Some wit once quipped that the defining trait of American politics is the belief that someone out there is getting something for less than retail that by rights ought to be coming to you. It’s a mercenary sentiment that might also be said to govern golf.
The impact of money in this sport since 2022 is apparent to all except those incentivized to present it as a positive, which demands a treacly audacity that even Joel Osteen would struggle to muster. One professional tour has been wholly manufactured on the back of greed. Another has disfigured itself in an unsustainable effort to keep pace. Still more prowl beneath the feast table hoping to be of temporary utility to the well-fed. By the time the avarice virus runs its course, there won’t be a corner of the game left unsullied.
Contrary to the smug twaddle often peddled as gospel, men’s professional golf isn’t a charity. Organizations and events aim to make money. Some just have goals beyond profit, long-standing obligations to the wider sport that require financing. Those include expanding access to golf and underwriting the junior, amateur and women’s games. The bodies responsible for the four major championships fall into this category. To an extent, so too does the Ryder Cup.
The rise of the Ryder Cup as a marketable product directly correlated to the U.S. team beginning to lose in the late ‘80s. Today, it’s a financial behemoth thanks to dependable ingredients we don’t see much in individual competition: raw emotion, playing for pride, investment in the success of others, camaraderie among rivals. The PGA of America runs on a four-year budget cycle because its operations are largely funded by revenue from domestic Cups. It’s a similar situation for the DP World Tour on the other side of the ledger.
Money matters a great deal in the Ryder Cup, so it’s willfully misleading to present it as a vestal beacon in a world increasingly populated by streetwalking slappers. But where prior generations of players saw participation as straightforward patriotism or as a chance to give a little back, today’s stars apparently see, well, something going to others that by rights ought to be coming to them.
Forget giving back. Let’s take more.
Arguments about whether Ryder Cuppers should be paid aren’t new. A quarter-century ago just such a public debate soiled several reputations and spiked Ben Crenshaw’s blood pressure to levels unseen since he had to surrender his last gutta-percha ball. Recent reports suggest that U.S. team members could receive $400,000 to do with as they see fit. Currently, $200,000 is donated to a charity of each player’s choosing. On Dec. 12, Sports Illustrated’s Bob Harig revealed that a dozen former U.S. team skippers wrote to the PGA of America lobbying against the idea — a healthy majority of the 16 living ex-captains.
The contents of the letter have not been made public, but its very existence lays bare a peppery generational divide between those who built golf’s biggest assets and those who feel entitled to cash in those assets for a lucrative dividend.
No prospective member of Keegan Bradley’s team will be eager to appear in public with his hand out on this issue, but it’s no secret that several players will see payment as their due. In this particular moment, that’s a stupefying level of tone-deafness that almost demands new rallying cries for the era of transactional patriotism.
“Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what it can pay you!”
“I only regret that I have but one fee to charge my country!”
Helen Keller could read rooms better than these guys.
It matters that former captains are taking a stand against paying players because the PGA of America itself certainly can’t, even if it had a leader willing to do so (former CEO Seth Waugh left in June and the organization is apparently struggling to find a replacement who is both a PGA member and a seasoned executive in global business, prioritized in that order). PGA brass ceded any claim to higher ground by setting ticket prices for the 2025 Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black at levels that would make bandits blush — $750 for tournament days and north of $250 on practice days, plus a couple hundred bucks more in fees. Sure, tickets quickly sold out, but at what cost? A New York fan will have to pay more than three times what it cost spectators last year in Rome. Those prices are counter to the PGA of America’s mission to grow access to the game and even of the muni ethos at the host venue.
The relentless layering of laissez-faire for players and administrators only reinforces a dispiriting and widespread sense among those who love this sport — that it’s overrun with fat cats enjoying plump compensation packages, not one of whom would spare a bucket of stale piss for the fans who actually pay for their product.
Only one group benefits in this self-inflicted shambles: Europe’s Ryder Cup squad, whose players quickly made clear they’re not looking for a paycheck, with some even saying they’d pay to take part. Thus began the psych-ops effort to defuse and perhaps even turn Bethpage’s famously raucous gallery by encouraging the perception of a U.S. team that sees patriotism as just another way to get paid. Captain Bradley knows how that will play on Long Island.
The chorus of ‘more’ needs…
