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The past 12 months had a little of everything — a career Grand Slam, Ryder Cup chaos and so much more. With 2026 on the horizon, our writers look back at the most memorable moments from 2025 and explain why they mattered.

No. 15 — The zero-torque putter movement | No. 14 — ‘Happy Gilmore 2’ takes golf world by storm | No. 13 — Joaquin Niemann’s big 2025 (and crucial 2026) | No. 12 — J.J. Spaun slays Oakmont | No. 11 — The Internet Invitational | No. 10 — Jeeno Thitikul’s record year | No. 9 — Tiger Woods’ next role | No. 8 — Tommy Fleetwood breaks through | No. 7 — The birth of TGL | No. 6 — Keegan Bradley’s big decision | No. 5 — Europe wins another Ryder Cup

Stories of 2025, No. 3: The Bethpage Buffoonery

When Ryder Cup Saturday at Bethpage devolved from a competition into an internet comments section, I thought I might be falling ill.

As the temperature rose outside the ropes on Saturday afternoon, I felt my stomach churn, my head pound, my knees ache. For a second, I thought I was coming down with the flu — the product of too many early mornings on crowded shuttles. But then I charged up the hill next to the 18th green and realized I was feeling better, which was when it occurred to me I might in fact be having a somatic response to the ugliness happening around me. My brain hadn’t realized yet, but my body was feeling rage.

The source of my fury needed no explanation to those watching the Ryder Cup. The combination of uncompetitive golf and abundant access to alcohol had supercharged the frustration flowing through an already restless crowd and channeled it toward the European side’s most dominant player: Rory McIlroy. One off-hand comment about Rory’s professional and personal failings became five, one fan became 15, and one McIlroy birdie became 50 (or so it felt). For two hours, the player responded to the vitriol with a metaphorical middle-finger back to the crowd (and then, at one point, a literal one). And, for two hours, the crowd responded by going even lower.

I’d spent six years counting down the days to the Ryder Cup at Bethpage. The biggest show in golf was coming to my home course, not far from my hometown, at a venue I thought represented everything good and decent about the sport. It was supposed to be one of the highlights of my career, and it’d taken all of six hours on Saturday afternoon for a group of chuds who couldn’t tell the Red Course from a stop sign to tarnish the place’s reputation for good.

I remember returning home from the golf course on Saturday evening and feeling exhausted in a way I could not explain. As I recounted the wild afternoon to my family, I heard myself list every conceivable culprit for the crowd meltdown — the fans, the golfers, the PGA of America, the ticket prices, the course setup, the competition, the psychology of crowd behavior. But I was leaving one notable villain out: Bethpage.

By that point, the internet had no shortage of provocateurs willing to call for Bethpage’s removal from all future golf tournaments for the way the crowd had treated the European team. Their comments represented the kind of thinly veiled golf classism and anti-municipal elitism that I have long viewed with open contempt — a shrink-the-game worldview that the real Bethpage railed against with every fiber of its being. But deep down, I knew my silence in response to these comments was the true source of my rage, because for once I had no counterargument. The crowd failures of Saturday had proved the elitists at least temporarily right: This version of Bethpage had no place hosting a major golf tournament.

Even now, these sentiments make me feel gross, but they bear repeating: The individuals responsible for the ugliest golf tournament in recent memory belonged to me. Even if they did not embody the ethos of my home golf course, they were locals by proxy. There is no meta-analysis of Bethpage’s failings without a much simpler launching off point: Those bad actors were idiots, and there seemed to be many more of them at Bethpage than anywhere else in the golf world. As someone who loves Bethpage, I am ashamed.

But I’m also angry. Today the Bethpage Ryder Cup may be viewed as a regrettable blip in the rearview mirror — a gruesome piece of roadkill best forgotten about next to the endless strip of asphalt ahead — but the rage I felt on that Saturday evening still lives inside of me. I’m not willing to blame the ugliness we saw at Bethpage on the lazy stereotypes of New York sports fans or the “inherent issues” of hosting at a municipal venue, and it concerns me that I might be alone.

The truth is that the Bethpage Ryder Cup wasn’t a bug in the system. It was a feature of pro golf that has been allowed to fester for too long. The exact shape of the problem varies by location, but its general dimensions never change: A heavily oversaturated hospitality environment; an overpriced ticketing system; a “tournament experience” encouraging chaos and consumption; a security strategy overwhelmed by the logistical challenges of golf; a crowd addicted to social media and a small group of bad actors stoked by the uniquely antisocial instincts of achieving viral fame. I saw this environment at Bethpage, but also at events across the golf world over the last several years: the WM Phoenix Open, the Memorial Tournament, LIV Bedminster, the PGA at Valhalla — and in many other places where a few good samaritans or an unheralded tournament volunteer helped restore order before the crowd took hold.

To be clear, this environment is a great way to make a ton of money hosting a golf tournament — as I suspect the PGA of America’s next batch of financial filings will show us. But it is also a means to a large, loud, drunk, entitled and easily peeved mob shouting increasingly deranged insults at one of the best golfers in the sport’s history in the hopes of gaining a shread of internet microcelebrity — as I suspect anyone who watched the Bethpage Ryder Cup now intuitively understands.

I hope the great majority of golf fans would agree this outcome is unacceptable, even if they, like me, have occasionally delighted in the grainy cell phone video of a tete-a-tete between a drunk teenager and a curmudgeonly golfer. The fiercely meritocratic, dreamily escapist nature of truly great tournament golf has attracted people to pick up the sport for generations. It is also the exact component of tournament golf that disappears the second a tournament devolves into ugliness. To lose this spirit to the engines of profit would be to lose perhaps the sport’s most powerful microphone to the regular world.

Of course, we are not in danger of losing tournament golf altogether. Most golf tournaments (even the ones that have flirted with disaster) are still pleasant environments operated by people who love golf and feel a duty to uphold its traditions. Failures like the crowd at Bethpage are usually the result of the implosion of several safeguards: organizers who spent years sweating the minutiae of security enforcement and fan behavior; tickets, which are not so prohibitively expensive as to strain the value proposition of rational behavior; and other fans, who police the worst actors among us and are, by the basic principles of tournament golf, rooting for most players and against none of them.

These people have served as the last line of defense for tournament golf forever, and will be the unsung heroes of every truly great tournament until the end of time. But these people are not enough. Without a shared commitment to dignity from golf writ large, the organizers and good samaritans will be the only line of defense against most tournaments turning into the ugliness at Bethpage.

One specific opportunity for improvement exists on social media, which lapsed into a patronizing echo chamber of mostly faux outrage in the wake of the ugliness at Bethpage. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised by the outrage, or by the almost instant rush to virtue-signal or sensationalize, but I am disappointed by it. There is no reward for thoughtfulness on golf social media, and in the world of anger-juiced algorithms, there might even be a penalty.

I wonder how many golf fans — even the chronically online ones — know how social media is altering their perception of the things they care about. The great gift of instantaneous connection has come at the explicit expense of nuance, flattening our experiences from a diverse range of opinion into an uncurious binary. Successful social media channels (which is to say: the ones with big followings) are those willing to engage on simple terms: “The American Ryder Cup team made a few strategic errors and is getting outplayed” is bad; “Fire Keegan Bradley” is good; and “Keegan Bradley is an unbelievable moron” is best.

