y 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.
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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.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/sep/28/usa-fans-ryder-cup-rory-mcilroy
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