The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Could Be the Greatest—or the Worst—Event of All Time
The Ryder Cup has never been more tense, which is all sorts of fun until it isn’t. The 2025 event at Bethpage Black on Long Island could be the best, most exciting edition yet—but there is a real chance it will be a low point for both the Ryder Cup and the game of golf. Players and power brokers, be warned: This could get ugly.
The last major held at Bethpage Black, the 2019 PGA Championship, featured one of the nastier atmospheres I’ve ever seen at a major, with some fans unabashedly calling for leader Brooks Koepka to shank his shots down the stretch. Hundreds of fans acted in a fashion that would get them quickly escorted off the grounds at Augusta National—and, worse, they seemed to take pride in it.
I am not saying most fans behaved poorly. But too many did, in an overzealous attempt to combine the if-you-can-make-it-here ethos of New York with the famed Course of the People vibe at Bethpage Black. What will they do when players are competing for the Ryder Cup instead of the Wanamaker Trophy? Do we really want to find out?
U.S. Ryder Cup fans will be out in full force at Bethpage in 2025.
USA Today
The Ryder Cup is fun in part because it is so different. Fans have a rooting interest in every group on the course. They get loud about it. It can be jarring for the players, who are accustomed to fans cheering harder for some than others but generally cheering for everybody. All of this is fantastic.
Everybody is entitled to their own opinion on where the too-far line is. Mine comes down to this: Fans are welcome to affect the competitors but not the competition. Get in their heads, but not in their way.
Cheering a missed putt? Fair game. Chanting “O-le!” to support Europe? Go for it. Screaming “U-S-A!” at European players as they walk from one green to the next tee? You love to see it.
But yell during backswings or as players line up putts; make inappropriate comments to or about players’ spouses; or do anything to affect anybody’s lie, stance or ability to concentrate on a shot, and that’s a big problem.
The Ryder Cup has been walking that line for years now. This year’s version featured:
- A report that Patrick Cantlay divided the team room over his belief to get paid for participating and that he refused to wear a team hat in protest …
- European fans heckling Cantlay and waving hats at him Saturday …
- American players and caddies trying to yank the troll control away from the fans by waving their hats back …
- Cantlay—who is, separate from this report, undoubtedly determined to maximize his income and a ferocious competitor—playing extremely clutch golf down the stretch Saturday, including a long putt that ultimately won the match on the 18th hole …
- Cantlay’s caddie, Joe LaCava, milking the putt and the hat for a little too long a little too close to Rory McIlroy, who still had a putt to halve the match …
- Ireland’s Shane Lowry confronting LaCava on the green, followed by McIlroy getting into a parking-lot shouting match with Justin Thomas’s caddie, Jim “Bones” Mackay, McIlroy was caught on video yelling about a “f---ing disgrace.”
McIlroy spends a lot of time thinking about what is right and standing up for those principles in public, admirable qualities that sometimes chafe his peers. So when LaCava stood in McIlroy’s line of sight, it was not surprising that McIlroy took exception, felt good about doing it and continued to do it. He seemed in no mood to make peace over the weekend, pointedly telling NBC twice that he had not met with LaCava on Sunday morning, despite a report that he had, then acknowledging later that they had texted.
But McIlroy and LaCava will surely be fine. They are reasonable, likable people who had a tense moment that most of the golf world happened to witness—and it’s a safe bet that they both understand that. It is inconceivable that either man is interested in a protracted feud over this.
The problem is that many of the people who show up at Bethpage in 2025 won’t follow all that. They might remember McIlroy getting into it with Mackay in the parking lot; that European fans heckled Cantlay for the hat report; and that McIlroy sorta promised victory in ’25: “I think one of the biggest accomplishments in golf right now is winning an away Ryder Cup. And that’s what we’re going to do at Bethpage.”
If fans at Bethpage don’t remember all that, they will be reminded of it.
And they will want to top it.
After all, New Yorkers love reminding the world that there is no place quite like New York. No crowd like a Yankee Stadium crowd. No stage like Broadway. No Ryder Cup like a Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black. (I say this as a native New Yorker who loves the place.)
I wish I had a good answer for how to make Bethpage Black the best Ryder Cup atmosphere, which it absolutely could be, instead of the worst, which is also entirely possible. I do know that if I had a say in Europe’s captaincy, I would stay far, far away from Sergio García.
There is no doubt García deserves to be a Ryder Cup captain. The Ryder Cup is his favorite event, and he is one of the most important players in its history. But García is famously sensitive and feisty when he is criticized, which makes him the wrong person to lead Europe at Bethpage Black. (Players have rallied around Luke Donald, who led this year’s squad.) Give García a chance, or two or three chances. Just not in 2025.
For a long time, Phil Mickelson seemed sure to be the U.S. captain at Bethpage, because New Yorkers have embraced him as their own. Mickelson’s candidacy is cloudy for other reasons now: most notably, his role in forming LIV Golf and suing the PGA Tour, and the report from Billy Walters that Mickelson, a recovering gambling addict, tried wagering $400,000 on the 2012 Ryder Cup. Mickelson denied placing the bet but not that he tried to do it. Regardless, I don’t see how anybody could argue that Mickelson is the best person to lead the best American players. Maybe someday. Right now there is too much rancor.
If Tiger Woods wants the captaincy, it should be his. But so much depends on how Woods sees himself, his game and his life at any given moment. One can easily imagine Woods wanting to be the captain who leads the U.S. to its first Ryder Cup victory in Europe since 1993.
Whoever the captains are in 2025, they should think about more than just how to win. They should discuss what the Ryder Cup atmosphere should be and be proactive about creating it together. The Ryder Cup is not like any other golf event. Bethpage Black is not like any other venue. This could be phenomenal. It could also be a f---ing disgrace.