Television feeds off drama. Reality show producers know they need to amplify it, even create it if required. That might have been the biggest reason Zach Johnson received so much flak for not picking pro golfer Keegan Bradley, to be on the 2023 U.S. Ryder Cup team. The entire incident was suitably dramatised for Netflix’s hit series Full Swing. The world watched as Bradley got the call, his shoulders slumped when he learnt he’d not been picked by the captain (Johnson). He took the high road, said he understood the decision and wished the team success. Johnson’s second call was to inform (then) out-of-form Justin Thomas that he’d made it.
Thomas and Johnson are good friends. While the show didn’t cast aspersions on either, it left viewers with a palpable sense of injustice. As if the hard-working hero lost out to the cool kid because he wasn’t part of a clique. Later, in Rome, when the U.S. team was handed a memorable drubbing by the Europeans, then all of Johnson’s decisions came under the scanner. Not picking Bradley came under even more criticism.
Given all that negative press, Johnson must have been pleased to get a chance to atone for his perceived lack of judgement. In 2024, one of his duties as outgoing captain was to call the man identified by the selection committee as his successor—Keegan Bradley. With no malice to Bradley or his credentials, the 39-year-old’s selection as the youngest man to ever captain a US Ryder Cup team remains a bit of a mystery. He was certainly playing well enough to be in the running as a player, but to captain a team full of superstars requires more than good play: it requires experience. Did the events in 2023 have any bearing on Bradley’s selection? Notwithstanding all this, if public endorsement is any indication, then he was certainly the popular choice. That sentiment only strengthened when Bradley did not pick himself to play and chose to focus on his captaincy.
The heroic redemption script ends there. The plot did not thicken at the 2025 Ryder Cup. The home side’s much vaunted advantage of playing at the monstrous Bethpage Black course turned out to be a non-starter. The Europeans, humble and low-key as usual, blew the Americans out of the water. The story was all too familiar. A tight-knit bunch, the Europeans dominated the team events, while the Americans, with their individual brilliance, took the honours on the final day’s singles matches. But it was never going to be enough to undo the damage.
Unfortunately, neither the spectacular play by the continentals, nor the capitulation by their adversaries made the headlines. Those were stolen by the New York fans.
Now some of this was expected. New York fans have a reputation for volatility and being boisterous. But the sheer volume of personal abuse directed at players like Rory McIlroy—cheering missed putts, and attempts to disturb European players’ swings—were unprecedented for a golf event.
Heckled incessantly during an event that they play not for money, but for honour and pride, the Europeans began battling not the American players but the hostile crowd.
There are far too many deplorable images that will define this Ryder Cup but the one that shouldn’t be forgotten is someone chucking an empty beer bottle that at McIlroy’s wife after the Europeans had won the cup. Not ‘retained,’ it as President of the PGA of America, Don Rea Jr. announced at the awards ceremony. There was no saving grace to what was by far the most egregious and publicised display of unacceptable behaviour on a golf course that’s ever been televised.
And while the American players—most notably Bradley—shied away from commenting negatively about the crowd, Tom Watson, couldn’t stop himself. The American legend posted a sincere apology on X. “As a former player, Captain and as an American, I am ashamed of what happened,” wrote Watson.
A few days earlier there were social media videos circulating with some gamesmanship that American sports are well known for. In that tradition, Bradley commented on camera that, “we’re going to kick their…” A comment that seems entirely incompatible with golf, and one that the Europeans would have certainly taken note of. At the post-event presser, Bradley got upset with a European journalist who suggested that his pre-match comments might have fired up the crowd to be as hostile as it was. No one will remember that Bradley failed as a Ryder Cup captain. But by trying to justify what happened, he failed the game. That’s something people won’t forget.
McIlroy put it best at the post championship presser where he spoke about how this kind of behaviour should never be acceptable in golf. “Golf should be held to a higher standard. Golf has the ability to unite people. It teaches you etiquette, it teaches you how to play (by) the rules, it teaches you how to respect people. We’ll be telling our fans in Ireland in 2027 that what happened here was not acceptable,” he said.
Matters of honour and pride are difficult and abstruse, but the honour that flows from pride is not false. You can’t learn that in books. You learn that when you watch someone like Justin Rose start walking toward the hole when his putt isn’t even halfway there, because it’s as far as he’ll go to put a puerile crowd in its place. That was Rose being rude. The quiet subtlety of his retort was lost on the raucous crowd.
Meraj Shah is a Delhi-based writer, golfer and television producer.
