“I thought the Ryder Cup was disgusting,” Harmon said. “It was embarrassing being an American. I love the Ryder Cup, it’s my favourite one to broadcast and being from New York, I had planned to work with the Sky [Sports] team. But I decided to pull out for that main reason. I felt we would spend more time talking about what’s going on in the gallery with the fans being unruly than we would the golf and I just didn’t feel I wanted to be part of it.
“This is the beauty of Augusta. These are the best behaved patrons in all of golf. I love the Open Championship because all the gallery people understand golf and they understand how to cheer. But this place, it’s like a holy grail of golf in the US, and it’s difficult to get a ticket to come. It’s probably the hardest event to get a ticket to.
“The patrons there are very well behaved, because they’re the same people that come back year after year. I hated the way things were going at the Ryder Cup. I thought it was a terrible embarrassment for the United States, and let’s hope it never happens again.”