A strange side effect of this binary is the velocity with which we have agreed to adopt it. We are faster to anger, to outrage, to “dunking on” our enemies than ever before. We are worse at listening and disagreeing. Civility is disappearing, and righteousness is taking its place.

We should all do better — either as the people making content or the people consuming it — to be curious instead of reactionary, and to reject those outright whose sole role in golf’s discourse is inflammatory. Perhaps outrage is the direction of the world, but it does not have to be the direction of golf.

None of this is to say that outrage is inherently bad. If you saw the videos and posts that came out of Bethpage and were mad, that’s a good thing. Golf is a unique sport precisely because its participants treat one another with a sincere sense of respect and dignity. The Bethpage Ryder Cup was severely lacking on both accounts — and outrage can be a particularly helpful emotion in ensuring history does not repeat.

But the only path to ensuring Bethpage exists only in our rearview is action, and noticeable changes have been sorely missing from the golf world in the months since the Bethpage embarrassment. Is anyone thinking about what went wrong at Bethpage, and how to ensure it never happens again? Is anybody soul-searching about what was lost in pursuit of the most expensive tickets and most expansive hospitality build-out in golf history? What will change at the Ryder Cups in 2027, 2029, and all the years beyond to protect against this outcome? How will the players be protected? And how about the fans?

Golf possesses the power and the influence to find these answers and live by them. But I wonder if the hard work of protecting a sport isn’t as easy — or as profitable — as a few angry words into the social media abyss.

The truth is that golf as we idealize it is hard. Civility requires effort. It requires leaders. And it requires individuals who are committed to upholding civility even when it is personally inconvenient. Regrettably, civility also requires that we pursue it with intention — even for the people we feel deserve it least, and, in fact, because of them.

When I began working in the golf industry as a 22-year-old Long Islander, Bethpage was the only place where I felt truly at home — surrounded by people who did not mind how I wore my shirts, which logos were stitched onto my hats, or what my bank account looked like. I learned quickly that Bethpagers felt a white-hot devotion to golf at its core — the challenge, the time outdoors, the competition within. I have learned at Bethpage that golf’s commitment to high-minded ideals like civility is remarkable precisely because there is no income requirement to practice them.

I still believe these virtues about Bethpage, even after the ugliness we witnessed in September. I still believe them about golf, too. But these rising temperatures in our sport have long been a symptom of a much more insidious disease.

After Bethpage, it’s time for the fever to break.

You can reach the author at james.colgan@neatly-delicate-grub.edgecompute.app.

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Was one of the greatest golf courses in the United States taken over by … robots?

On Friday morning, the New York State Inspector General’s office released a months-long report on the state of the tee time system at Bethpage State Park, looking into allegations of software bots and tee time resellers that have plagued the municipal golf haven (and recent Ryder Cup host) for years. The investigation, which began after a separate investigation into the tee time system by the golf writer Kevin Van Valkenburg, aimed to understand why booking irregularities had become an accepted piece of the state park’s online reservation system among golfers at each of the park’s five golf courses. Specifically, the investigation tried to answer if tee time “bots” — or software programs targeted to scoop up times faster than any human user — were to blame for the irregularities, as Van Valkenburg’s No Laying Up podcast first alleged.

Nine months after Van Valkenburg’s first report, the IG’s office report found bots posed a “serious threat” to the integrity of the Bethpage Tee Time system, though the Inspector General was unable to find any concrete evidence of bot usage.

The IG’s office produced a host of unusual data in the report, including a tranche of tee time data for the period between April and August 2024. According to the report, more than half of all the tee times booked on Bethpage’s five golf courses (57,587 of 105,000, or 55 percent), and nearly sixty percent of those booked on the fabled Black Course (9,462 of 16,365, or 57 percent), resulted in cancellations during those five months. Even if that datapoint made it impossible to ascertain the cause, the unusually high number suggested irregularities with some portion of the tee time system.

The report did not find evidence of tee time “resellers,” or those booking times illegally and reselling at a higher price, but the unusually high number of cancellations indicated there were loopholes that could be exploited — and perhaps were being exploited — by bad actors.

“This data could suggest that some users are exploiting a loophole to evade Bethpage’s prohibition on the transfer of tee times,” The report reads. “For example, if a golfer reserves a tee time that they want to transfer to another golfer despite this prohibition, the first golfer could cancel their reservation at an off-hour (for example, at 3:00 a.m.) so the second golfer can attempt to claim it when the reservation is re-released into the system.”

Ultimately, the IG’s office ruled that tee time bots were a “serious threat to the integrity of the booking systems,” and recommended a series of changes aimed at ensuring fair access for all who book tee times at Bethpage by disincentivizing (or outright removing) software programs from the system. One specific option, an identification verification system called ID.me which is frequently used by other branches of New York State government, would help authenticate every tee time booked through the system before it was finalized.

Those changes might sound familiar to golfers based in New York: They were many of the same changes implemented by the New York State Parks Department over the last several months. Earlier this year, the department instituted stricter rules regarding cancellations and the upfront payment of a “booking fee” in an effort to disincentivize bad actors. The department then doubled down on that approach in the days after the Ryder Cup, announcing the creation of a two-factor authentication system that would ensure all tee time reservations were executed by human beings.

Drama around the Bethpage Parks tee time system has increased in 2025 as Bethpage Black has welcomed the attention of the golf world in a historically busy playing season surrounding the Ryder Cup. As the “People’s Country Club” prepared for its moment in the limelight, the wait time for parking lot tee times on the fabled Black Course stretched in some instances to two days.

In the end, the Inspector General’s office said it was the spirit of these golfers that necessitated serious actions to defend against bots.

“If left unaddressed, such bot usage risks eroding public trust, limiting equitable access to tee times, and creating the perception that the system favors those who can exploit technology rather than those who follow normal booking procedures,” The report said. “For these reasons, adopting safeguards against bot activity is essential to preserving both the integrity of the system and fair access for all players.”

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The first thing you notice while playing Bethpage Black is the price. At $78 for in-staters, it may be the best bargain in golf.

The second thing you notice is the volume. Bethpage Black is only open for about 200 days per year, but during those 200 days, the golf never stops. Golfers tee off from morning until night, a ceaseless march that batters the sod and boggles the mind. Golfers at Bethpage Black are “like planes at an airport,” the maintenance workers like to joke, an analogy that makes more sense after a morning spent taxiing for takeoff on tee boxes and greens while golfers clog the jetway in front of you.

For many years, the only real mystery around the Black Course was how you managed to snag a tee time. Rumors circled the fairways about “family friends” who could get any tee time they wanted, while the transition to an online tee time system required only a rudimentary knowledge of coding to hack. For the first few years of the online system, tee times disappeared in milliseconds — a reflection either of Bethpage’s inherent demand or a system rife with bad actors, depending upon your worldview and knowledge of Python.

Now, though, that appears on the verge of changing. On Tuesday afternoon, the New York State Parks Service sent an email to golfers announcing the creation of stringent new procedures around tee time bookings aimed at stamping out “bots” and other bad actors. The new changes, which will go into effect on Thursday, Oct. 9, will enforce a new “2-step authentication/booking code” requirement — effectively ensuring that all golfers who book a tee time on the online system are real human beings.

The new system will require all those looking to play one of Bethpage’s five public courses to type in a code sent via email at the time of booking in order to secure their time. Each new booking will require a new booking code, which will be sent via email.

