LONDON — Europe may have defeated the United States in golf’s marquee event. But the verbal abuse hurled at the European players by a baying, boozed-up New York crowd left a sour taste Monday, with calls for tighter policing of American spectators.
The scenes at the Ryder Cup were unrecognizable from golf’s genteel archetype, in which etiquette demands silence on the tee and applause greets opponents’ drives and putts. Instead, the Bethpage Black Course, on Long Island, descended this weekend into a bear pit of personal insults, vulgar chanting and — in one instance — a beer thrown at the wife of star Rory McIlroy.
McIlroy, the world No. 2, led the jubilant response, including a chant asking President Donald Trump whether he had seen the result (he had — and he congratulated the Europeans).
McIlroy, of Northern Ireland, got the brunt of the abuse, which veered into anti-Irish and homophobic jeers and references to his well-documented marital issues.
It wasn't just the crowd.
Heather McMahan, an American warm-up comedian, was forced to apologize and step down after she led a chant of "f--- you, Rory!" And there was a heated verbal altercation between Englishman Justin Rose and California native Bryson DeChambeau and their caddies.
All the while, there was a torrent of trash talking, at one point so bad that McIlroy refused to take his stroke until it ceased. Other supporters tried to distract the Europeans with squeaky rubber ducks that came free with a cocktail being sold out on the course.
It got so bad that by the end, McIlroy had to be flanked by state troopers. He was not shy of giving it back, at one point addressing a separate, pointed “f--- you!” to a number of offenders after he smashed a drive.
It was a remarkable scene for a sport whose historic restraint means audiences are permitted within an arm's reach of the athletes.
In the end, McIlroy and his European teammates silenced the crowd the hard way — edging out the Americans 15–13 to win and retain the biennial golf tournament, which pits a super team of Americans against their Euro-counterparts.
Europe's win came despite a dramatic late surge from the American hosts, who had looked destined for a historic, humiliating thrashing going into Sunday.
The visitors said the gauntlet of mockery and abuse made their resistance doubly hard.
European captain Luke Donald said at a news conference afterward that the atmosphere was “rough,” “brutal” and “nasty.” McIlroy said it was unacceptable behavior.
“I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week,” McIlroy said. “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. Sometimes this week we didn’t see that,” he said, deploying understatement to the extreme.
In truth, the Ryder Cup has long since departed from golf’s gentlemanly beginnings, with rowdy taunts and sledging now par for the course. And the sport in general is far from unblemished, with issues over inclusion and race lingering long after the era of segregation.
But many American pundits agreed the abuse this weekend was on another level — and crossed a line.
Joel Beall, writing in Golf Digest, bemoaned “the toxic alchemy at work here: alcohol mixed with entitlement, rudeness fused with xenophobia.”
Some Americans were audibly dismayed at the conduct. Justin Thomas, on the U.S. team, gestured to his supporters in a failed attempt to calm their worst excesses.
"I don't think anyone's safety was necessarily in danger," but "words hurt, too," he said afterward. American captain Keegan Bradley defended the "passionate" New York crowd. “You’re always going to have a few people that cross the line, and that’s unfortunate,” he added.
Inevitably perhaps, politics was not far away.
“Grotesque Bethpage circus holds a mirror up to Trump’s America,” read a headline Monday in Britain’s right-wing Daily Telegraph newspaper. The left-leaning Guardian opined, “U.S. fan ugliness at the Ryder Cup was merely a reflection of Trump’s all-caps America.”
In the event, Trump was gracious in defeat.
He had made an appearance at the course Friday, eliciting chants of his name and the ubiquitous “U-S-A! U-S-A!” The European team responded playfully late Sunday, posting a video online in which it chanted, “Are you watching, Donald Trump?”
And, it turns out, he was, responding with a comfortingly generous message to end a toxic weekend.
“Yes, I’m watching,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Congratulations!”
