This coming week at Bethpage Park on Long Island, New York, Europe will be attempting to win the Ryder Cup for a fifth time on that side of the Atlantic. Paul McGinley, the victorious European captain at Gleneagles in 2014, feels the hosts have already erred, and I don’t mean by continuing to begin proceedings on Friday with a series of foursomes matches – Europe completed a clean sweep of the opening morning in that format in Rome in 2023.
He is referring to the decision that the American players will each receive $500,000 for participating over the course at Bethpage Black. “I think they have made a massive mistake to push for this,” he said. “For the kind of money these guys are making nowadays, to get half a million each is tiny money. It’s huge in everybody else’s life [but] these modern players have pushed the envelope to get half a million dollars.” McGinley pointed out that Luke Donald, the European captain, had raised the subject with the 12 players who played in Rome “and they came back within a few hours to say ‘100% we don’t want to get paid’; that bonds us with the European fans”. Fans of either team are having to pay $750 a day for a regular ticket, so other prospective reasons for some commotion aside there has to be the possibility of noisy American crowd disgruntlement if they feel their team isn’t playing well enough to justify that half-mill.
Moving on (a bit), in a clip that aired on Sky Sports earlier this month, Justin Rose said: “I think America have tried too hard to become a team, whereas [with] Europe it’s a bit more natural and organic. I think it comes from deeper roots. Being a great team is having a kind of real good theme and having an identity that has come from the players [who came] before you and you all buy into that vision.”
To be even-handed here, Rose did also say: “I think the US team have definitely bonded a lot more in recent years.” I don’t doubt that. The first Ryder Cup I attended in the US was the first one Europe won overseas, at Muirfield Village in 1987. Going into the afternoon fourballs on the second day, Europe held a five-point advantage. Among the omitted Americans was Mark Calcavecchia. He had only played once, he and Andy Bean losing an extraordinary fourball match on the final green to Bernhard Langer and Sandy Lyle 24 hours before. Captain Jack Nicklaus had sat him out again.
I had done a couple of stories with Calcavecchia that year. I approached him that afternoon while he was watching a match with some team-mates (the notion that these days a journalist might have the opportunity to talk to a team member on the course during the Ryder Cup would be as credible as claiming to have just seen a stegosaurus) and said I was surprised he’d been left out three times. “Not as surprised as me,” he replied. “Jack hasn’t spoken to me about it yet.”
Calcavecchia beat Nick Faldo in the singles but Europe won the match 15-13. So, yes, the bonding on the American side has improved. As has the money: from non-existent to, seemingly, existential.