The changes mark the second time in 2025 that Bethpage has enhanced security around its tee time system. In April, the park announced stricter cancellation rules and the upfront payment of a booking “fee” (previously part of the greens fee paid at the time of playing) to discourage customers from booking many times at once. Those changes made a noticeable positive impact on tee time availability, even in the midst of a historically busy playing season (even by Bethpage standards) ahead of the Ryder Cup.

Still, some critics argued that the booking and cancellation changes enacted in April failed to go far enough to cut off bots and other nefarious actors. Under the new system, these critics argued, bots were disincentivized, but they were not actually removed, and would not be until the park enacted a “ReCaptcha” or 2-factor system ensuring all bookers were human beings.

Now, in October, Bethpage has reached for those exact changes, with the unstated goal of removing as many bots from the platform as possible, and returning the “People’s Country Club” to the people.

The timing couldn’t be much better. Bethpage is fresh off a historically busy playing season — even by its own bloated standards — with some wait times for overnight, parking-lot tee times on the Black Course stretching to two days, the longest in many a Bethpage lifer’s recollection.

Of course, an international spotlight was part of the allure of bringing the Ryder Cup to Bethpage. The tourism dollars the event has and will continue to bring to the state are prolific.

But, to paraphrase Spider-Man, with great volume comes great responsibility. Even at the Black Course. And maybe especially at the Black Course.

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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Scottie Scheffler stepped to the ball and the world stood still.

It was early Saturday afternoon at Bethpage Black, and after a Ryder Cup full of frustration, Scheffler’s moment had finally arrived.

The crowds had gone from loud to delirious as the second morning session neared its completion, their chants echoing around the 18th-hole amphitheater. Cameron Young and Bryson DeChambeau had raced out to points in the first match of the day, while the Europeans had grabbed convincing victories in each of the second and third matches. Now, the balance of the session hung on a pivotal anchor match: Scheffler and Russell Henley, 1-down on the last against the vulnerable pairing of Bob MacIntyre and Viktor Hovland.

As Scheffler stood over his ball on the 18th fairway, the day and perhaps the Cup rested on his fingertips. If the World No. 1 could hit it tight, he could even the match and tilt the pressure back to the Europeans for an all-or-nothing afternoon four-ball session.

Scheffler swung, and almost immediately the ball shot surprisingly out to the right, arcing high into the air and settling, finally, in the greenside bunker. Scheffler looked puzzled, and for good reason: It was the kind of short-yardage miss he might go a year or more without making in a tournament, let alone a moment of significance like this one. Hovland followed, striping his approach shot into the center of the green. The Americans were done, in the match, in the session, and perhaps in the Cup. The crowd in the enormous grandstand around 18 let out a collective grumble.

There are hundreds of ways to dissect the European clobbering of the first two days at this Ryder Cup. And, should the result hold come Sunday afternoon’s singles matches, you can rest assured that the golf public will find its way to all of them. Course setup. Pairings selections. Order of formats. Order of players within formats. Captains. Rosters. Crowd energy, location, date, time, place — you name it.

But the best explanation for the inexplicable American performance at Bethpage is also the simplest: The Ryder Cup is about your star players, and through three sessions, Scottie Scheffler is winless.

It’s not that Scheffler has played particularly badly. According to datagolf‘s Strokes Gained data, he has been the second-best player on the American side, behind Cameron Young. It’s just that Scheffler hasn’t been anywhere near the same energy-swallowing megastar that has helped him become the best player of the post-Tiger Woods era. At one point in Friday’s opening proceedings, Scheffler had gone 18 consecutive holes without a birdie — a stretch which would have marked just the second time that has happened to Scheffler in any competitive setting in the last two months. Add in Bethpage’s calm winds, soft greens and unusually tame rough, and Scheffler’s showing is even more of a head-scratcher.

One explanation involves his closest historical counterpart: Tiger Woods. Scheffler’s stretch of poor results in team play (and more specifically, the alternate shot format) brings to mind Woods’ own struggles in the Ryder Cup. The Cup is perhaps the only blemish on Woods’ prolific list of on-course accolades: A career 13-21-3 record that undersells his dominance as a tournament player.

Perhaps Scheffler, like Woods, has found the Ryder Cup chaos disruptive to the zen state needed to overwhelm a golf course. Or perhaps his European competitors are to blame: As the afternoon four-ball matches went off on Saturday, McIlroy, Rahm and Fleetwood were a combined 8-0-1 and showcasing the exact same sun-blotting skillset that Scheffler so often displays.

Irrespective of the eventual result (or the ultimate cause), it will be the work of the next Ryder Cup captain to understand the how and why behind Scheffler’s 0-3-0 start. In the Rahm-McIlroy-Fleetwood era, it is difficult to see the U.S. competing in a Ryder Cup, let alone winning one, without Scheffler leading the charge. And as a big Euro lead sets the stage for a potential Sunday coronation, it is difficult to find an easier explanation of what went wrong than the win-loss column next to the World No. 1.

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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — Michael Jordan did not arrive at the 13th hole camera tower at this year’s Ryder Cup so much as he appeared.

He was not among the people at Bethpage Black, and then he was. All 6 feet 6 inches of him, draped in white Team U.S.A. gear and burning with a blue flame of competitive fury.

Jordan likes golf, and his biennial appearances at the Ryder Cup have made the inverse true. His sudden emergence on Ryder Cup Friday morning was a cultish experience for the Long Island golf faithful, who delighted in the sight of His Airness riding in a cart alongside the American team, and who clearly believed Jordan’s mythical powers of winning could be transferred into his country’s best golfers by osmosis.

But a problem was brewing by the time he sidled up against the 13th hole camera tower. The Americans were not winning, and unless Jordan’s powers started working fast, the home team might be in trouble.

Jordan leaned over as Tyrrell Hatton, part of the day’s first European pairing, stared down a 10-foot birdie putt to sink his high-energy American counterparts, Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Thomas. Hatton aimed his putter and fired. The ball fell into the hole. DeChambeau and Thomas wilted. Jordan winced.

He was walking away before Hatton retrieved his ball from the hole. But before he disappeared again, Jordan could not help himself. He looked off with contempt, and then he delivered three foreboding words.

“We got problems.”

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The truth was much more damning. The Americans did not just have problems, they had old problems. Familiar problems. Problems that were supposed to be solved before the Europeans walked into Bethpage and stole a 5.5-2.5 Day 1 lead.

The truth was the Americans of Friday at the 2025 Ryder Cup looked an awful lot like the Americans of Friday at the 2023 Ryder Cup — and that was the biggest problem of all.

On that Friday back in ’23, the U.S. went down 6.5-1.5 at Marco Simone on a lopsided morning session and an uneven afternoon session. In ’23, the Europeans revealed a three-headed monster the Americans could not answer in four-ball and could not compete with in alternate shot. On that Friday, the Americans started flat and stayed there, watching as their best players faltered and the Euros holed everything. And on that Friday, the Euros displayed a deep knowledge of their roster’s strengths and weaknesses while the American pairings were disjointed and easily second-guessable.

Two years of soul-searching followed that wicked Friday in Rome. The PGA of America eventually settled on Keegan Bradley as next U.S. captain largely because he represented a “break” from the traditional American leadership. He entered the post preaching change and backed it up by hiring the first-ever team manager and a brand-new suite of vice captains. Bethpage, another home game, promised to be different.

