Saturday evening at the 2025 Ryder Cup was marred by tensions inside and outside the ropes.
Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry shipped an unholy amount of abuse from the US supporters in their evening fourball.
While Lowry and McIlroy were lightning rods for fan abuse, the foursome between Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose for Europe and Scottie Scheffler and Bryson DeChambeau nearly bubbled over on the 15th green.
As Justin Rose was lining up his birdie putt, DeChambeau’s caddie Greg Bodine stepped into the eyeline of the Englishman.
Rose reacted immediately with words for Bodine, and the caddie stepped back. Moments later, he sank his birdie putt. Rose and Bodine shared a word after the putt and it seemed like the matter was resolved.
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Bryson DeChambeau was up next and nailed his birdie putt to split the hole. The boisterous American immediately had words with Fleetwood and Rose and all hell – in golf terms, anyway – almost broke loose.
As the action moved to the 16th tee, Scheffler’s caddie found himself in a heated row with European vice captain Francesco Molinari.
It took Fleetwood’s caddie Ian Finnis to calm things down.
You can watch the whole thing here.
There were shades of the row between Patrick Cantlay and his caddie Joe LaCava and McIlroy and Lowry in Rome two years back. It all originated with Bryson’s caddie but it took Bryson to needlessly turn the ratchet up the tensions.
Brandel Chamblee’s verdict on the American before the tournament has proven prophetic.
In the end, the English pairing won a very sweet victory. Here’s how Rose explained the situation.
I’m really disappointed that this has to be the talking point at the end of a really cool match. The level of golf was incredible. I was ready to hit my putt. I didn’t feel like that space was being honored. I may be made my feelings known. Asked him to move. Maybe not as politely as I could have done but in the scenario, it’s coming down the stretch. We both have a lot on our minds and it’s intense out there. I said to them, if I should have done it a different way, I apologize. But other than that, I had to step up and hit a huge putt with a lot going on.
From my point of view, I was just trying to protect my own sort of environment to execute. It’s all part of it. It’s up to them if they want to take it the wrong way but from my point of view, there’s no malintent. Hope to win the match because Tommy and I were unbelievable today and huge match against Bryson and Scottie. We were kind of aware of what that meant not to us but to the whole place.
