The Ryder Cup is meant to be golf’s greatest theatre — passion, precision, and pressure playing out over three extraordinary days.
At Bethpage Black in New York, Europe’s victory was all of those things, but it was also a reminder of where passion can spill over into something less welcome.
It certainly was gripping theatre, and for it to fall to our own Shane Lowry to convert the final putt needed to secure the trophy was especially good for Ireland.
Much of the commentary has focused on the shouting and abuse being hurled at the European team from the galleries, which was very much counter to the traditions of the sport.
But let’s not get carried away.
Golf is by its very nature an individual sport. The build-up, the emotion of the players and the narrative of this being one of the most most extraordinary team events in world sport is fine within the moment, but the coming together once every two years, not having trained with each other, seen each other through injury and dips in performance, and had the relationship forged and shaped in front of a tribal audience that puts Golf’s followers in the ha’penny place is perhaps overstating things a bit.
I’d begrudge no sports star a celebration, but I don’t think I’m the only sports fan who perhaps felt the hugs and chest bumps after each win were just a little bit forced.
I’d want nobody engaging in sport for our pleasure to be subjected to abuse for doing so, but being called a stupid leprechaun is perhaps in the lower register of the abuse that someone playing, for nothing, in an Ulster Football Championship in Gaelic football, or in front of a crowd of ultras in the Italian Serie A, might see as just part of the game.
And who among us did not love Rory McIlroy just a little bit more when he turned to his heckler and tell him to “Shut the F**k up” before nailing his approach shot to the green in the ultimate two fingers to the hometown crowd. I only wish a little backward glance right at him might have also followed the shot.
Having beer thrown over Erica McIlroy was unsavoury, but does it really compare to the officials in the Rugby World Cup whose lives and those of their families were threatened, or Andres Escobar, the Colombian footballer who was assassinated by angry fans after mistakes made in the 1994 World Cup?
Let’s celebrate the Ryder Cup of 2025 for what it was, a brilliant three days of sport where the team and the players we supported came out on top first in a totally dominant fashion, and then in one of pure closing drama.
I do not fear that Adare Manor in 2027, or the K Club for next year’s KPMG Women’s Irish Open, will be overtaken by marauding fans with their shirts off and demonic flags waving above their heads.
There is a sense that we want to attribute every ill in the world to a coarsening of social discourse in America. This was perhaps charged up by having Donald Trump payt a flying visit to Bethpage Black.
Everything around him tends to be painted in cartoon villain colours, which lessens not only the very real dangers that exist in the world beyond the 18 holes of a golf course, but also leads us to react with horror at stuff we might not pass a glance at on Hill 16 of a summer Saturday.
Nobody died, nobody was hurt beyond their feelings. That’s something that sport can be proud of, allowing people to let off steam but without the actual danger and death that can accompany other public gatherings.
For that, as well as the great golf, let us be grateful.
Further Reading for Sport for Business members:
Read our Sport for Business Coverage on Golf
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