On this Ryder Cup Friday, though, the problems were the same. Much like ’23, they went down after a lopsided morning and an uneven afternoon (though the Americans scraped away another point to merely go down three, 5.5-2.5). Much like ’23, they were trounced by a three-headed European monster (this time it was Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood). Much like ’23, the Euros holed everything and the best American players faltered. And, much like ’23, the American roster decisions — particularly the playing of Datagolf’s 132nd-ranked alternate shot pairing, Harris English and Collin Morikawa — seemed overmatched.

The scoreboard is intimidating, but as Bradley pointed out on Friday evening, it is not eliminating.

“Well, we’ve played 25 percent of the points. We’ve played the first quarter of a football game or a basketball game,” Bradley said. “They went out there and they played better than us today. They made more putts.”

That is all true, but the scoreboard isn’t the only thing that needs to change for the Americans at this Ryder Cup. More than any change in outcome, the U.S. needs a change in spirit.

“0-2 today, pretty disappointed,” DeChambeau said. “I played good golf, just not good enough, and they made everything. Luck is on their side right now.”

Luck, maybe, but the Americans know winning is about much more than luck. They have a few powerful voices in that arena at Bethpage, none more powerful than the man in white pressed against the 13th camera tower on Friday morning.

It was Jordan, after all, who proudly told the world he had “failed over and over again, and that is why I succeed.”

The Americans certainly hope that’s true for this Ryder Cup Friday. Otherwise, Jordan was right: They’ve got problems — and at Bethpage, they’re only getting bigger.

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The Ryder Cup, after last being played two years ago, is now just one day away. But that’s also 24 hours. Or 1,440 minutes. Or 86,400 seconds. The point being, the biennial matches are as close to us as a hole on a par-3 — but yet feel as far away as one on a brutally long par-5. The second hand can seem stuck until Friday. 

And then there are the press conferences. They, too, can mostly drag. After all, there are only so many ways to slice a golf ball, so to speak.

But there are tasty morsels. 

So, today, as a means to get us to the moment when the balls are in the air at Bethpage Black, we’ll offer a highlight or two. They might be technical. They might be insightful. They might be emotional. They might be technically insightful, emotionally said. 

Thursday, over 2 hours and 14 minutes, eight Europeans and four Americans talked, and we heard a story about Bethpage fans taunting Jon Rahm and a player thinking President Donald Trump will be “a great force,” along with a few other items.

Bryson DeChambeau vs. Rory McIlroy 

Thursday, we got words on the words between Bryson DeChambeau and Rory McIlroy.

To catch you up on how we got here:

– At the “Happy Gilmore 2” premiere earlier this year, DeChambeau told People magazine that at the Ryder Cup, “I’ll be chirping in [McIlroy’s] ear this time. Now, if we go up against each other, I mean, you can be sure of it.”

– In response, McIlroy told the Guardian in a story published last week: “I think the only way he gets attention is by mentioning other people. That is basically what I think of that. To get attention, he will mention me or Scottie [Scheffler] or others.”

– And in response to that, DeChambeau told Golf Channel on Monday: “All I’m trying to do is inspire kids on YouTube, and we’ve amassed quite a big audience on YouTube. I’m continuing to focus on that train of thought. Whatever Rory says and whatnot — granted, I didn’t mean anything by it other than I’m excited. I hope we can have some good banter back and forth, and if not, if he wants to do what he’s doing, great, no problem. Crowd is going to be on our side. We’re going to have a fun time. But ultimately, my job is to get a kid out there who is looking at me hitting a golf ball smiling.

“There’s a rivalry between every one of us golfers. Is it heightened with Rory? Sure. You can make it that way. But look, anytime we go out in the arena, we’re trying to be the best we can possibly be, and if it helps the game of golf out, then great, so be it.”

Thursday, each player was questioned about each other — and the fire simmered. Did Chambeau believe there was a rivalry between the two? He answered only that rivalries are good for golf, that he respects McIlroy and that he’d like the chance to play him. Did McIlroy think the back-and-forth was a bit of gamesmanship? He said he just wanted to win points. 

But he did start his answer with this:

“I promised Luke [Donald] I would only talk about the European team today. I’m going to stick to it.”

The takeaway: A DeChambeau-McIlroy matchup would be good theater. Seeing them each drive the first hole would melt Twitter. 

Bryson DeChambeau vs. Brandel Chamblee 

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There’s another player in the DeChambeau-McIlroy feud. 

To catch you up there:

– In response to DeChambeau’s response to McIlroy, Golf Channel’s Brandel Chamblee said this: “I thought it was pretty pointed there when he [was] asked about the retort of Rory, that he didn’t mention the goal this week of a Ryder Cup. Nope, he didn’t do that. He didn’t talk about playing on a team and how much that meant. Nope, didn’t do that. What he did do was talk about his YouTube channel, which, you know, if we want to talk about the numbers that are generated from that, it’s pretty dubious. I have no doubt bots are generating a lot of those views. There may be some interest as well. But that’s what he wants to talk about. Not the team, not the Ryder Cup.

“It’s one of the reasons why I think he’s going to be such a difficult person to get paired with. No doubt he’s one hell of a golfer. No doubt he has his moments of generosity with fans; I have heard about them. But he’s an odd duck when he’s trying to blend in with the team, and he has so many potential bulletin-board mistakes. I think he would be a captain’s nightmare.”

– The response to that response came as DeChambeau was signing autographs for fans earlier this week. As a camera recorded him, DeChambeau said: “Did Brandel say something yesterday? I don’t know what it was.”

Thursday, DeChambeau was asked about that feud, and he said he didn’t mind what was said. He said that that was good for golf. He then added this:

“Ultimately, on YouTube, you have to be verified to be able to subscribe and whatnot. So I don’t think it’s really that honest or true. But it is what it is. I mean, any time you can say something like that and create more buzz for the game of golf, it’s great.”

The takeaway: Drama certainly sells. 

‘One of the scary parts of the decision’ 

News

Tyrrell Hatton was asked whether the possibility of not playing on future Ryder Cup teams played a part in his decision early last year to leave the PGA Tour for LIV Golf. Currently, LIV events don’t factor into Ryder Cup team standings, leaving only the majors and, for now, DP World Tour play as the primary avenues to qualify for the event.  

Hatton’s answer?

He said “it was definitely one of the scary parts.” But he knew the circumstances. 

“I definitely feel like the events that I played outside of LIV,” Hatton said, “I had the extra motivation to play well. I still tried my — it’s not like I tried any harder; I try my best no matter what. But certainly knowing that the majors had an extra importance to them for me maybe helped me.

“Yeah, it adds a little bit of pressure, but I feel like over the last couple years, I’ve dealt with that pretty well. And although my performance in majors hasn’t been amazing, it’s got better the last two years. So I take that as a positive.”

The takeaway: This will be interesting to watch over the next couple of years. LIV is waiting on a decision that would give the league world ranking points.  

‘That’s the embodiment of what the European Ryder Cup team’

No, McIlroy didn’t always revere the Ryder Cup. One of the more, we’ll say, ‘memorable’ quotes about the Ryder Cup came in 2009, when McIlroy said: “It’s not a huge goal of mine. It’s an exhibition at the end of the day. In the big scheme of things it’s not that important of an event for me.” 

Was there a moment, though, where things changed for him?

Thursday, he said there was. It came in his first Ryder Cup appearance, in 2010 at Celtic Manor.

