18 Parting Thoughts: The 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black

1. A Moribund Two Days Followed by an ELECTRIC Sunday

No matter the deficit, no matter which team is down, there’s always a point on every Ryder Cup Sunday when the comeback feels possible. When you look up on the scoreboard and see the right color, and you think if this match goes our way, and we can just flip that one, and he wins 18…

We saw that on steroids on Sunday. What an inspired run from the Americans. It’s amazing how real momentum is despite it being, you know, not actually a tangible thing. The first two days of this competition were a total dud, but Sunday went a long way toward washing that all away. There is just nothing like playing for your country. (Or continent).

2. Good Things Happen to Good People—like Shane Lowry

Shane Lowry feels things harder than any other professional golfer. He wears his heart on his sleeve. You see it just as much when he’s struggling in events as when he’s playing well. But he is the nicest, sweetest person you’ll ever meet.

I’ve gotten to know him pretty well in the last few years. He hosted my two buddies, my dad and I at his club in Ireland when I went over there in July. He and his two Irish buddies played a Ryder Cup match against me and my two American buds. He eagled the 18th to close us out. It’s a day we’ll never forget.

He’s been desperate for another moment like the one he lived at Royal Portrush in 2019. For most players, winning a major on your home island is the pinnacle of a career. There’s no beating it. But Shane lives for this competition, and I truly believe this one was even more special for him. Good things happen to good people sometimes.

3. Home Team Advantage Isn’t the Story Anymore—It’s European Dominance

The story going into this Ryder Cup was that the home team almost always wins. The Ryder Cup might be in trouble, the scribes said, if the home team just wins every time.

The story now: this is a period of European dominance. They have won 2 of the last 4 Ryder Cups on U.S. soil. They’ve won 11 of the last 15. And very, very few Ryder Cups of recent vintage have had any sort of intrigue on Sunday afternoon.

I’m not sure there’s a “fix”—or if one is really needed. I chuckled at the online conversation that we should make it Team North America vs Team Europe; I can’t think of a more un-American idea, nor would any player from Canada or Mexico have made this team.

4. American Greats Underperforming at the Ryder Cup Is Just a Bummer

By and large, the best American players in recent years have poor Ryder Cup records. Tiger. Phil. Furyk. Spieth. And, now, Scottie. We have a distinct lack of Ryder Cup DOGS in the present (or recent-past) stable. Europe had Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia and now they have Rory and Rahm and Fleetwood. The difference between our studs’ play in normal golf tournaments and the Ryder Cup is truly baffling.

5. The ‘Envelope Rule’ Makes Zero Sense And Should Be Changed

It wouldn’t have made a difference to the result, but the “envelope rule” is really silly. Help me understand why one team has a player that can’t tee it up and both teams get half a point? Shouldn’t the team that can’t field a full 12 guys simply forfeit the match? That’s what happens in tennis?

This isn’t to doubt the legitimacy of Viktor Hovland’s injury. There is precisely zero chance he chose not to play to get that half point and inch Europe closer to victory. Plus, he would’ve been a big favorite had he been healthy. But it’s a dumb rule that should be changed moving forward.

While we’re at it, no more of this “Retains The Cup” bullshit. If it ends 14-14, each team nominates one player and they play head to head, sudden-death match play. The envelope rule, and the idea of "retaining" the Cup are anachronistic, borne from a different time. Let’s bring this thing into 2025. It’s an entertainment product. Think how Box Office a sudden death playoff would be.

6. Cameron Young Was A Major Bright Spot For Team USA

Cameron Young elevated himself this week. The New York native needed a serious late-season flurry to earn his spot on this team and he played his butt off all week. Doing so on such a massive stage can absolutely change the way a player views himself. We saw it with Scottie Scheffler after he boatraced Jon Rahm at the 2021 Ryder Cup. He still hadn’t won a PGA TOUR event then. He’s won quite a few now. Young got his first win at the Wyndham earlier this summer and it most certainly will not be the last.

7. Players, Not Captains, Win Or Lose The Ryder Cup

This isn’t Captain Keegan Bradley’s fault. There’s a natural tendency to point fingers after an embarrassment like this, to find a scapegoat. But once the week starts, it’s really never the captain’s fault. I’ve said throughout this process that the role of the captaincy is overblown. Players win or lose the Ryder Cup. Is it Keegan’s fault that Scottie went 0-4 in the team sessions? That Europe outputted his team so severely? Nor was it because of Keegan that the Americans caught fire on Sunday.

