It’s one thing to play the Ryder Cup between Lake Michigan and Wisconsin dairy fields or to stage it on the outskirts of Paris near the Palace of Versailles.
It’s something else entirely to put it at Bethpage Black, a state park golf course that plays like a street fight, and frame it all with an overcrowded, New York-centric gallery that wants to see golf’s version of a heavyweight title bout, preferably with a couple of beers in their bellies and some Uncle Sam showing someplace.
It’s the difference between leather and lace.
Too bad Madison Square Garden isn’t big enough and Yankee Stadium is still occupied this time of year.
This Ryder Cup, the one that has had a warning light flashing since the PGA of America announced the venue 12 years ago, figures to be like none other. In other words, we’ve got your New York state of mind right here.
Ryder Cups, in case you haven’t heard, aren’t like anything else in golf. Hands tremble. Mouths get dry. Stomachs churn.
And the players feel that way, too.
What separates this Ryder Cup is the setting, a bucolic state park about 27 miles east of Central Park that is home to five golf courses including the Black, which has hosted three major championships and revels in its fearsome reputation, making 18 holes feel like walking down a dark alley after midnight.
Most years, the Ryder Cup course is secondary to the plot, a captivating set piece to stage a competition in which the goal isn’t to beat the golf course but to defeat the one or two players on the opposing side even if it means smiling after making a bogey.
Where Bethpage differs is in the potential impact of the approximately 50,000 guests expected on property this week, the majority of whom figure to have local ties, which is a nice way of saying they’re likely to be loud and obnoxious. That’s meant as a compliment of sorts, a nod to the passion that has fueled New York sports fans for decades, for better or worse.
As Reggie Jackson, the straw that stirred the turbulent New York Yankees universe years ago, once said of the local fans, “They don’t let you escape with minor scratches and bruises. They put scars on you here.”
Cheering is allowed when the other side goofs up. Singing is allowed, even encouraged at times, but like karaoke, it’s best to let someone else do it.
The rules of decorum are different at the Ryder Cup. Cheering is allowed when the other side goofs up. Singing is allowed, even encouraged at times, but like karaoke, it’s best to let someone else do it. And, there is a rare elasticity to the amount of belligerence that’s deemed acceptable.
Where that line falls and who draws/enforces it must be on the organizers’ to-do list.
The question isn’t whether the New York crowds will make themselves a part of the story. It’s whether the $750 per day individual tickets have priced some of the, let’s be polite here, more vocal fans out of coming, thereby softening the tone if only by a decibel or two.
If you’re wondering, the ticket price was so steep it took almost 48 hours to sell out.
“It’s going to be hostile. New Yorkers pride themselves in their overt one-sidedness and the Ryder Cup feeds into that to begin with,” said Casey Alexander, a golf-focused financial analyst who lived within a mile of Bethpage Black for nearly two decades.
“There are guys paying $750 a day for a ticket who can’t afford to but they are going. They are going with bells on. It went from one day of bitching about $750 a ticket to the next day ‘what can you get me?’”
It will be a disappointment if the preponderance of hospitality venues and their catered guests dilutes the atmosphere, though it seems unlikely.
“I know it’s being hyped up that it’s going to be loud and boisterous. I hope it is but I hope it’s respectful,” said Mike Pomerico, the president of the Nassau Players Club, a group of approximately 100 local golfers who have made Bethpage their home course.
“It looks like there are so many corporate tents as compared to stands. Even guys at our club say it’s only four matches (per session Friday and Saturday). They would rather watch on TV because it’s going to be so difficult to watch in person. I do think it’s going to be loud. I just hope it’s respectful.”
Bethpage fans have a reputation to uphold. When Sergio García was dealing with his regripping tic during the 2002 U.S. Open at the Black, fans annoyed him by counting off each time he regripped the club and the Spaniard didn’t take it well.
It was rowdy in 2019 when Brooks Koepka won the PGA Championship and it doesn’t feel as if the world has gotten softer and kinder in the ensuing six years.
The European team has a sense of what they’re walking into. That doesn’t mean Robert MacIntyre or Tyrrell Hatton won’t glare at noisy American fans but it’s part of the Ryder Cup experience.
To that end, European players were given virtual reality headsets designed to simulate what they might see and hear at Bethpage but they can only do so much. It’s like the first-tee jitters so many players have experienced. It’s one thing to anticipate them and something else to feel them.
“Nothing can really prepare you until you’re actually in that,” Rory McIlroy said.
Ideally, the Bethpage galleries will decorate the story but not be too big a part of it.
The Americans are playing to win back the Ryder Cup on home soil while the Europeans are trying to become only the second visiting team in the last 10 events to win.
And somehow it feels bigger than that.
It’s a Ryder Cup with a New York state of mind.
Start spreading the boos.
E-MAIL RON
Top: If Whistling Straits was loud in 2021 for the 43rd Ryder Cup, what awaits at Bethpage?
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