games, there is plenty of heckling. Some of it crosses the line, but that is baseball. Same with Football, Basketball and Hockey.

Sox/Yankees has toned way down in the last 20 years. It was really bad in the 70s and 80s. Now it’s fairly civilized. I have many Yankee fan friends too. Phili fans can be bad.

I agree this has no place in golf

[ScouseJohnny]

5 hours ago, iacas said:

That's dumb. The captain has other things to do, and will not have hit a meaningful golf shot for literally weeks or months leading up to Sunday singles.

It would be dumb, I agree. That's why a team should bring an alternate.

The one thing dumber is some 1930s gentleman's agreement with sealed envelopes.

It's not just about the actual score. That match should have been played, yesterday. The US had a player ready to go. The Euros didn't. It was on them to find a player. A fairer outcome would have been a point to the US, should no player have been available. There is also the impact on the other players of seeing another match on the board in which the US golfer could have been ahead.

I get that no top golfer is going to want to go and sit around as second banana in case someone pulls a hamstring. That's why I think Captain's pick for the alternate, not next in line in the rankings. If they don't get to play, fine, use them as another vice captain or something.

Half a point each is an easy cop-out, it isn't necessarily a fair or proper solution.

If Liverpool show up to play Manchester United and a defender injures himself during the warm up, they don't say, "Frightfully sorry old boy, we're a man down. Would you mind awfully removing one of your players from the pitch?" 

Bring a substitute. It's really not that hard.

Edited September 29 by ScouseJohnny

[iacas]

16 minutes ago, ScouseJohnny said:

It would be dumb, I agree. That's why a team should bring an alternate.

Nah, that's also dumb. 🙂 

It's been used three times in 46 years, and once in the last 30+, and one involved a player getting in a car crash (Steve Pate in 1991).

 

16 minutes ago, ScouseJohnny said:

The one thing dumber is some 1930s gentleman's agreement with sealed envelopes.

1979

16 minutes ago, ScouseJohnny said:

A fairer outcome would have been a point to the US, should no player have been available.

Maybe. That's how the Solheim Cup does it. But that's not what was decided and agreed to by all, as it has been since 1979.

Will discussion about it be renewed? You bet. Alternates, though, nah. It won't be seriously entertained. Imagine if a player shows up and stinks… there'd be pressure to claim an injury just to get the alternate in. And that's not a great situation.

16 minutes ago, ScouseJohnny said:

Half a point each is an easy cop-out, it isn't necessarily a fair or proper solution.

Perfectly fair. Doesn't mean I agree it's the best solution, but claiming it's not FAIR is another thing entirely. Again, agreed to and known well in advance. So, totally fair.

16 minutes ago, ScouseJohnny said:

If Liverpool show up to play Manchester United and a defender injures himself during the warm up, they don't say, "Frightfully sorry old boy, we're a man down. Would you mind awfully removing one of your players from the pitch?" 

It's not in the rules for a soccer (football) game.

[Shindig]

15 minutes ago, ScouseJohnny said:

I get that no top golfer is going to want to go and sit around as second banana in case someone pulls a hamstring. That's why I think Captain's pick for the alternate, not next in line in the rankings. If they don't get to play, fine, use them as another vice captain or something.

Half a point each is an easy cop-out, it isn't necessarily a fair or proper solution.

If Liverpool show up to play Manchester United and a defender injures himself during the warm up, they don't say, "Frightfully sorry old boy, we're a man down. Would you mind awfully removing one of your players from the pitch?" 

Bring a substitute. It's really not that hard.

What do the vice captains do?  I believe it's more than hanging around, and I wonder how many meaningful shots the vice captains have hit in the past month.  It isn't just throwing someone in as a vice captain at the last minute for a ceremonial duty.

I think both of this year's captains have said that they think the sealed envelope rule should change.  That sort of thing happens in sports:  something happens and the rules committee(s) decide that the rule should change going forward.  That doesn't mean it's going to become a forfeit of the match, no different than if the injured player shows up to the first tee and, after his opponent hits a shot, concedes the match (as happened at the WGC Match Play a number of years ago). 

A weird rule change happened because of Stewart Cink a few years ago, although not at the Ryder Cup.   He hit a tee shot into a fairway bunker, hit his approach into a greenside bunker, and then he (or his caddie, probably the caddie) raked the fairway bunker.  At the time, this was a penalty:  his ball was in the hazard (as they were known then) and he had been deemed to have tested it.  I think within a day the USGA and R&A agreed this was not in the spirit of that rule (or it was a pace of play issue?) and decided in the future, this would not be interpreted as testing the hazard (perhaps to avoid having the player need to go hit the greenside shot and then wander back to rake the fairway bunker). 

[ScouseJohnny]

Fair points. I guess it's a situation with no perfect solution. Especially the point about "Ow, my wrist hurts," to sneak in the sub if a player is off form.