“I got into that team room at Celtic Manor,” McIlroy said, “and I just saw how much it meant to everyone. I sort of started — I was like, maybe I got this wrong. You start to see how much — yeah, especially for Europeans.

News

“I remember Seve [Ballesteros] was sick, and we had him on one of those conference call things like back in the day. He’s speaking to the team, and we’re all in the team room. This is on like the Wednesday or Thursday night. You know, and I look around and the majority of the team is crying as Seve is talking to us.

“And I’m like, that is — that’s it. That’s the embodiment of what the European Ryder Cup team is. I think that was the moment, that conference call with Seve in 2010, was the moment for me.”

The takeaway: Ballesteros’ name is spoken with great reverence with the Europeans. This is another example. 

‘I’d probably say 18- to 20-under’

Bethpage Black is still hard. 

But this week, it’s bearable, as, most notably, the rough is down. And that led to a question of what the winning total would be if the course were hosting a stroke-play tournament. 

“For a four-round tournament,” Harris English said, “I’d probably say 18- to 20-under. I mean, it can still bite you out there, especially that back nine. If you miss a couple drives, you’re having some mid-irons into the greens and you can start missing in some pretty bad places.

“Yeah, this is not the normal Bethpage Black we’re used to. You’re going to see a lot more birdies out there than you normally would in the PGA or the U.S. Open. I think that’s great. That’s what we’re ready for.”

The takeaway: Expect more birdies than blow-ups this week. 

‘Hey, Rahm, where is the Ozempic?’

There are going to be taunts at Bethpage. 

But you know that. 

Question is, what will come out of the mouths of the Bethpage crowd? Thursday, during an exchange with a reporter, Jon Rahm gave us a look. The reporter’s question is in italics. 

Talking about the fans getting creative with the heckling, I saw it reported that someone shouted something about the weight loss drug Ozempic to you the other day?

News

“Yeah, first shot in the practice rounds,” Rahm said. “Yeah, I don’t know exactly what he said, but I think what he said was — what did he say? He either said, ‘Hey, Rahm, where is the Ozempic?” Or ‘When’s Ozempic?’ Something ‘Ozempic.’ I just don’t know what word exactly. It was funny.”

The heckling in general, do you think it’s in the right side of good taste; there’s no issue with it?

“So far, the humor that’s been there,” Rahm said, “it’s really funny. I would imagine tomorrow things might turn a little bit, but there’s always funny ones, and not only towards me, towards everybody.

“I’m not going to say what they said, but yesterday on 17, me and Shane Lowry had a good laugh at something someone said in the crowd. Again, people can be really creative nowadays.”

Fan noise also led to a question for Viktor Hovland. The reporter’s question is also in italics. 

You are generally one of the more popular players on tour. How do you prepare for fans that might be actively rooting against you this week?

“I think you’ve just got to stick to your game, and if you play well, you know, there’s going to be some comments here and there,” Hovland said. 

“They won’t really come close to the thoughts that I have in my own head. So I think I’ll just laugh it off for the most part.”

The takeaway: Hovland’s quote might be the quote of the week. 

The money question, Day Four  

Day four of press conferences brought the fourth round of questions on the U.S. decision to pay its players for playing in the Ryder Cup, though this time, there was a twist. Donald, in his opening ceremony speech, twice mentioned money — “It is not about prize money or world ranking points; it’s about pride, it’s about representing your flag, your shirts, and the legacy you leave behind” and “we are fueled by something money cannot buy: purpose, brotherhood and a responsibility to honor those who came before us, while inspiring those whose time is yet to come.”

Folks noticed. 

And that led to this exchange with Sam Burns, with the reporter’s question in italics.

News

There’s been a lot of talk about the money this week and the stipend. What do you make of this notion that if guys are getting paid, then somehow it’s not as pure or they are not playing for their country in some way?

“Yeah, to be honest, my personal opinion is I’m extremely grateful that the PGA of America is doing this,” Burns said. “I live in a small town in Louisiana, and that amount of money in that community for those charities is going to go a long ways.

“So for me personally, it’s going to have a huge impact on our community. I’m just extremely grateful that we get that opportunity.”

Yesterday Luke Donald said, you know, we are not here for prize money. Did you guys take that as sort of a subtle jab?

“I mean, to be honest, like for us, being able to steward that money in our own communities at home, I think that’s a great thing,” Burns said. “And I think the PGA of America giving us the opportunity for us to do that is really special.”

Later Thursday, after the pairings announcement, Donald said his speech wasn’t directed at the U.S. 

“My speech was directed at my players,” he said. “I wrote that speech six months ago, maybe, OK. We have been very consistent where we stand and what we play for. We’re not concerned about what the U.S. are doing.”

The takeaway: The Americans have been well-advised of the talking points here. 

‘I think he’ll be a great force’

Friday afternoon, President Donald Trump is expected to attend the Ryder Cup, and that led to this exchange with DeChambeau, with the reporter’s question in italics:

Can you just articulate to us what it means to you to be back in the Ryder Cup team and representing America, and do you think the presence of Donald Trump here this week is going to help inspire you to victory?

“I hope he will inspire us to victory,” DeChambeau said. “I think he’ll be a great force for us to get a lot of people on our side. I think it will be interesting and exciting to see how the crowd and everybody reacts. It’s going to be an electric environment.”

European Robert MacIntyre, meanwhile, had this exchange. 

Features

Donald Trump is proud of his Scottish heritage. As a Scot, how do you feel about him coming to watch tomorrow?

“Again, I just play golf,” MacIntyre said. “I don’t — politics and stuff is out of my — I mean, I’m not bright enough, for one, to be worrying about politics. I’m worrying more about what goes on this week on the golf course.

“Yeah, as a European, we’ve got a job to do, and yeah, try and compete as hard as we can and hopefully win the Ryder Cup.”

So you don’t find it a distraction?

“It’s just another spectator,” MacIntyre said. 

The takeaway: The Ryder Cup starts Friday. 

Editor’s note: To read Day One’s best lines, please click here. To read Day Two’s best lines please click here. To read Day Three’s best lines, please click here.  

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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — “Is the sign … missing?”

You did not have to be a Bethpage regular to have uttered those words on Monday morning, the same day that the Ryder Cup officially arrived to Bethpage Black. The Sign is so entrenched into Bethpage lore, so critical to the experience of playing the brute, that the mere suggestion it had been removed from its typical perch atop the black bars protecting the first tee box bordered on blasphemy.

A Bethpage Ryder Cup would not be a Bethpage Ryder Cup without The Sign. How else would these 24 highly skilled golfers know that The Black Course Is An Extremely Difficult Course Which We Recommend Only For Highly Skilled Golfers?

And yet, there it wasn’t — removed from its typical location among the hordes and placed … where exactly? This, reader, was the first question that needed answering on the first day of this year’s Ryder Cup. But good news: The answer proved quite satisfying.

5 Ryder Cup secrets spotted at Bethpage Black

5. The Return of The Sign

If you are a believer of history, you know that The Sign at Bethpage Black likely first arrived as a public service announcement — encouraging those who fit Bethpage’s more proletarian golf ideals to better enjoy their weekend afternoons on one of the property’s other four courses (yellow, green, blue, red, in rough order of quality). But if you are a believer in the supernatural powers of great golf courses, you know The Sign has come to represent something much grander (and more terrifying) about Bethpage Black. It is a reminder that the Black Course is rude and irascible. A grump. A grouch. A kick in the shins. A contemptuous beast.

