FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — As with all things at the Ryder Cup, it started before dawn.
Thousands of people had squeezed into the 1st tee grandstand at Bethpage Black and were made subject to some forced camaraderie by the emcee, who hoped to guide a De-Cham-Beau chant to the step-step-clap beat of “We Will Rock You.”
It was much too complicated for 6:30 in the morning, and the crowd quickly booed the emcee into silence. And then, as they would for much of the next 12 hours, they worked their three favorite words into a student section chant.
“F–k you Rory!”
clap, clap, clap-clap-clap
“F–k you Rory!”
clap, clap, clap-clap-clap
Never in the history of golf has a single player been cussed at like McIlroy was during Saturday’s Ryder Cup sessions. It was as though, in the face of an ever-increasing American deficit, that the Long Island crowd decided to take things into its own hands. Every time McIlroy and Shane Lowry stepped onto a tee in the afternoon — during the most intense match of the week — they were ruthlessly booed. Every time McIlroy teed his ball up, f–k yous arrived from every direction.
And did McIlroy stoke the fire? Undoubtedly. He predicted just one month ago that tensions were sure to boil over, and would possibly (if not likely) involve him. Then he came out and won his first two matches and went so far as to seemingly flip a middle finger to certain fans Friday afternoon. (Lowry did as well.) When they screamed “F–k you, Rory” before his morning foursomes match, he brought both hands to his mouth and blew them a cheeky kiss.
That only guaranteed that Saturday afternoon would get worse, and it absolutely did. The American crowd had seen almost nothing to cheer for so it decided to almost exclusively cheer against, a trend that always tends to rear its ugly head at this event.
A few holes in to his fourball match against Justin Thomas and Cameron Young, McIlroy pleaded with the referee to see what he could do about disruptions coming from outside the ropes. The problem wasn’t playful chirping and it wasn’t obnoxious cussing. It was the timing of these barbs, which kept arriving in the moments right before — or, worse, just after — McIlroy had started his backswing.
It was in the middle of the front nine — after Lowry had gone eagle-birdie-birdie to stretch a 2-up lead — that event organizers doubled the amount of New York State Troopers following this match, ordering them to stand guard on each tee box and around every green. But that was part of the issue. With roughly 50,000 fans in attendance, many of which paid a small fortune for their Ryder Cup day, and just 16 golfers on the course at a time, there simply isn’t much space to move around. Following a match from hole to hole was impossible. It turned the course into something of a haunted mansion, where each hole had new ghouls and goblins just waiting for hours to get their scare in.
One such fan, standing just off the 10th tee, said something as McIlroy addressed his ball about 20 feet away. The message wasn’t clear, but it was clearly too much. Standing in his way was an attentive Lowry who, similar to McIlroy’s caddie Harry Diamond, had started doing his own crowd control. Despite a one-strike penalty that the event signs promised, security was doing so little — and fans were shouting so much — that Lowry and Diamond were regularly scanning for any fans who crossed the line. When the 10th tee perpetrator barked, Lowry charged a few steps in his direction, only to be held back by his caddie. They called in security, pointed out the perpetrator — “I didn’t say anything,” the teen with a white hat and red face said — and Lowry even doubled back to make sure they got the right person.
You can call Lowry an attack dog, body guard, big brother, whatever. He said he was just being himself. But he played this protective role for McIlroy at the last Cup, too, when Joe LaCava and McIlroy had their 18th-hole dustup, and when McIlroy brought his fury at Jim Mackay in the parking lot. All Ryder Cups run tense — this one was no different. Only it was promised in the lead-up that it could get this bad, so Saturday felt almost like a forced prophecy, given it was just Wednesday when Collin Morikawa said he hoped for “absolute chaos.”
Maybe he’s in the camp of, that’s just the Ryder Cup. He wouldn’t be alone. But for many of those who followed the extent of this match, it left a sour taste. Like Thomas Levet, one of the radio broadcasters walking inside the ropes, who even played in a Ryder Cup himself. (The 2004 edition, for Europe, coincidentally the last team to absolutely wallop the Americans on their home turf.) His mind went straight to the worst parts of Hazeltine in 2016. “He’s seen this before,” Levet said, reminding that McIlroy had recently broken up with Caroline Wozniacki then — just as his personal relationships were the center of much of the abuse Saturday.
Andrew Dawber has been McIlroy’s on-course bodyguard for most of a decade, and even if he’s seen a lot in his day, nothing compared to the constant nature of attacks at Bethpage. All. Day. Long. But a few seconds later, Dawber turned his shoulders toward the truth: the leaderboard, about 200 yards off in the distance.
“But look at the score,” he said.
The abuse mostly turned McIlroy inward, which, for a player who admittedly enjoys engaging with his surroundings, looked different. He’s spent most of the week with his eyes fixed on the horizon in front of him, if not the ground just a few steps ahead. He refused to engage on the tee boxes, even when European fans tried to crack through the noise. He’d roll his eyes when the noise broke through, take a step back, and then step in. It was only when putts fell that he let out some of those animated, primal screams we’ve seen throughout his Ryder Cup career.
With a 1-up lead on the 17th, and all four players safely on the green — that’s when the irony hit hardest. For the fourth straight session, the leaderboard was covered mostly in blue. After four hours of hearing some of the worst things they’ve ever heard on a golf course, Lowry poured in a 5-footer, ensuring at least a half-point from the match and offering McIlroy the entirety of the open green to finally say something in return.
“F–k you!” he shouted on repeat, into different sections of the American mob.
“F–k you, f–k you, f–k you.”
After they clinched the match 15 minutes later, McIlroy offered a Golf Channel reporter 12 words:
“It was a really challenging day. I’m going to sleep well tonight.”
