Paul Azinger does not lack for opinions, especially when it comes to the Ryder Cup. Considered one of the best U.S. captains in history, the major champ and longtime broadcaster has certainly earned the right to spout off.

In the wake of Europe’s victory over the Americans in last week’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, Azinger got a chance to process it on Golf.com’s podcast, “Subpar,” and he touched on a few subjects—the most high-profile being the U.S. fans’ brutal treatment of Rory McIlroy. Azinger asserts that he’s a fan of the Ulsterman and credits him for taking the pressure off his European teammates by admitting in Rome two years ago how difficult it is to win on the road. (He also predicted the Europeans would triumph in New York.)

“I give Rory credit for that,” Azinger said, “but now I want to take a shot at Rory, who I love.”

In Azinger’s view, heckling and being vulgar can be a two-way fairway.

“In the press conference after it’s over, he is saying that I think golf should be held to a higher standard of decorum, but in the meantime he says ‘F you, F you, F you’ in full voice for the world to see,” Azinger said. “He turns around and says to the guy, ‘Shut the F up.’ The guy in the media asks him, ‘How did that feel, Rory, to tell him to shut up and then hit it to two feet?’ And he said, ‘It felt pretty f’ing good.’

“And I’m, like, which is it, Rory? Is it that golf is held to a higher standard or are you just going to ‘F you’ the fans and act like that’s OK? So, I love Rory, but you can’t say that. You can’t say the fans need to behave better and then in the meantime lay them to waste. You can’t do both. You’ve got to be one or the other.”

RELAED: Rory McIlroy endured torment at Bethpage—and came out the other side a deserving winner

In terms of the fan behaviour, Azinger said no one should have been surprised by how wild it got.

“Didn’t the PGA of America know when they came here what was going to happen?” he said. “Of course, we all knew. We’ve all been talking about it for 10 years, that this crowd could go crazy. Hey, if the beers weren’t $16 a piece, it could have been worse.”

Like most everybody watching, Azinger was stunned to see the Europeans put the U.S. in a huge hole the first two days, heading into Sunday with a seven-point lead. The Americans needed to mount the greatest comeback in Ryder Cup history and nearly pulled it off, losing only one match in singles in an eventual 15-13 defeat—the first loss for either team on home soil since 2012 at Medinah.

“I don’t know what happened in Europe’s team room, but they almost let it get away,” Azinger said. “But they did the slaughtering on the first two days. That was a tough pill to swallow. There was a time when I thought it was just going to be the most devastating defeat, and the PGA of America was going to have to restructure everything. And it turned out not to be that way at all. It was actually a bit of a nail-biter.”

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By now, golf fans are well aware of the verbal abuse showered on Rory McIlroy during the Ryder Cup. And even some hops that got showered near the five-time major champ and his wife. Disgusting stuff.

But Rory wasn’t the only member of Team Europe being heckled at Bethpage Black. And now one of those players has clapped back in a creative way.

That would be Robert MacIntyre, who posted a video montage on Instagram containing clips of his highlights from the week with some of the most vile comments spewn at him. Have a look:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Robert MacIntyre (@robertmacintyre)

“Keep them coming”, the Scottish star captioned with a kiss emoji. And in case you’re wondering about the music, that’s Gala’s “Freed From Desire,” which Team Europe has transformed into its catchy “Europe’s on Fire!” chant.

Anyway, well played, Bob. Both on and off the course.

READ MORE: The subtle way Europe has cracked the code to motivating its players

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There was no shortage of heroes for Team Europe at Bethpage Black last weekend. Tommy Fleetwood, who won four points enroute to the Nicklaus-Jacklin Award. Rory McIlroy, who blocked out all the noise and played like the superstar that he is. Luke Donald, a bonafide Ryder Cup legend who is 4-0 all-time as a player and 2-0 as a captain. Then there’s Shane Lowry.