I also understand that everyone with two working eyes and access to DataGolf.com is a data expert and knows exactly what the pairings should’ve been. But we are talking about tenths of a stroke difference in stroke-play. Europe won because its players performed better in this cauldron of emotion. It’s why I thought Keegan should’ve played—the captain really can’t do that much, and Keegan has the exact type of personality that we seem to be lacking. Europe has guys with that spirit. We had two: Bryson and JT. Keegan would’ve been the third.

8. I Feel Awful for Keegan Bradley

Had the captain been anyone besides Keegan Bradley, he’d have been a crucial member of this team. It is unlikely he gets to play in another Ryder Cup and, though it’s not his fault (see above), he will forever be associated with this disaster of a week. He put his heart and soul into this experience and his team got beat at home. Sports can be cruel.

9. Does The Presidents Cup Lull Team USA Into a False Sense Of Security?

I have to give Luke Kerr-Dineen credit on this one, but I’m coming around on it: is the Presidents Cup actively hurting the Americans in the Ryder Cup? Does it give them a false sense of confidence? They wash away the bitter disappointment of Ryder Cup with largely comfortable strolls to victory a year later. It also inputs some bad match-play data into our calculations. It might burn them out. Would they come into Ryder Cup weeks with a little more red-ass if they didn’t get the off-year boondoggle.

10. Bethpage Black Was Unrecognizable This Week: No Rough, Pillow-Soft Greens

It was genuinely jarring to see the vaunted Bethpage Black play so toothless. Of course, both teams played the same course. And both teams were strikingly similar statistically—gone are the days where Europe fielded a bunch of DP World Tour-based bunters—so it’s not like the lack of rough benefitted one team disproportionately. But the setup this week will not help the perception that American Ryder Cup courses are bombers paradises.

There was strikingly little rough all week, and rough is part of Bethpage Black’s DNA. I say this without exaggeration: distance aside, the course played tougher when you and your buddies camped out to play. It was soft even before the rain on Thursday. After that, Justin Thomas had no problem hitting a long iron out of the right rough, attacking a front pin and stopping it within 10 feet. That doesn’t happen here.

Paul McGinley asked Keegan Bradley about this on Live From on Thursday night and Keegan bit back quickly, suggesting American fans just want their team to win. They don’t care how it happens. And there’s something to be said for match play being a different animal, how birdies should win holes rather than pars. But part of what made this Ryder Cup coming here so cool was the Every Man getting a chance to see the world’s best play their track. Some of that was lost. This was not The Beast. The famous sign—“only for highly skilled golfers”—almost seemed ironic. Obviously you can’t do anything about rain. Weather is weather. But the rough was a choice, and it neutered one of the best layouts we have.

11. Here’s Hoping by 2027, We Can See Every Shot

Pretty astounding that, in 2025, there wasn’t an option for fans at home to watch a stream of every individual match. The Masters does this with all 18 holes; the Ryder Cup couldn’t figure it out with four groups on the course. Surely the PGA of America or NBC could’ve offered a direct-to-consumer (paid) premium product to allow fans to watch every shot live. A big miss.

12. In Its Best Moments, the Crowd Reactions Are the Crown Jewel of This Tournament

The Ryder Cup is special for so many reasons but one of my favorites is the respective crowd reactions. Each action on the golf course produces a distinct sound. A good shot from the home team sounds different from a made putt from the home team. A made-putt to win the hole for the home team sounds different from a made-putt to tie the hole for the home team. A good shot from the away team sounds different from a made putt from the away team. Go to enough of these and you can follow a match with your eyes closed. I’m very lucky to do what I do.

13. It Sure Feels Like Fitz Is Back

There might not be a player on the planet who picks their tee up quicker than an in-form Matt Fitzpatrick. This was the best I’ve seen him swing it since Brookline. How good he must feel—he was completely off the Ryder Cup radar just a few months ago, lost in the abyss, his swing coach of 15 years stuck at home dealing with a difficult personal matter. Then came a link-up with Mark Blackburn and a rather rapid uptick in performance. For all his personal success the Ryder Cup record was a malignant tumor on his resume. He wasn’t just poor, he was historically bad, coming into this week with a putrid 1-7 record. 

Luke Donald placed serious faith putting him out in foursomes Friday morning alongside Ludvig Aberg and he delivered a masterclass, gaining over four strokes overall in essentially half a round. He was by far the best player in the session and he kept it up throughout the week. 

He’ll be slightly disappointed not to have closed out Bryson DeChambeau after leading 5 up through 7, but that comeback was more a result of Bryson’s great play than Fitz blowing it. A 3-1-1 week, and he’s a player who wishes the golf season weren’t over.