It was for the latter group that U.S. Ryder Cup leadership made the decision to relocate The Sign from its traditional position to directly above the entrance to the enormous first-hole amphitheater. In its new perch resting above the player-entrance to the amphitheater, the sign serves as a small piece of psychological warfare, reminding those from the visiting side that the experience at Bethpage is designed to be fearsome. For golfers shaking in their boots, it will serve as a terrifying final reminder of the challenge quite literally pulsing ahead.

4. A tent city

For those who play a lot of golf at Bethpage, the sudden footprint of the Ryder Cup’s tent city has been a regular talking point in recent months. The structures went up overnight, and seemed to consume half the property.

But walking around for the first time on Monday afternoon, it seemed clear that even the most overeager Long Islander had undersold the sheer scope of the build. There are more buildings, more structures, more activations, more things on property at this Ryder Cup than I have ever seen at a major golf tournament. According to the PGA of America, there are three football-field-sized hospitality offerings this week — a “reserved table” offering off the first fairway, a “luxury suite” off the 15th fairway, and a “chalet” near the 18th green. There are also 11 on-course bars, nearly a dozen free “concessions” stands, a T-Mobile-sponsored podcast studio and lounge area with free food and entertainment offerings, and a merchandise tent large enough to easily convert into affordable housing for a half-dozen 747s .

The enormity of the build was only amplified by a proud PGA of America employee, who stopped me near the first tee box and pointed to a hospitality tent off in the distance with three stories of enormous seating and entertainment options.

“You see that?” He said with no small dose of pride. “It’s the first-ever triple decker.”

3. Course tweaks

Speaking of course setup, the biggest changes to this year’s layout (as directed by the home team) appear immediately. In the first fairway, players will tee off from the forward tees (in order to accommodate the amphitheater), play into a wider-than-usual strip of short grass, and have a first cut awaiting some of their near misses. With his practice round tee shot on Sunday, Rory McIlroy was spotted taking a preposterous line over the trees in the vicinity of the green.

These are the stakes as the Americans like them. As the home team, they get to keep a close watch over course conditions throughout the week at Bethpage Black. Thus far, the headline is that the course is set up for the see-saws of match play — and not nearly as thick or intimidating from off the fairway as the U.S. Opens of yesteryear.

2. A respect-off

The first Ryder Cup captain’s presser of tournament week is an exercise in insincere praise and preposterously guarded gamesmanship.

That tradition continued on Monday afternoon, as Keegan Bradley and Luke Donald spent the better part of a half-hour gassing one another up to the press. About the closest any reporter neared to tactical insight involved the two captains’ plans to share a cocktail on Sunday evening — plans with questionable odds of ever happening.

Still, it was oddly comforting to see both sides of golf’s great Ryder Cup rivalry share in the oddity of a press conference in which both sides are determined to fiercely (and somewhat facetiously) praise one another.

1. The sound of silence

Monday marked the final day at Bethpage for this year’s Ryder Cup teams without spectator attendance. The work of an early competition week was well underway for both sides. Scottie Scheffler and Tommy Fleetwood banged putts on opposing practice greens for the better part of an hour. Several groups played practice rounds, cycling through potential match play partners. The energy was quiet and serious.

U.S. Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley took advantage of the silence, calling his team to an early-morning meeting at the first tee box, where cameras captured an emotional pre-tournament moment. Bradley welcomed his Ryder Cup teammates to the tee with their first playing of the national anthem, followed by speeches from FDNY Lieutenant Chris Mascali and Nassau Players Club president Mike Pomerico.

“I had this vision of doing that for about a year, and to be out there and see it and see how emotional the guys got was a really special time for our team,” Bradley said. “It was a powerful moment. You’re looking around and seeing all the guys staring at what we were doing and so into it in such an emotional way. A lot of people have worked really hard to get to this point in their lives.”

Tuesday might not be much different from a competitive standpoint, but it’s a safe bet that the silence will end swiftly. With three days remaining of tournament prep before Friday morning’s opening session, the American faithful will look to have their voices heard for the first time on Tuesday. And if Mascali and Pomerico’s comments are any indication, they won’t be shy.

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FARMINGDALE, N.Y. — You could feel Mike and Gary winding up for the punchline.

Before the ball landed neatly in the center of the fairway at Bethpage Red. Before it shot high and straight into the air. Before the club even struck the ball.

And so when the punchline finally arrived, I wasn’t sure whether to be excited or relieved.

“Do ya know what I’d call you for that?” Mike asked.

I could guess.

“I’d call you a f—ing sandbagger!”

I have played golf at Bethpage for most of my life, which means I have met hundreds of Mikes and Garys. I have felt the iron grip of their handshake. I have experienced their brusque, no-nonsense mannerisms. And I have experienced their ancient tradition of endearment: Withering trash-talk.

But as it turns out, I have never played golf with anybody like Mike Pomerico and Gary Cohan, the two men with whom I shared an afternoon foursome at Bethpage Red earlier this year. Because Mike and Gary are not just Bethpage lifers, they are part of a secret club that exists just underneath the surface of Bethpage’s packed tee sheets — a club of regular Joes who are serious sticks, and who call Bethpage their golfing home and mean it.

You see, three decades ago, a group of Mikes and Garys realized they wanted the community of a private golf club without any of the pretension, so they formed a club of their own. The goal was to bring together a group of like-minded Bethpage diehards, people (like them) who cared much more about golf’s virtues as a competition than about the status endowed by a club crest. They would go where they were welcome — which was good news, because they were welcome at Bethpage State Park, where most of them already played. Eventually, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they wound up with the exact collection of folks you might find on any random Tuesday on the Black Course: Doctors and firemen, lawyers and policemen, transit workers and accountants. A name was the only problem remaining, so they settled on a simple one: The Nassau Players Club.

Technically speaking, the Nassau Players Club has no home. It is a “club without borders,” meaning it has no territorial rights. But spend a few minutes with Mike or Gary inside the Bethpage Clubhouse and you’ll soon realize that definition is a fallacy. Their home is right here at the Black Course, where regular tee times and events have been staged for the better part of the last three decades — and where everybody who’s somebody knows their name.

“Would you like the usual?” A server inside the clubhouse asks, as if on cue, a few minutes before our tee time.

“No, not today,” Mike responds.

Mike, a larger-than-life ex-cop with a rib-cutting sense of humor, is the president of the NPC. He works a part-time gig at a local country club, but most of his golf life exists here at Bethpage, where it seems he is loved and feared in equal parts. His swing is long, slow and confident, and he plays our round from a cart with a militant respect for pace-of-play. He fills the time between shots with laughter, skewering jokes, and self-deprecation. When he hears I have given shots in a bragging rights match with our fourth, he barely hides his disdain.

“We don’t do strokes,” he says, shooting me a grin.

Mike keeps the trains on time for the Nassau Players Club, which includes hosting a regular suite of events at Bethpage.

“Ninety percent of our golf is played here at Bethpage,” he said. “Whether it’s at the Green or the Blue or the Black, it doesn’t matter, we play where we can.”

All members are serious players, though serious has many definitions. Some are tournament-level golfers, many are like Mike: single-digit players with a bad case of the golf bug. The common thread is a love for golf, for competition, and for the community that exists at the intersection.

“It’s a group of guys, about a hundred guys from all walks of life,” Mike says. “Retired cops. Retired firemen. Active cops, active firemen. Business people, accountants, garbagemen. You just have to love and have a passion to play golf.”