The Irishman’s performance was merely fine through much of the first two days. But on Sunday, he gutted out an incredible singles performance against Russell Henley in a match that came down to the 18th hole. With the U.S. team charging and the crowd raging, Lowry stood over a six-footer for a birdie to halve the match and give Team Europe the crucial half-point they needed to retain the Ryder Cup. With the weight of a continent on his shoulders, he buried it.

RELATED: Rory McIlroy endured torment at Bethpage—and came out the other side a deserving winner

But according to Lowry’s dad, Brendan, it wasn’t quite so simple.

“He said to me ‘Da, I was sure I missed it!’” the Lowry patriarch told The Ray D’Arcy Show on Ireland’s RTE Radio 1. “He was certain it was going to lip out. The pressure was immense. Things weren’t looking too good for Europe.”

RELATED: Watch Rory McIlroy stoke the flames in Bryson DeChambeau rivalry during Bethpage celebration

To the naked eye, Lowry seemed to confidently pour in his putt. Anyone with a pulse could feel the pressure, but the only indication the World No. 24 gave was in clear outpouring of joy and relief that followed. But if we’re to believe his old man—a former All-Ireland Gaelic football champion who knows a thing or two about pressure—Lowry was feeling anything but confident as he struck his putt.

It just goes to show that no matter how good you get—no matter the size of the lead or the stakes—golf is a game that will make you doubt yourself. So next time you’re standing over a big putt to break 80 or clinch your member-guest, take a page out of Lowry’s book and look your fears dead in the eye, give ’em a wink and bury it.

RELATED: Rory McIlroy and Team Europe call out President Donald Trump after Ryder Cup upset, Trump responds

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Following Europe’s Ryder Cup victory at Bethpage Black, there are people who will point to the strong European play on Friday and Saturday as an explanation for how the U.S. was humbled on its own soil, ending the decade-long era of the home blowout. American captain Keegan Bradley is one of them. On Saturday night, facing the worst second-day deficit in modern Cup history, he lamented Europe’s mind-boggling putting performance. It serves his interest to push that narrative, since any focus on their play distracts from the failures of his captaincy, but he’s not wrong. Europe did play exceptionally well in tough circumstances, and Luke Donald’s team deserves a mountain of credit.

Unfortunately, there is a glaring problem with relying on this explanation to the exclusion of the systems behind the performance. There is a reason Europe held a seven-point lead going into singles, just as there’s a reason that when the captains’ influence waned on Sunday, the tide reversed to such a shocking degree that it almost bailed Keegan Bradley out. (Ironically, coming up just short had the effect of accentuating his mistakes; more on that below.) It’s not because the Europeans have better players than the Americans—statistics alone can tell you as much. There is luck and variance in such a brief format, but the fact is that the Europeans built an institutional advantage that gave them an edge in the pairs sessions before the first ball was even struck. On the occasions when America has succeeded in this century—just three times, in 2008, 2016 and 2021—it’s because they successfully counteracted Europe on that institutional front, built a well-oiled organization and came prepared to execute an informed plan.

RELATED: A frenetic Sunday delivered more than seemed possible

But after the Rome blowout of 2023, instead of viewing the result as an unlucky confluence of player illness, normal road woes and a red-hot opponent—in other words, a blip in an otherwise successful U.S. reboot beginning with the task force—they gave up the progress they had made and returned to the randomness and hope of the Ted Bishop/Tom Watson debacle. And just as in 2014, they faced a European team that, far from retreating to complacency after its spoils, stood on the shoulders of its own successful decades-long template to reach the next stage of evolution and crack the code of how to prepare a team for a road Ryder Cup.

You see the results.

Any person with any power who believes that this result can be explained exclusively by what happened on the course—”the Europeans just played/putted better”—is unconsciously perpetuating a broken ideology, and extending the time it will take to mop up an unholy mess.

