BAAAH-BA-BAAH! The speakers at Bethpage started playing Village People's YMCA about nine in the morning. Everyone was cheering and ye...
BAAAH-BA-BAAH! The speakers at Bethpage started playing Village People's YMCA about nine in the morning. Everyone was cheering and yelling at Scottie Scheffler, the world's number one golfer, when he got to the putting green. Scheffler linked fists with one of his coaches, hugged another, and then, BAH-BA-BADA-BADA-BAH!, he walked up and across the bridge to the practice area, where some 500 fans were waiting.
They began to chant. "Yew-ess-ay! Yew-ess-ay!" Scheffler is a huge guy. He seemed like he had grown twice as big by the time he got to the range.
The host team wins two out of three Ryder Cups for a few hundred thousand reasons. One of them is the courses themselves, which are the same on both sides of the Atlantic, but distinct in certain ways. The second thing is that the captains can change the fairways' lengths, the rough's height, and the greens' speed to fit their team.
The remainder are all spending more than $750 to go. The Ryder Cup always has the loudest fans in the game. Patrick Cantlay from the USA argues that the tribalism has "become such an integral part of this event that it's just to be expected."
But this year, no one knows what's going to happen. Donald Trump is coming on Friday afternoon, and his arrival is hanging over the tournament like a balloon at the Thanksgiving Day parade.
People can only say for sure that Long Island will be stuck in traffic. The people in charge have been in talks for a long time about the arrangements, and they are already working to get tens of thousands of fans in and out of the grounds. Trump's decision to attend and watch the US Open men's final caused a delay of about an hour. Because they were so worried about the delays caused by his security, the organizers have already urged him to wait until later in the day to show up. There are laws against bringing in bags, placards, and stools, but it's not clear what the rules are for a nuclear football.
The European squad is so scared of what they will face that they have been wearing VR headsets to get used to all the heckling they think they will hear. It was like trying to play 18 in the middle of a Maga rally on the first day of practice. When Trump showed up at Flushing Meadows, people had conflicting feelings about him. But US golf is farther to the right than my slice, and Bethpage is in Trump's home state. In the 2024 election, he won Nassau County by 4.2 percentage points, a 14-point swing from 2020. In 2016, he picked the town for his rally before the New York primary. He reminded the gathering that he used to wake up at 2 a.m. to get a tee time here.
Which, like everything else Trump says in the game, might be real or not. He also states he has a 2.8 handicap and has won 36 club championships, including six in a single year. These accomplishments would mean a lot more if he ever recorded his scores or participated in tournaments at clubs he didn't own against players he couldn't kick out.
Everyone in the sport knows that he is a habitual cheater. Rick Reilly published a book on it. The only true thing about Trump's golf is how much he likes it. Almost single player here can tell you a tale about how he contacted them to chat about their most recent win in agonizing detail.
He will be the first sitting president to take part in the competition. In 2008, George HW Bush departed to Valhalla. His son came to Brookline in 1999, when he was running for president. Captain Ben Crenshaw asked him to come in and talk to the team on Saturday night, when they were four points behind. Bush chose to give them William B. Travis's letter from the Alamo: "The enemy has demanded a surrender at discretion; otherwise, the garrison will be put to the sword if the fort is taken. I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls."
By the time Bush was done with it, the team was so excited that the next day they became the first team to win the Cup after being behind by more than two points before the singles. One of the European players' spouses was spat on, another player's father fled the course early because his son was being abused so much, and the US team ended up storming the 17th green before José MarÃa Olazábal could make his last putt.
Alistair Cooke claimed on the BBC that the day will "go down in infamy." Everyone agreed after that it was one of the most shameful days in the competition's history. Trump may also say that it established a record for TV ratings that lasted for 13 years.
No one knows what Bethpage will be like on Friday. Keegan Bradley, the captain of the USA team, said he thought Trump would set himself up by the first tee. "I'm so happy he's coming. I can't wait to see what the first tee will be like with the president there. "Everyone will remember it for the rest of their lives." In some way or another, he is probably accurate about it.
You can only guess that Scheffler is too busy playing to listen to many of his president's speeches. He said that Trump is "one of those guys who, when you're around him, makes everyone feel more confident." One thing I noticed a lot about him in the short time I spent with him was that he treats everyone the same and with the most respect. Scottie might be good at irony, but I suspect he thinks it's the thing he puts in his bag next to his 3-wood.
There is another ironic thing here. Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration created Bethpage Black as part of a New Deal effort to make golf more accessible to "a new kind of average golfer." It was one of 250 municipal courses built at the time. Roosevelt played golf as well. He was the club champion, secretary, and treasurer in Campobello in Maine. He built a course at Warm Springs in Georgia just for persons who were recovering from polio. It features roads and strong bridges so that patients could be driven between holes. It is a totally different idea of the game than what we are going to see played out in the following few days.