It does not take a sociologist to recognize the countercultural tones in the club’s origin story, but Mike insists the Players Club isn’t pushing back against country club culture, elitism, or anybody, really. In Mike’s estimation, the Nassau Players have only ever sought to build community, and have no tolerance for those seeking to tear down anyone else — a point evidenced by the club’s terse, five-rule “code of conduct.”

The Nassau Players Club Code of Conduct prohibits the following behavior by its members:
– Any other action in golf or in their personal life, which could discredit the club or its membership
– Willful, repetitive violations of the rules of golf and handicap procedures
– Signing “Nassau Players” for food, drink, merchandise or services at a private course
– Attempting to use the facilities of a private club under false pretenses
– Actions deemed seriously offensive to the other members such as excessive displays of temper, failure to repay debts incurred on or off the golf course

For Mike, Gary, and the remainder of the 100 or so who consider themselves part of the Nassau Players, the responsibility is much deeper than a Bethpage-themed bag tag. It is about being part of the fabric of one of the best municipal courses in golf, and upholding a tradition of ordinary people taking part in something truly extraordinary. Most days, that takes the form of golf at its purest: equal, honest, sincere. Some days, it’s just a place to share some laughs with a stranger.

As our round on the Red neared its conclusion — and the trash-talk melted into genuine kindness, the way it so often does on the Black — I wondered what serving in the secret fraternal order of Bethpage had taught my two playing partners about golf.

As soon as I asked the question, I felt that familiar hum of anticipation in the air. Someone was winding up to deliver another haymaker. Then Gary spoke.

“I grew up here in Bethpage. I used to play here all the time and I didn’t know about Nassau Players,” he said, pausing.

“It’s all about camaraderie playing Bethpage. This place is great. It’s home.”

That, it turned out, was a punchline all its own.

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Welcome! Where are you, you ask. I’m calling this the Weekend 9. Think of it as a spot to warm you up for Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’ll have thoughts. We’ll have tips. We’ll have tweets. But just nine in all, though sometimes maybe more and sometimes maybe less. As for who I am? The paragraphs below tell some of the story. I can be reached at nick.piastowski@neatly-delicate-grub.edgecompute.app.

For 20 years now, I’ve wondered who carried a drive 50 yards over my head at Bethpage Black. 

To start this mystery, though, we need to jump back another six years, to 1999. That summer, while interning, I lived in Huntington Station, N.Y., home to a mall named after writer Walt Whitman, Friendly’s restaurants and my first experience with the Long Island Rail Road. But Bethpage was where I needed to go, the LI’ers told me. Five golf courses. Grillroom. All a few miles away. Say less. I played the Red. And the Green. And the Blue. And the Yellow. But because of funky intern hours and mild fear, I never got onto the Black — but regretted that. On my last day, I tried, but it was booked and I bought a head cover.

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But Ethan was — and still is — a helluva dude. In 2004, I was the best man in his wedding. And he knew that I’d whiffed on not playing the Black. So as a best man’s gift, he wanted us to give it a go. Stay in Long Island. See the city. Play golf. Yessir. 

Then it rained. 

Every day. 

We managed nine holes on the Green, finishing in a downpour — which prompted a firefighter in a nearby firetruck to shout over a speaker: “Get inside, you freakin idiots.” So we did, had a pint and left. But we returned on our last day. This time, Ethan wanted a souvenir, and for amusement, I looked at the tee times board.   

There was a Black opening. 

For 45 bucks. Twilight rate. 

Thirty minutes later, we teed off, and I hooked my first ball ridiculously left. Who cares? We were on. We were paired with a Long Island dad and son. A twosome was behind us. 

You may know where this is going. The first paragraph gives it away. 

On 5, our foursome was 300-some yards out, when a ball dropped over us, 50 yards ahead. 

Features

The dad we were paired with turned around. He shouted. Every other word he said started with the letter F. He needed an apology. He told us we shouldn’t move. Ethan and I were, well, feeling a few things. Confusion? Yes. Fright? Yes. But mainly curiosity. What was about to go down?  

And who hit that ball??

It was … a 15-year-old. 

He apologized. An older man with him apologized. Our playing partner said some different things. But as he walked away, I whispered to the kid:

“Nice shot.” 

But I never caught his name, though maybe ‘the mystery teen bomber of Bethpage’ makes for a better story. As for the point here, besides needing an intro to our weekly conversation? Since this Ryder Cup was announced, I’ve been convinced that golf will see no bigger happening. Team event. In Long Island. At a muni. A beloved one. The People’s CC. 

Where everyone has a story. 

Let’s see if we can find eight more items for the Weekend 9. (And if you have a Bethpage story yourself, send it to me. I love a good yarn. 

One takeaway from the week that was 

2. An interview Rory McIlroy did with the Off the Ball group this week at the Amgen Irish Open struck me. In it, while talking about his motivation following his Masters win, he was asked if he could win the Masters again, and he answered this way — which also again showed his allegiance to caddie Harry Diamond:

“Second green jacket, a second Claret Jug, a second U.S. Open,” McIlroy said. “You know, Harry said to me pretty soon after I won Augusta, he said, it’s great you’ve won the Grand Slam, but I haven’t yet. So I was like, that’s — so that’s cool. It’d be cool to be able to do that with Harry. I thought it would — one of my favorite things about winning the Masters was being able to do it with Harry. We met on the putting green at Holywood Golf Club when I was 7 years old, and we’re striding up the last hole with a chance to win a green jacket. Like, that’s as good as it gets for me. So if he’s on the journey for the rest of my career and we can pick off a few more, that would be amazing.”

You can watch the full interview below.

Another takeaway from the week that was 

3. On Wednesday, a member of our team wrote in our Slack channel: “When is Paddy going to write a self-help book?” The thought was in response to Padraig Harrington’s press conference ahead of the Amgen Irish Open, where Harrington answered 12 questions from reporters, but spoke for about 20 minutes, confirming again he may just be golf’s best thinker. 

This exchange was my favorite, with the reporter’s question in italics:

How do you keep the fire in your belly?

“I have this theory that I fit very nicely, certainly up to my age group,” Harrington said. “Most careers last about 20 years, but it’s seven or eight years before you start getting into it and peaking. You probably have 18 months, two years of the real peak, a couple years after that, and then 15 to 20 years, you’re burnt out. You’re still playing, but you’re burnt out, and I would have mirrored that. So many people.

“I do see the peak of people’s careers happening much earlier. That 18-month run, two-season run can happen two or three years, four years into their career, but nobody is ever good after the peak. That’s the nature of the game. So yeah, burnout comes, and it would have come for me in 2016, around then, about 20 years in. I looked at it and did a number of different things. I did a bit of coaching, did a bit of commentary, all that sort of stuff, and I realized I actually really liked playing golf. So I kind of looked at it a different way, got a little bit more relaxed about it, didn’t try as hard, took away some of the stuff that was making it — I basically couldn’t go at the pace I was trying to go at. I couldn’t go at the pace I would have been going at when I was a young man.

“I found a new lease on life. The Champions tour has definitely helped with that. The strange thing is, I play better, [and] the temptation is to go back to working harder and going back to trying harder. It’s pretty simple. I describe it like this: 15 years ago, if somebody said we’re going for dinner, I wouldn’t have gone — I’ve got physio, I’ve got to get in the gym, I’ve got to do this, I’ve got to do that recovery, all that. Now I kind of go, we’re going for dinner, great, I’ll change everything to go for that dinner. I’ll still go to the gym, I’ll still do my physio. But my priorities, I wouldn’t be anywhere near as professional as I would have been 15 years ago because I can’t.