– – –

In the summer of 2024, Bradley was selected as the next captain of the American Ryder Cup team. It had been a decade since he played in a Ryder Cup, he had never served as a vice captain and there was every chance that he could qualify as a player … or, worse, he could be a borderline captain’s pick and have to decide whether to take himself. In a post debating whether this was a smart decision or not, I pointed out these red flags and further wondered how such an important decision could be made with such seeming randomness in a single phone call, based mostly on sympathy engendered from segments in “Full Swing,” and so far outside the considered philosophy they had tried to build after Gleneagles. In other words, how were we going rogue again, just a decade after the Watson debacle? I don’t consider myself especially prescient to have noticed these potential pitfalls—they were obvious. And they all came true.

Bradley seems like a smart person. He seems to have taken the job seriously, and he certainly cares deeply. He seems to be liked by his players. He made a noble sacrifice by not picking himself for the team, even though that scenario—that the only way he could fail to make the team was by being thrust into the position of captain—was an absurdity born of a sequence of poor decisions.

The problem with Bradley is that he was put into a position to fail. He was not ready for this job. He could have been a tremendous captain in a decade, but with Luke Donald returning with nearly his entire team from Rome, it’s evident in hindsight that he had no chance. Even in his famous locker room speech after last year’s Presidents Cup, when he guaranteed victory and declared that “they’re gonna doubt me … I’ve been doubted my whole f—ing life … that’s when I do my best work,” you could see him operating on the wrong theoretical principles. He thought winning the Ryder Cup was about his own will, his own energy, and not about the complex network that success requires. He was the mythical John Henry, if John Henry was unaware of the machine. Compare that to Donald’s cool, almost corporate approach, it was volatile behavior, and you have to pity Bradley for his ignorance. Looking back, he was a determined, eager zealot, running headfirst into a brick wall.

He was put in a position to fail. In turn, once the Cup began, he put his players in a position to fail. He managed to find the statistically worst possible U.S. foursomes pairing, put them out in the opening session, and then, when they were blown out, he committed the unthinkable blunder of sending them out again a day later, to similar results. He had teams like Henley and Scheffler teeing off on the wrong holes, which he had to correct a day later. He sat some of his best players Friday morning because they were rookies, inadvertently putting them under even greater pressure when they had to play their first match trailing 3-1.

These may all sound like small problems, but they are tip-of-the-iceberg warnings that hint at darker trouble beneath. If you’ll tolerate an analogy, you’ve probably heard the story of big musical acts that include strange items deep in the pages of their rider—the list of requirements from the venue—with the quintessential example being something like “a glass bowl full of only yellow M&Ms.” This seems like diva behavior on the surface, but the reality is that it’s a test of how well a venue’s staff has prepared for their show—how good is their attention to detail? If they walk in and see a glass bowl of yellow M&Ms, they can feel assured that the more important things have been properly attended to.

Harris English and Collin Morikawa lost both matches they played in foursomes. Jamie Squire

What we saw from Bradley was the inverse; the Collin Morikawa-Harris English pairing, or the Russell Henley-Scottie Scheffler playing order debacle, may have only cost a point or two, but it’s a point or two that decided the Cup. Like the absence of that M&M bowl, it points to a larger incompetence. It’s a bellwether of everything else that must have gone wrong, some of which we’ll learn in the coming weeks and most of which we’ll never know, from the big to the small. And it’s my belief that both great preparation and boneheaded mistakes compound and have overt and subtle influence on how things play out on the course.

There was a worrying intentionality there, too. Bradley has talented statistical analysts working for him, and unless I’m missing my mark, there’s no way they could have signed off on something like the Morikawa-English pairing or failed to notice that Henley shouldn’t be teeing off on even holes. Did he ignore them? Twice? Is there defiance here?

Stubbornness? Arrogance? How must Morikawa and English have felt, being thrown to the lions twice?

How did we so quickly return to the Watson-esque paradigm, in which one man’s idiosyncrasies have such an outsized impact on a Ryder Cup team?

– – –

And now we take a breath.