[saevel25]

I think the best solution is to have a backup on standby, who can sub in if someone gets injured or sick. Then the opposite team can choose to use their sub if they want, or whoever is on their own team. Just to prevent matchup shenanigans. 

[iacas]

15 minutes ago, saevel25 said:

I think the best solution is to have a backup on standby, who can sub in if someone gets injured or sick. Then the opposite team can choose to use their sub if they want, or whoever is on their own team. Just to prevent matchup shenanigans. 

I disagree for reasons stated above and for other reasons not yet stated.

[boogielicious]

1 hour ago, saevel25 said:

I think the best solution is to have a backup on standby, who can sub in if someone gets injured or sick. Then the opposite team can choose to use their sub if they want, or whoever is on their own team. Just to prevent matchup shenanigans. 

[turtleback]

3 hours ago, Elmer said:

 

 We all know very well golf spectators travel. 
The issue with the crowd is not where they are from,
It is the "us" vs "them" mentality.

 

I grew up in NY and I recognize NY accents.  And I don't recall anything like this in other recent US venue Ryder Cups, nor do recall the heckling level of the 2002 US Open in non-NY venue US Opens.

[Ty_Webb]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

Imagine if a player shows up and stinks… there'd be pressure to claim an injury just to get the alternate in. And that's not a great situation.

I said this exact thing to a friend of mine having the same discussion and he said right now they could be under pressure to claim an injury and they'd get a guaranteed half. I'm not sure I agree since the scrutiny on it would be higher if there's no match vs if there isn't. And there's also the fact that asking someone to fall on their sword for a half point is pretty dreadful since they're losing the opportunity to play a RC match, where if there's a sub then at least you're giving it to someone else that you think is more deserving (presumably). 

I was quite pleased to see Burns's putt miss since at least it meant that the end result wouldn't have been directly different (although I imagine after losing it's pretty deflating for the players playing the last hole or two in a dead rubber, so there may well have been an indirect impact on it). At 14-14 or 14.5-13.5 there'd be a lot more talk about how that's unfair. It's also a maximum impact of 1 point since there's only one name in the hat. If say 4 people got food poisoning and couldn't play then I would think that would be one halved match and three losses, so it's not like the Euros could have ditched 6 people and got the three points they needed that way. 

[GolfLug]

I get that it doesn't happen often enough, but I don't get why a withdrawal for ANY reason would yield a player anything over what is earned, i.e., zero.

Instinctively, it's a forfeit, and a full point award to the player that is ready to play is the first thing that comes to mind (regardless of the 30 minute window). I'm only very mildly curious about what led to the rule being enacted.

[Shindig]

1 hour ago, Ty_Webb said:

I said this exact thing to a friend of mine having the same discussion and he said right now they could be under pressure to claim an injury and they'd get a guaranteed half. I'm not sure I agree since the scrutiny on it would be higher if there's no match vs if there isn't. And there's also the fact that asking someone to fall on their sword for a half point is pretty dreadful since they're losing the opportunity to play a RC match, where if there's a sub then at least you're giving it to someone else that you think is more deserving (presumably). 

I was quite pleased to see Burns's putt miss since at least it meant that the end result wouldn't have been directly different (although I imagine after losing it's pretty deflating for the players playing the last hole or two in a dead rubber, so there may well have been an indirect impact on it). At 14-14 or 14.5-13.5 there'd be a lot more talk about how that's unfair. It's also a maximum impact of 1 point since there's only one name in the hat. If say 4 people got food poisoning and couldn't play then I would think that would be one halved match and three losses, so it's not like the Euros could have ditched 6 people and got the three points they needed that way. 

I definitely agree that at 14-14 or 14.5-13.5 there would be more conversations about this, and thank you for the information about the one point maximum.  When I was reading the previous sentence, I had begun mentally calculating how many of his own players Luke Donald would have needed to injure to guarantee a win on Saturday night.  Obviously I know he wouldn't have done that even if it were possible.  

[Zeph]

Are the US players more individualists and play better on Sundays when it’s ome on one while Europe got more of the team spirit going and collecting points the first two days? I haven’t looked at the statistics, but I feel like I’ve seen US comebacks on Sundays before.

[Shindig]

1 hour ago, Zeph said:

Are the US players more individualists and play better on Sundays when it’s ome on one while Europe got more of the team spirit going and collecting points the first two days? I haven’t looked at the statistics, but I feel like I’ve seen US comebacks on Sundays before.

Maybe?  I used to really enjoy these competitions, but I'd sometimes see American (I can't ever recall seeing an opponent do this) pairing in the best-ball event do things that strike me as the opposite of teamwork.   It's probably just as well that I can't remember who I'm thinking of right now, and it wasn't this year, but I seem to recall one pairing hit their tee shots:  one in the middle of the fairway, the other into a fairway bunker.   The player in the fairway hit his second shot first, shooting at the pin.  Yikes!  Let the player from the fairway bunker hit first and get safely on the green, then shoot at the pin so you know it's (effectively) safe[r] to do so.  I can't see a European pairing making that mistake.