{"id":377932,"date":"2025-12-29T10:03:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:03:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/377932\/"},"modified":"2025-12-29T10:03:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-29T10:03:13","slug":"i-was-there-europes-dramatic-ryder-cup-win-signed-off-a-strange-week-ryder-cup-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/377932\/","title":{"rendered":"I was there: Europe\u2019s dramatic Ryder Cup win signed off a strange week | Ryder Cup 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was out by the practice green late afternoon on the Monday of the Ryder Cup<\/a>, and so was Bryson DeChambeau. He was on his own, signing autographs for the handful of people on the other side of the railings, and there was this one woman leaning over towards him, a bottle blonde, late middle-aged, in a tight white dress. She was only a couple of feet away from him but she was screaming in his ear like she was trying to reach someone across the far side of the golf course. \u201cWe love you Bryson! Bryson! We love you! We love you for everything you\u2019ve done for the Donald! We love you for everything you\u2019ve done for the Donald!\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a long, strange week, and when I think back on it now the golf is entirely overwhelmed by technicolour memories of the weird scenes around the grounds of Bethpage Black and in the surrounding town of Farmingdale. I wish I could say that the things I remember best are that approach shot Scottie Scheffler hit from 180 yards at the 10th, or the 40ft putt Rory McIlroy made on the 6th, or Jon Rahm\u2019s chip-in from the rough at the 8th. But they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump with Bryson DeChambeau at Bethpage Black during the Ryder Cup. Photograph: Mandel Ngan\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the first man I met when I walked on to the course, who was wearing a T-shirt with pictures of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris and the slogan \u201cIt\u2019s Official \u2013 Trump Beats Women\u201d, and the one I spoke to later on, who was wearing a top with \u201cAlex Jones did nothing wrong\u201d on it. It\u2019s the wild grin on the face of New York state\u2019s governor, the Democrat Kathy Hochul, as she was being furiously heckled by thousands of people during the opening ceremony, and it\u2019s the cop in the parking lot who demanded: \u201cLet me see some ID,\u201d when I said good morning because he wasn\u2019t satisfied with the press accreditation I had around my neck.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the yard sign saying \u201cWe are all Charlie Kirk now\u201d. And it\u2019s the argument I watched between a couple of white middle-aged golf fans and a young black girl on the 7.20pm train after she refused to move the big cardboard box which was taking up the last two free seats in the carriage, which ended with him shouting: \u201cThis is the Long Island Railroad bitch, and I\u2019m sitting on your shit!\u201d as he dumped himself down on top of her belongings. It\u2019s the woman who reprimanded everyone else for \u201cletting him talk to a woman that way\u201d and it\u2019s the old man who turned around and told her she was \u201ceverything that\u2019s wrong with this country\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the scene at dawn on the opening morning, when the shuttle buses that were meant to ferry everyone from the train station got gridlocked and everyone poured back off them into the streets to walk to the course. It\u2019s the 30-something dumb 20-somethings who decided to charge the level crossing while the next train was coming around the bend because they were in such a rush, and it\u2019s the way the rail driver stuck his head out the window and swore at them while his brakes were squealing. It\u2019s the endless queues, the closed roads and the underpaid concession staff complaining to the unsympathetic police that they needed to get in for their shift.<\/p>\n

A fan passes through airport-style security screening before the Friday morning foursomes. Photograph: Carl Recine\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Fortunate Son playing over the public address. It\u2019s snipers on the clubhouse roof. It\u2019s \u201cairport-style security\u201d around the back of the grandstand and a secret service member telling the man in front of me: \u201cI\u2019m going to let you bring that apple in with you but I need you to understand that if you throw it at the president you are going to jail.\u201d It\u2019s Air Force One flying low over the first tee, it\u2019s the presidential limo pulling up, and a fleeting glimpse of a familiar yellow comb-over fluttering in the wind. It\u2019s Keegan Bradley doing the Trump shuffle.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Scheffler telling a room full of European journalists that the one thing he knows about the president from his own personal experience is that \u201che treats everybody the same and he treats people with utmost respect\u201d on the very same day that Trump stood up at the UN General Assembly and said: \u201cYour countries are going to hell.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s people double-fisting cheeseburgers at 8am in the morning because they had all-inclusive tickets. It\u2019s the comedian Heather McMahan, the MC at the 1st tee, screeching: \u201cFuck you Rory!\u201d into a microphone at dawn<\/a>. It\u2019s Team USA turning in one of the single worst team performances I\u2019ve ever seen in any sport for two days and it\u2019s the nauseous feeling of watching them sweep the leaderboard during the Sunday singles and thinking: \u201cSurely not?\u201d It\u2019s McIlroy turning around and telling the crowd to \u201cshut the fuck up\u201d then dropping an iron shot to two feet.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s thinking that if you boil a frog you have to turn the heat up slowly so it won\u2019t notice it\u2019s being cooked, and it\u2019s being on the flight back home and looking down out the window and wondering how many of the people beneath have noticed just how hot the water is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I was out by the practice green late afternoon on the Monday of the Ryder Cup, and so…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-377932","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-golf","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377932","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=377932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}