14. I’m Reminded Yet Again There’s No Right Way to Swing It

Golf swings are as unique as fingerprints. There are certain threads present in most of the best ones but there’s plenty of room for artistic expression, for homemade eccentricities. Let’s highlight one on each team.

Rasmus Hojgaard's right knee locks in a downright unnatural way on his backswing. It looks like a meniscus tear every time he hits driver. Ben Griffin has the most odd chin movement during his downswing. It looks like a herniated disk every time he hits driver. Neither man has—knock on wood—torn their meniscus or herniated a disc. Bodies are idiosyncratic machines. There’s no “right” way to swing it.

15. Data Is a (Great) Tool—But It’s Not Everything

Every Ryder Cup cycle we make the same mistake: we extrapolate data from a season full of 72-hole stroke-play events and treat it as gospel at the Ryder Cup. They are just not apples to apples. It’s one week. For some guys it’s three rounds, or two-and-a-half, and every single hole feels like a Sunday in contention.

Take Justin Rose. The advanced stats said he was one of the weaker players on either team…in 72-hole stroke play events across a whole season. I asked Rose about this earlier this year—about how he’s dealt with the changing reality of getting older.

“I’d love to say I can roll with it every single week. I do have some challenges. I'm flying transatlantic 7 to 10 times or more, 12 times a year. That takes its toll. I think I have a lot of other things going on in my life with a busy family, kids growing up, all these sorts of things, almost dealing with young adults now. So there's a lot of other things I have to pay attention to; can't just be solely distracted by golf or solely focused on golf. I think I should be realistic about what's achievable, but there's plenty of golf tournaments in a small enough window of time that I can focus on, and I really believe that the ones that truly matter to me are all attainable still, and that's kind of why I'm practicing. That's tons of motivation for me.

I feel like I don't necessarily have to be No. 1 in the world again to feel like there's enough to play for, for me.”

Translation: When I’m up for it, I still got it. We saw this at the Masters, when he charged with a final-round 64 only to fall just short. We saw it when he beat an elite field in the Memphis heat earlier this summer. And we saw it when he played absurdly good golf in Saturday afternoon’s four ball sessions, birdieing 6 of his first 8 holes.

There’s a lesson here: Data is a tool. It is not the be-all end-all, especially in a truly one-of-one event.

16. Some Sad News You May Have Missed

The golf community lost one of its own this week. Makena White passed away at a way-too-young age. Every death hits hard but to lose someone so full of life, with so much in front of them—that’s a tragedy. The news trickled through the grounds on Friday afternoon after her friend posted a message on her Instagram. It hit like a gut punch.

Makena was so extremely nice. That might sound simplistic but it’s a dying quality. Anyone who knew her has a story. Mine: she’d often defend me on social media when there was absolutely nothing in it for her. She hated to see anyone in distress, even if she hardly knew them. Hug your loved ones tight.

17. The American Crowd Was Disappointing On Friday and Saturday

Regarding the crowd…an extreme disappointment. We live in a black-and-white age where everyone wants to latch onto A Reason, post it and soak in the dopamine of likes and comments. But there’s no one reason why the crowd sucked. It was a combination of ticket prices, the scoreboard, general assholery—and the lack of songs.

The European fans, taking inspiration from soccer and pub culture, had at least a half-dozen. They serenade their players and they tease the Americans with creativity. There’s a light-heartedness to it all, a self-awareness. Like, this is all a bit of fun.

On the American side, this week was a nonstop chorus of "U-S-A!" and "Fuck You Ro-ry." A bunch of isolated chirps without any cohesion. What resulted was an atmosphere that felt more unfriendly than anything else. It wasn’t electric, it wasn’t fun, it was just kind of…nasty. The other thing about songs: 10 people singing the same tune sounds a lot louder than 100 yelling random shit. The golfers disappointed inside the ropes and the fans disappointed outside them.

It’s a shame that this is what the event has become over here. It’s so severe that Fitzpatrick’s parents didn’t bother coming because they didn’t want to hear what would be said about their son.

18. Sometimes It’s the Little Things, When You’re a Sicko

I got a kick out of seeing Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau’s name on the PGA TOUR app this week. (Say it with me: I am a sicko).

They’re both an absolute joy to watch. Bryson leans into the entertainment aspect like no other pro golfer. Rahm has serious aura. It’s a damn shame this fracture in pro golf has gone on as long as it has and it would be a travesty if it eats into more years of their primes.