{"id":605109,"date":"2026-05-26T17:05:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T17:05:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/605109\/"},"modified":"2026-05-26T17:05:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T17:05:15","slug":"pga-of-america-president-don-rea-jr-is-out-after-ryder-cup-controversies-golf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/605109\/","title":{"rendered":"PGA of America president Don Rea Jr is out after Ryder Cup controversies | Golf"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don Rea Jr, who was cricitized for his response to verbal abuse<\/a> directed at European players during last year\u2019s Ryder Cup, is out as president of the PGA of America, effective immediately.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s news came on the heels of the PGA of America\u2019s board of directors suspending Rea for the remainder of his two-year term, which ends in November. PGA of America vice-president Nathan Charnes was named acting president.<\/p>\n

Rea came under fire for failing to apologize amid a raucous New York crowd hurling personal insults at Rory McIlroy and his family during the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black last September. An MC at the event resigned after she led chants of \u201cFuck you, Rory\u201d aimed at McIlroy; homophobic slurs were shouted at golfers; players\u2019 wives were insulted. McIlroy said his wife, Erica, was hit by a beer<\/a> that was thrown during play. At one point, he pushed back, telling a spectator to \u201cshut the fuck up\u201d during a foursomes match.<\/p>\n

In an interview on the Sunday morning of the Cup, Rea dismissed the abuse as no worse than what\u2019s said at \u201ca youth soccer game\u201d and said the behavior was distracting American players because they had to expend energy helping to control the crowd.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got 50,000 people here that are really excited, and heck, you could go to a youth soccer game and get some people who say the wrong things,\u201d he told the BBC.<\/p>\n

A week later, Rea apologized to PGA of America members in an email, saying some fan behavior had \u201cclearly crossed the line\u201d and that it was \u201cdisrespectful, inappropriate, and not representative\u201d of the organization.<\/p>\n

Rea was also caught on video performing a karaoke version of Eminem\u2019s Lose Yourself when the US trailed Europe by seven points. He ruffled feathers at the end of the matches, when he said Europe \u201cretained\u201d the Cup rather than won it outright during the trophy presentation.<\/p>\n

Rea had been the president of the PGA of America since November 2024. In 2014, the organization removed Ted Bishop from his post<\/a> as president after he called English golfer Ian Poulter a \u201clil girl\u201d in a tweet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don Rea Jr, who was cricitized for his response to verbal abuse directed at European players during last…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605110,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-605109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605109","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=605109"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605109\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}