Off Bethpage Black there is a white tent longer than a football field and almost as wide where the merchandise is: “The largest variety of products ever for fans at a Ryder Cup.”
It was Wednesday and the Rolex clock across from the BMW i7 sedans showed not quite noon. Inside the tent were 1,500 logoed items to choose from, according to the PGA, which also says the golf industry is valued at around $100 billion.
Frank Coloccia, an IT consultant from Yonkers who was visiting with his daughter Alexa, a nurse practitioner, marveled after they went through: “It’s overwhelming — there’s so much merchandise, booth after booth.”
Briefly and by no means comprehensively: $8 Bethpage Black sunglasses and $8 American flag neoprene can koozies, a $38 1,000-piece Bethpage Black jigsaw puzzle, a patriotically themed Swag golf bag “Beautifully crafted from our tour-grade body material and genuine leather accents,” according to the Swag website which says it costs $400.
The Coloccias are golfers. He spent $432 for shirts, a bag and divot tools and she a modest $200 on a T-shirt, fanny pack and form-fitting navy blue Lululemon jacket she said she would wear over her scrubs. “It started as, let’s go in for a few minutes — there is no few minutes,” he said.
The pros were practicing, still days away from competition, while thousands of fans watched from the course and thousands more filed through the temporary mall in a tent called Ryder Cup Shops, anchored by Ralph Lauren, one of the official Ryder Cup outfitters for the United States team. Its racks contained a $425 navy blue sweater with an American flag on the chest, a $415 red, white and blue rainsuit jacket and $25 Team USA Low Cut Socks that will put an image of the Ryder Cup trophy and the words USA 2025 on the wearer’s ankle.
Past Ralph Lauren was 40-Love Tennis Jewelry. “This is the first time we’re doing a golf tournament,” said Silvia Rodriguez, at the Anchorage, AK-based company’s booth. The company mainly sells at major professional tennis tournaments including the U.S. Open but found that a “household that has a tennis player has a golf player” as well. “It’s the same market, pretty much,” Rodriguez said. 40-Love’s wares included gold and silver cuff bracelets — one end shaped like a club, the other like a ball — for $175, and golf-bag bangles on thin sterling silver chains for $145-$190. The golf bag can be taken off the chain and worn as a pin, she said.
“There’s a long curve you need to learn the audience” at a golf tournament, Rodriguez said. Tennis is “very social and cohesive,” and a vendor might sell half a dozen matching pieces to a and adult league team; “golf is a more individual sport,” and the fan base appeared to be more “male-oriented,” she said. The company may add bracelets with leather features to cater to those men, she said.
Ryder Cup vendors are also selling at an Express Shop elsewhere on Bethpage grounds and “pop-up” shops in the tournament’s ride-share lot, at Jones Beach, Grand Central Station and Rockefeller Center, the last promising “a series of innovative attractions, including official watch parties, interactive golf challenges and more, that celebrate golf’s greatest team event like never before.”
But the muchness of the Shops is unrivalled. There are 70 cash registers, 16 giant screen televisions to watch golf while you shop, merchandise storage for $20 (free for Citi cardholders). There is even a place to buy precious metals: Echo Collectible’s gold and silver coins, some more precious than others because they come with certification labels signed by U.S. team captain Keegan Bradley. Only 100 one-ounce gold coins with accompanying Bradley signatures were made and they cost $7,500 each.
“If you’re a collector, you know the value,” said Sarah Schorr, overseeing sales at the booth. “There’s nothing else with this kind of value to it . . . It’s museum-grade quality.”
Outside the tent, Astrid Yiorkatzi, of Huntington, said she’d dropped $90 on two t-shirts, one for her and one for her daughter. It was her first Cup, she was over the moon because she’d seen Rory McIlroy, and she considered it money well spent. “It’s a memory,” she said. “It’s like going to Disney World.”
Two young men in camouflage fatigues and combat boots stood out from the sea of shoppers in golf casual. They were Logan McNally, who commands the Army’s Suffolk County recruiting, and his executive officer, Zach Bult, who had come to attend a flag ceremony opening the competition. Bult bought a $70 t-shirt bearing the Ryder Cup emblem and an image of the Statue of Liberty, “something to remember my time here.”
McNally explained: “We don’t get to stay in one place long — two, three years. Then it’s a new deployment, a rotation, or a new unit.”
Not for the first time that day, a well-wisher stopped them. “Thank you for your service . . . You guys are looking sharp,” he said, and Bult hadn’t even put on his new threads.
Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.
