The impact of the horrific fan abuse at the Ryder Cup has had a lasting impact on one of golf’s most beloved voices.

The scenes outside the ropes at last year’s Ryder Cup were so unedifying that one of the game’s great narrators considered stepping away from the mic for good.

Ewen Murray, the legendary golf commentator at Sky Sports, was among those on the Bethpage grounds mortified by the venomous abuse directed at European players and their families.

The incredible 15-13 victory last September – Europe’s first on away soil since the Miracle of Medinah – was tinged by an atmosphere so hostile that police troopers were drafted in to line the fairways and protect players. On a fraught weekend on Long Island, Rory McIlroy was the chief target of the bile, while his wife Erica struck by a drinks cup.

In a fascinating bonus episode of the Sliced podcast with Ben Coley and Sam Harrop, Murray detailed his own version of events from the tumultous week.

“On the Saturday, I had two hours off after they teed off in the afternoon,” he explained. “Because I don’t hear tremendously well, I thought I’d go out to the 9th, 10th and 11th which were quite close to the television village.

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“I heard stuff in that half hour that I can’t repeat to you, it’s that bad. Not fired at Rory but at Rory’s family. I walked back and I thought ‘do you really need to be part of this anymore?’ That’s when I decided to finish commentary. By the time I got on the plane on the Monday, I looked out over New York and thought its been a fantastic journey, but if that’s our future, I really don’t want any part of it.”

Murray was particularly appalled by Heather McMahan, the comedian and actress hired by the PGA of America to fire up the crowd seated in the sprawling first tee grandstand. McMahan stood down after leading chants of “F*** you Rory” on a megaphone.

The toxicity set the tone for more ugly abuse that followed.

“The PGA of America should be ashamed employing a woman at the back of the first tee to behave the way she behaved,” Murray added. “I actually found out, thankfully, she doesn’t have kids,” Murray added. “So we’re not going to see the next generation of that. I thought her performance was disgraceful.

“If Keegan Bradley who came and supported it and waved his hands to get the crowd to get louder… if he spent as much time looking at his pairings, [he] may well have been a winning Ryder Cup captain. They spent way too much energy on something that was disgusting and really had no place in our game.”

Murray also took exception to the behaviour of the PGA of America’s maligned president Don Rea, who initially failed to condemn the abuse, and then congratulated on Europe on “retaining the Ryder Cup” – rather than winning the duel outright.

“[I thought] where have you been for the last few hours?” Murray added. “They didn’t retain. They had a putt to retain which they knocked in, then they had a putt to win which they knocked in. 

“I just thought what a terrible organisation. I shouldn’t say that because my father was captain of the PGA in Scotland in the mid-seventies so it was very much part of growing up and my father’s involvement in that and every other profession involved in the PGA but I don’t think they did themselves any favours at all.”

Thankfully, Murray has not completely stepped away just yet, and made his return to the commentary booth to watch Cameron Young win The Players last weekend.

But the 71-year-old’s appearances are becoming increasingly sporadic and the Ryder Cup has certainly expedited his move into semi-retirement.

“My contract finished three months after the Ryder Cup,” Murray revealed. “I met with our golf chief, Jason Wesley, who’s been running Sky Sports golf for over 20 years.”I [said] I think my time is probably up in the sense that there’s no place for a lead commentator. 

“There’s no place for my job because the world feeds have their own lead commentators, quite rightly so. I just feel that after the Ryder Cup I lost a little bit of respect for the game. I was so disgusted at the stuff I heard. I’ll never repeat it because it’s that bad. I just thought, ‘you’re 71 years of age, you’ve had a great kick of the ball’, as they say in Scotland. Now is maybe the time.

“We had a couple of lunches and Jason was keen for me to do the majors and The Players. Because I’d sort of mentally switched off, I said: ‘Yeah, but if I do the majors now I have to work every week because I have to know what’s going on. I have to look at other tournaments to see who’s playing well, who’s not playing well.’ Anyway, he persuaded me to do The Players.”

Murray could hang up the mic after July’s Seniors Open at Gleneagles, a poignant place in his life in the sport. “I will be doing The Masters,” he confirmed. “I will do The Open and I may finish at the Seniors [Open] because my mother met my father at Gleneagles. My father was an assistant pro and my mother worked in the hotel. So I may finish there…

“We’ll see, as long as I’m still okay upstairs and still happy to do the preparation, the homework, the research. If I’m still able and happy to do that I may continue, but that’s the plan at the moment.”