“It was burning me out trying too hard. Getting up three-and-a-half hours before your tee time, a young man can do that. I watch the young guys and I see them do the stuff in the gym and all that, and I go, yeah, I used to do all that. You just can’t keep that pace up.

“I’m reinvigorated because I found a new way. I’ve always loved playing golf. I’ve always loved practicing, but I do have to have a different outlook. I think it comes to most people in their life, they get to a stage in their own job where they’ve got all this expertise because they’ve kind of hit a wall. The best solution is to try and get rid of some of the stuff that’s annoying them and keep the stuff that they’re good at and experienced at, and that’s the kind of way I’ve tried with the golf.”

One takeaway for the weekend 

4. Watch the Walker Cup this weekend at Cypress Point. For the golf. For the course. 

Why? Watch the video below, narrated by GOLF’s Michael Bamberger:

5. I also enjoyed enjoyed the thread below from the Golfers Journal (and the complete story can be found at the bottom of the tweets):

A golf story that I found interesting 

6. I thought this was interesting. On a recent episode of Barstool’s “Fore Play” podcast, Tommy Fleetwood talked about how he put into play his mini driver — and said he’d learned about it through Fred Couples. 

“So I was at the Masters in 2023,” Fleetwood said. “Fred Couples is on the range with this burner mini driver. And I mean, Fred talks to everybody on the range at the Masters. Like he loves talking, hitting balls, hanging out, whatever. And he comes over to me, he starts talking, he’s talking about this club. He’s going, ‘Have you tried this club? I’m going to hit this everywhere. Unbelievable.’ I’m looking at it, I was like, ‘Yeah, it does look nice.’ Like whatever. 

“Anyway, I got one at Hilton Head the following week and I hit it everywhere all week and I was like, this club is unbelievable. So I’ve had one since then, like literally that day. And I think I would actually have to give Fred Couples credit because he was probably the first one that used it and I was probably number two, but I think because I was playing on tour, I was the one that people saw with it and it’s become really popular since then.”

You can watch the full interview below. 

A rules video that interested me 

7. I thought the rules video below was interesting. 

A Viktor Hovland video that made me laugh 

8. The Viktor Hovland video below, recorded after the captain’s picks were made for the European Ryder Cup team, made me laugh. 

A Justin Thomas video that made me laugh 

9. The Instagram video below, shared by Justin Thomas, made me laugh. 

What golf is on TV this weekend?

10. Let’s do 10 items! Here’s a rundown of golf on TV this weekend:

– Saturday 

7:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET: Amgen Irish Open third round, Golf Channel 

1 p.m.-3 p.m. ET: Aramco Houston Championship second round, Golf Channel 

3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: Stifel Charity Classic second round, Golf Channel 

7 p.m.-10 p.m. ET: Walker Cup day one, Golf Channel 

– Sunday 

7:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. ET: Amgen Irish Open final round, Golf Channel 

1 p.m.-3 p.m. ET: Aramco Houston Championship final round, Golf Channel 

3 p.m.-6 p.m. ET: Stifel Charity Classic final round, Golf Channel 

7 p.m.-10 p.m. ET: Walker Cup final day, Golf Channel 

What you’re emailing me 

11. Below is an email I got this week:

“Every player who has played in a Ryder Cup talks about what an honor it is to be part of the Ryder Cup Team and what a dream come true it is. 

“But captains these days are more interested in the bragging rights of winning the Cup rather than spreading the honor of representing the U.S. or Europe to as many aspiring golfers as possible. One would have expected that is the most effective way for the captains to exercise the captain’s picks — to choose new players and spread the honor and the dream. Instead, we see, time and again, captains choose players who have played three or four or five Ryder Cups, just because they did well in past Ryder Cups, or because they have a good personal rapport and kinship with the captain himself, regardless of current form. 

“Unfortunately the media in general do not flag this practice and criticize it. Perhaps you also believe the bragging rights are more important than the dream itself. A pity!”

The post Rory McIlroy caddie makes 1 request, and a Bethpage mystery | Weekend 9 appeared first on Golf.

The post Bethpage overhauls reservation system to fight tee-time bots appeared first on Golf.

The post Bethpage overhauls reservation system to fight tee-time bots appeared first on Golf.

The sign directly in front of the Bethpage State Park clubhouse greets golfers with a bold proclamation.

“The People’s Country Club.”

It’s an enticing premise, and Bethpage has lived up to it for most of its 90 years, gifting the public golfers of Long Island’s country club utopia affordable, accessible, world-class golf. But in recent years, reality has been slightly murkier.

As No Laying Up’s Kevin Van Valkenburg first reported on an investigative podcast in January, Bethpage’s core values of accessibility and equity have been tested in the digital age, as the public course’s tee time reservation system appears to have been bombarded with illegal “bots” built to score tee times before the masses.

A Bethpage tee time is a coveted prize for obvious reasons. The Black Course, which will host the Ryder Cup in September, remains the crown jewel of public access tee times in the New York Metro area. At $80 in peak season, it is also the most affordable. The park’s remaining four courses are nowhere near as famous, but at roughly $50 per player, they represent a compelling value nonetheless.

The problem is that access to a tee time at New York’s most prestigious public golf course seems to have fallen into the hands of a smaller group of nefarious actors. When the park’s tee times go live on its online reservation at 6 p.m. each day for 7 days in advance, they are gobbled up instantaneously. When cancellations are re-released into the reservation system, they are snatched just as quickly.

The source of the problem appears to be the practice of “tee time farming,” where internet software programs, or “bots,” select tee times instantly, rendering regular golfers with regular computers obsolete.

Now, though, the state appears to be fighting back. On Saturday afternoon, Bethpage State Park sent a letter to all registered golfers informing them about a series of changes to the park’s reservation system aimed at cutting out tee time bots and restoring equity to the reservation process.

According to the letter, the state will start charging a nonrefundable $5 reservation fee at the time tee times are booked and reduce the number of cancellations allowed per month for eligible accounts.

The state’s actions represent the largest effort at fixing the tee time problem at Bethpage — changes aimed at stymying those who book tee times by the bundle using bots and then cancel or no-show them with regularity. In theory, the $5 reservation fee will also serve as a deterrent from bot accounts mass-booking tee times.

Some golfers have criticized the changes as not going far enough to fix the bot problem. The best way to ensure folks don’t cancel their tee times, critics have suggested, is to force those purchasing a tee time to pay the full sum of their bill at the time of reservation — or to make the fines and punishments steeper for those who cancel. By comparison, a $5 reservation fee is more of a speed bump than an outright wall of protection against illegal website usage.

“This changed… nothing?” wrote one account by the name of Nik Bando. “Phantom band-aid.”

Still, it seems clear that the bot issue is taking a larger emphasis at Bethpage as the park prepares for its Ryder Cup spotlight in September. For years, demand has far outpaced supply at the Black Course, and that is only expected to rise in the months preceding (and following) the Cup.

The path to online reservation salvation might still be a long way off, but after Saturday, it seems things at the People’s Country Club are trending … away from the bots.

(You can — and should — listen to KVV’s full No Laying Up podcast about the tee times issue below.)

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