The massive stage – potentially the largest of all-time for golf – is set for the 45th Ryder Cup at Bethpage State Park’s Black Course on Sept. 23–28. This year’s Ryder Cup is a patriotic passion play with a strong dose of pomp and pageantry, a fierce rivalry featuring 24 of the finest players in the world competing for country and continent, a marquee that features the No. 1 vs. No. 2 player in the world, a boisterous New York crowd, a brutish but beautiful golf course and an unpredictable match-play script will make its Big Apple debut – not on Broadway, but at Bethpage Black.“Let’s say AI saves you two or three hours a week,” Williams says. “That’s two or three more hours you can spend on the lesson tee, on the golf course or, most importantly, at home with your family.”
It was the late, great Frank Sinatra who famously sang and said of New York City, “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” The PGA of America has taken Sinatra’s “New York, New York” mantra to heart for the 2025 Ryder Cup by scheduling the biennial matches for Long Island, but capitalizing on the large-market appeal of the “city that never sleeps” by hosting watch parties at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City and providing pop-up Ryder Cup souvenir shops so a melting pot of Big Apple residents and visitors, along with a huge national and international television audience, can catch the fervor and fever of the Ryder Cup Experience.
A week of special events, celebrities and ceremonies, and a grudge match pitting the top 12 American professionals against the top 12 Europeans with the coveted Ryder Cup at stake will unfold on a specially constructed outdoor stage – the Black Course at Bethpage State Park. In hosting three previous major championships, the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens and the 2019 PGA Championship, the vaunted Black Course was the star of the show with Tiger Woods, Lucas Glover and Brooks Koepka, respectively, emerging as leading actors while winning major championships.
Teams Will Carry Top Billing
But this time, the largest buildout of infrastructure in PGA of America special-event history, which has transformed Bethpage State Park on Long Island into a 1,477-acre golf festival a la Ryder Cup Palooza, and the confrontation between the U.S. and European teams will demand top billing.
Great host city, great venue, great crowd chanting and cheering, and two great teams vying for one of the most prestigious and exclusive trophies in sports. U.S. Captain Keegan Bradley owns the home-turf and home-crowd advantage, but Captain Luke Donald and Team Europe are riding the momentum of a 16½-11½ victory in the 2023 Ryder Cup at Marco Simone Golf & Country Club on the outskirts of Rome.
However, last we checked, Bethpage Black and New York City are situated in the United States – in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State Building and other wholly American landmarks – and the U.S. squad is rarely upstaged on American soil. To wit, when Team Europe last visited the United States with high hopes, it was delivered a 19-9 lashing at Whistling Straits in Wisconsin.
PGA to Occupy Spotlight
PGA of America President Don Rea Jr., for one, is looking forward to the 2025 Ryder Cup with the anticipation of a youngster looking forward to Christmas morning. He knows golf will be in the national and international spotlight, as will the PGA of America.
“It’s such an exciting time because people will be talking about golf and the Ryder Cup, which gives us a chance to weave in the story of the PGA of America and our professionals,” notes Rea. “We get to tell the story of our more than 30,000 PGA of America Golf Professionals to a global audience, sharing with them how we grow and serve the game. And the PGA of America gets the sports spotlight for the week, which is a true source of pride for our members.”
Rea understands the uniqueness of conducting the 45th Ryder Cup at a public facility like Bethpage Black, which is known as “the People’s Country Club,” since he is the owner and operator of Augusta Ranch Golf Club in Mesa, Arizona.
“For it to be at Bethpage Black, a public facility just outside New York City, is amazing,” says Rea. “I’m so excited for the world to see some of the things that we’ve been quietly working on behind the scenes.
“Between Keegan Bradley and our team at the PGA of America, we have a few secrets for the week that are going to activate the crowd like never before. I can tell you the first tee experience is going to be off the charts. I can’t wait to see it, and I can’t wait for golf fans around the world to see it. I think PGA of America Members are going to be very proud, and it’s going to be a very exciting week.”
Many 2025 Storylines
More plots, subplots and storylines than a library of Sherlock Holmes mysteries surrounds the 2025 Ryder Cup as Captains Bradley and Donald began assembling data to select the final six players for each side (six also receive automatic bids) at the end of August. But some certainties are etched in stone. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who won four PGA TOUR events in a seven-month span this year including the 2025 PGA Championship in May and the Open Championship in July, will anchor the U.S. Team. On the opposite side, Rory McIlroy, the No. 2 player in the world who completed the career Grand Slam by winning the 2025 Masters, will lead Team Europe.
Will we see Scheffler go head-to-head against McIlroy at Bethpage Black in a No. 1 vs. No. 2 showdown with valuable Ryder Cup points at stake? Maybe, maybe not. But the specter of such a matchup fuels the fire of an already highly energized event.
“The Ryder Cup is the Ryder Cup – there is nothing else like it,” says Scheffler, who sports a modest 2-2-3 record while appearing in the 2021 and 2023 Ryder Cups. “I play golf to compete and I love the competition of the Ryder Cup. It’s always fun to be part of a team competing for your country, and the atmosphere is always electric. It will be fun for us to be back home this time.”
“Scottie brings a lot to our team,” assures Bradley, who positioned himself as possibly the first U.S. playing captain since 1963 when he won The Travelers in June to soar as high as No. 7 in the Official World Golf Rankings. “He (Scheffler) brings a lot of leadership to the room and he will be a tough matchup for anybody he plays against. He’s playing with such dominance this year. He can be paired with almost anyone on our team and he’s super competitive. He doesn’t like to lose, I’ll tell you that.”
