{"id":158147,"date":"2025-09-24T20:15:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-24T20:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158147\/"},"modified":"2025-09-24T20:15:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-24T20:15:07","slug":"americans-ryder-cup-pay-still-generating-talk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/158147\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans’ Ryder Cup pay still generating talk"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"U.S. captain Keegan Bradley spoke Monday about American players\u2019 Ryder Cup compensation. Harry How, Getty Images<\/p>\n

FARMINGDALE, NEW YORK | Harold Wilson, a British prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s, is credited with the saying: \u201cA week is a long time in politics,\u201d implying that governments, prime ministers even, can fall within seven days.<\/p>\n

Wilson died years ago but versions of his saying regularly reappear in conversation. Here is another: \u201cA week, specifically the Ryder Cup week, is a long time in golf.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arrive on Monday morning fresh-faced and keen to cover an event that does not start until Friday and you face a long haul of hours and days that must be filled. Sometimes, though, a story comes to you. Sometimes an incident, first reported in the buildup to Ryder Cup week, gets blown up into more than it deserves.<\/p>\n

Question: Do we need to hear more about money at the Ryder Cup and the payments made to the U.S. players? This issue was the seventh question put to American captain Keegan Bradley at his first press conference of the 45th Ryder Cup. It is hardly a new subject. Payments began for U.S. men in 1999 when players received $200,000 to be given to two charities, one of their choosing and one of the PGA of America\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It bubbled up again early in Keegan Bradley\u2019s current captaincy because he was asked by the PGA of America to \u201c\u2026 bring the Ryder Cup into the present day. The charity dollars hadn\u2019t changed much since 1999 and [the PGA of America] asked me to sort of shepherd their way into making it into 2025,\u201d Bradley explained on Monday.<\/p>\n

The answer was to increase the payment to $500,000 to each player, with $300,000 designated for charity and $200,000 as a stipend. Some, such as Scottie Scheffler, said his entire payment would go to charities with which he was associated without naming those charities. \u201cThe guys on our team are incredible people who do incredible things with charity dollars and their foundations,\u201d Bradley said. \u201cA lot of them aren\u2019t comfortable sharing that sort of information, and I feel the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Europeans resolutely decline payment for participating in a Ryder Cup, pointing out how well paid they are already and how much it means to them. One dozen former U.S. Ryder Cup captains, including Tom Watson, have opposed the PGA of America\u2019s pay-for-play plan.<\/p>\n

In taking payments for the biennial event in which they represent their country and repeatedly talk about the honour of doing so, the Americans are seen by some as ceding the moral high ground to the Europeans.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not concerned about what Europe does or what they think. I\u2019m concerned about what my team is doing.\u201d \u2013 Keegan Bradley<\/p>\n

Bradley was asked whether this was evidence that the Ryder Cup meant more to the Europeans than to his men. His answer was swift. \u201cI\u2019m not concerned about what Europe does or what they think. I\u2019m concerned about what my team is doing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe wanted to bring the Ryder Cup into today\u2019s age and we felt like this was the best way to do it. We copied a lot of what the Presidents Cup does. I think a lot of good is going to come of this. I think the players are going to do a lot of good with this money and I think it\u2019s great.\u201d<\/p>\n

The more this subject is talked about, the more it reflects well on Europe\u2019s players. There is something old-fashioned, gentlemanly and honourable in this day and age about doing something as important as this without direct reward. Is it time though to say enough has been said on this subject for now?<\/p>\n

Sometimes the preparations for a Ryder Cup are interrupted by an outside influence as happened in 2016 when Darren Clarke\u2019s Europe players at Hazeltine in Minnesota, the venue where Tony Jacklin had won the 1970 U.S. Open, were broadsided by publication of a satirical article about Americans written by the brother of Danny Willett, a member of Clarke\u2019s team. The reaction to this article caused such a stir in the U.S. that Clarke had to rip up his first morning\u2019s foursomes pairings, shielding Willett, the reigning Masters champion, from the public eye. The US swept the morning foursomes, 4-0, only one match going to the 18th, on their way to a 17-11 victory two days later.<\/p>\n

\"\"Europe\u2019s Colin Montgomerie made comments during the 1997 Ryder Cup for which he later apologized. Chris Turvey, EMPICS via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Sometimes the players themselves raise the pre-match temperature as on the eve of the 1997 match in Spain when Colin Montgomerie suggested Phil Mickelson was \u201cunreliable\u201d and said, as Brad Faxon was getting divorced, \u201c\u2026 I don\u2019t think he\u2019ll be with it.\u201d Two Americans, neither due to play at Valderrama, came to Mickelson\u2019s and Faxon\u2019s defence. Fred Funk called Montgomerie the \u201cjerk of the world\u201d and Bob Estes suggested the big Scot was \u201ca crybaby.\u201d Montgomerie wrote to the U.S. team members apologising.<\/p>\n

Let us not dwell on Tom Watson\u2019s instruction to his 1993 team not to sign autographs at an official dinner in Birmingham, England, and the criticism he and his men got for that. For that matter, we shall pass over Golf Channel\u2019s Brandel Chamblee calling Bryson DeChambeau \u201ca captain\u2019s nightmare\u201d early in this Ryder Cup week on the grounds that Chamblee, while American, is a TV analyst and owes allegiance to neither side.<\/p>\n

But Rory McIlroy\u2019s response to Bryson DeChambeau\u2019s intention to chirp in McIlroy\u2019s ear at Bethpage Black this week has certainly generated considerable column inches and been noted in the U.S. team room. \u201cI think the only way he gets attention is by mentioning other people,\u201d McIlroy said of DeChambeau in an interview in The Guardian newspaper. \u201cThat is basically what I think of that. To get attention he will mention me or Scottie [Scheffler] or others.\u201d<\/p>\n

This may be McIlroy\u2019s way of replying to DeChambeau\u2019s criticism of him after they had played the final round at this year\u2019s Masters together and DeChambeau complained that McIlroy, who won the tournament and thereby achieved golf\u2019s career Grand Slam, did not say one word to him all afternoon.<\/p>\n

It could be a dangerous tactic by McIlroy \u2013 and if it is it wouldn\u2019t be the first to have been thought up and uttered in the early days of a Ryder Cup week. DeChambeau loves being the centre of attraction. He sees his role in golf as that of a showman and a role model for youngsters. He may be spurred to new heights in his play at Bethpage Black this week.<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2025 Global Golf Post LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"U.S. captain Keegan Bradley spoke Monday about American players\u2019 Ryder Cup compensation. Harry How, Getty Images FARMINGDALE, NEW…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,6547,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-158147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-golf","9":"tag-ryder-cup","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}