Steve Moseley
By Steve Moseley
Did you lock onto the recent Ryder Cup golf matches hours at a time like me? If so, I am very interested to hear your take on how the U.S. behaved while hosting the European team.
Not the U.S. players, oh no, they acted like adults. Fought back valiantly, accepted their defeat (with one exception) and offered outstretched hands in congratulations to their victors on the 18th green.
What I and other people were mortified by was all the foul, despicable so-called ‘fans’ in Red, White and Blue.
Turns out European soccer isn’t the only sport dragged through the muck by hooligans.
Insults directed toward the European players, coaches and even wives, piercing in their personal cruelty, were an abomination. I saw and heard it over and over and so did everyone who tuned in.
Day 1 was bad. Day 2 was worse. By the start of Day 3, when the mano-a-mano singles matches took turns on the first tee, someone had finally called the cops. Law enforcement en masse from multiple agencies swarmed the galleries with badges and tasers and pepper spray and firearms and stern gazes from beneath the brims of Smokey Bear hats.
Don’t read me wrong; I was as big a dumb jerk in my day as anybody, to which the fishhook pin embedded in my right fifth metacarpal from a fight in 1966 still bears witness. (I did win the skirmish, by the way.)
But even a former immature boob like me is appalled by how these slack-jawed ruminants reduced this proud gentleman’s game to a profane scrum of mouth breathers. F-bombs swarmed like a cloud of toxic Game of Thrones tracker jackers.
Football, on the other hand, is a game of raw, unapologetic violence. This is obvious at a glance. Perhaps not so mysterious, then, how the odd hormone-overdosed, self-absorbed male of the species, probably with a snoot full, would get all revved up and do dumb stuff out of misguided enthusiasm for his team.
Golf is quite another world, again as is obvious at the most casual glance. There is grass underfoot and a ball involved, but that is where all comparisons end.
Football mandates a platoon of referees to keep things fair and attempt to minimize the maiming.
Golf, by contrast, has no officials. The integrity of the players themselves, their respect for the game and each other is how golf rules are enforced. And it’s no big deal. Golf has been that way since its birth in Scotland.
There is a formal aura of manners and civility that is palpable when golf be the game … or there damn well should be.
Sadly, there was little of that at the 2025 Ryder Cup.
Please don’t let me hear you whine how they barked at us in Ryder Cups past on their soil or how they surely will when it’s Europe’s turn to host in two years. Our vacuous goons made sure of that. It’s no surprise the host state’s tourism motto is not and has never been “New York Nice.”
No, this was us hosting all of Europe with the rest of the world looking over our shoulders. Offenders were a minority of course, yet far too many reveled in glee, playing the role of low rent bush leaguers.
Please, let’s reel in our worst excesses and do better next time.
