Bringing the Ryder Cup to notoriously nasty Bethpage Black already was cause for concern. Imagine the most passionate, patriotic event in golf played before a flag-waving crowd that once harassed Sergio Garcia so badly he pointed at them with the wrong finger.
This could make the 1999 matches outside Boston look like a real tea party.
And now add money to the equation and the Americans will be under more pressure than ever to deliver that 17-inch gold trophy the home crowd expects to win in September.
The PGA of America took a step toward quashing the quibbling about whether players should be paid. It decided on a new compensation package that keeps charity at the forefront ($300,000) and gives players and the captain $200,000 to let them decide if it should go in their wallets or to a good cause.
U.S. captain Keegan Bradley, in a show of leadership far more valuable than team uniforms, declared all his $500,000 is going to charity.
Does the money make a difference? Not really.
The total compensation - charity and the stipend - is roughly the equivalent of what 10th place paid at the PGA Championship this year. Does anyone really believe the level of motivation on the biggest stage depends on the purse?
Tiger Woods is the richest man in golf and always played like he didn’t have two nickels to rub together. Woods loves his money, but that’s not what drives him. And anyone good enough to make the U.S. team most likely has that much in common with him.
Start at the top.
“I’ve been playing golf my whole life for free and the money’s just a bonus,” Scottie Scheffler said two weeks ago in the Bahamas. “I want to win just as bad for zero dollars as I do for whatever millions of dollars it is.”
That would be $62,228,357 for those keeping track. Now the world’s No. 1 player gets an additional $200,000. That probably won’t motivate Scheffler more than the 9-and-7 loss he and Brooks Koepka suffered last time at Marco Simone.
Players - not just Americans - for a decade have been raising questions about the sharp rise in revenue at majors and the incremental increase in prize money. But money is the last thing on their minds standing over a 6-foot putt to square the match in the Ryder Cup.
This was always about economics.
It surfaced in 1999 going into matches at The Country Club. The Ryder Cup had become big business by then. The PGA of America was raking in millions (net profit estimated at $23 million that year) and players - the show ponies - were getting a $5,000 stipend.
“When you can’t show up and play for your country, if playing for your country is not enough, my heart bleeds for the game of golf,” U.S. captain Ben Crenshaw said. This was after he had cashed in on a new golf ball endorsement and clothing deal as Ryder Cup captain. Big business.
Players wanted more say in how some of the proceeds were spent, and the PGA of America responded by setting aside $200,000 to be split between their college golf programs and their designated charities.
Why is this an issue in America? It’s a difference in funding. The PGA of America uses PGA Tour players to make a mint (and pay for many of the association’s noble projects). Income from the Ryder Cup in Europe supports the players’ very tour.
Either way, money has been at the core of the Ryder Cup for some time. But now it’s official, and it’s a bad look for the Americans.
For the first time in this century-old competition, they get a check for their services. Jack Nicklaus and Arnold Palmer never got paid. Neither did Ben Hogan or Byron Nelson.
But this is where golf is right now. Everyone is sick of talking about money, but then most questions directed to players is about money. It’s inescapable, even at the Ryder Cup.
“I’m tired of it. The whole world is,” said Seth Waugh, the previous CEO of the PGA of America, going into the Marco Simone matches in 2023. “We play for love and they play for money. The one time of the year they should be playing for love, we’re still talking about money.”
And they’ll be talking about it at Bethpage.
It’s not enough that the Europeans have won eight of the last 11 times in the Ryder Cup and are better at this competition. They still look for an edge.
One year during the peak of their dominance they rallied around the PGA Tour asking its players to promote the Nationwide Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour) by referring to it as the second-best tour in golf. After Europe won handily in Ireland, Garcia said, “Hopefully we won’t get asked if the Nationwide Tour is the second-best tour in the world anymore.”
“Behind Europe,” Luke Donald added, the ultimate Ryder Cup rim shot.
Now the U.S. team has given Europeans a rallying cry they didn’t really need. They will proudly say they play for passion and their flag (and Seve Ballesteros, of course), that they would gladly pay for the right to play in the Ryder Cup.
European spirit against American greed. Yes, the Bethpage crowd will be watching.
The only way the Americans can escape this bad look is to win. That’s how it was when this mess first unfolded. Consider the words of Davis Love III going into Brookline in 1999.
“If we lose this year after the Presidents Cup (loss in Australia) and losing the last two Ryder Cups — and after all that controversy over money — well, it’s going to be bad,” he said. “So, we can’t lose. We just can’t lose.”
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