There is every temptation to overreact to this result when we extrapolate what it means for the future. I feel it acutely. When conceiving this piece, I went through mental phases where I wanted to declare that there is no chance to win at Adare Manor in 2027, that the earliest we could see a competitive result is 2029, that the Ryder Cup is fundamentally broken, that the incompetence on display at Bethpage, contrasting so emphatically with European efficiency, has ruined this thing for a generation.

But then I remembered a conversation I had with Davis Love III after Whistling Straits, when the Americans defeated the Europeans by the formerly historic margin of 19-11. Love had been one of the architects of the task force and the American rebirth and was directly responsible for the 2016 win at Hazeltine as captain, and as vice captain five years later. When we spoke a few months later, he mentioned how they were trying to keep getting better on an organizational level. How, I wondered, was that even possible after such a massive victory? Here’s what I wrote then:

His response incorporated elements like food and transportation that were so granular they’d be too boring to recount here—at one point, it got down to what kind of water Dustin Johnson drinks—but that have a big impact on the players’ experience and will be improved in the future. Susan Martin, a manager at the PGA of America who works closely with all the captains and teams, has already sent out a questionnaire to everyone involved with the Ryder Cup to identify other areas of improvement. If they’ve come so far as managers and planners that they’re thinking in great depth about the food and the cars, it seems clear that absolutely no stone is being left unturned. And coupled with the quality of the players, it’s a disheartening prospect for their enemies; it’s America unleashed.

It’s incredible to read how optimistic that sounds, to remember how competent the Love and Stricker captaincies were, and to remind ourselves that it wasn’t that long ago. At that point, the Americans had responded brilliantly to the European dominance of the early aughts by learning from their opponents, building on the lessons of Azinger’s revolutionary captaincy in ’08, forming a task force that identified the key problems and solutions of their failures, and creating a system that could function as the bedrock of successful teams.

Jon Rahm and captain Luke Donald celebrate the win of a match. Scott Taetsch/PGA of America

Europe, to its credit, responded in kind. With an assist from LIV Golf decimating a generation of players (many of whom I’m convinced would have been awful captains), they landed on a brilliant captain in Donald and made the smart move to keep him on board after Rome. This is their reward.

But America as a Ryder Cup power is not dead. They had found the answer—more accurately, they had found the path—but they wandered off when they responded to a setback abroad by abandoning what they’d built. They courted disaster this cycle by naming a green captain and giving him too much power too soon, and disaster, ever dutiful, answered the call. Now they live in the days of humiliation.

And yet, America doesn’t have to be a beaten dog. The answer is right there, in the recent past, and the men who can bear that message forward are ambassadors like Love, Stricker, and Furyk, and the next generation who served as vice captains this year and endured the failure. There is no dearth of talent in the U.S.—it’s still the greatest golfing power on the planet—but the lesson of Bethpage is that a team sport like the Ryder Cup requires a coherent system, and not the vicissitudes of a lone operator. Bradley, unmoored, was destined to fail. Those who come next are not bound to the same fate.

Main Image: Michael Reaves/PGA of America

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RELATED: The subtle way Europe has cracked the code to motivating its players

UNBELIEVABLE #TeamEurope | #OurTimeOurPlace pic.twitter.com/QvAcINeoJV

— Ryder Cup Europe (@RyderCupEurope) September 27, 2025

In fact, Rahm looked so dominant on Saturday morning, that J.J. Watt had to hop into his group chat with the reigning LIV champ to ask for a little mercy. Check it out.

https://t.co/pTCX1WzRrf pic.twitter.com/DyQkGELQN7

— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) September 27, 2025

Sacrificing his dignity for his nation. J.J. Watt is a true American. Unfortunately for U.S. fans, Rahm wasn’t checking his phone on the course as he and Hatton defeated Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay, 3 and 2. We’ll see who takes home the cup at weekend’s end, but one thing is certain:

Watt is never going to hear the end of this one.

Main Image: Scott Taetsch/PGA of America

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One of the reasons they are so loved is the team’s “14th man.” No, not the 13th man, that will always remain the loyal yellow and blue army of witty-singing fans from across the pond. It’s this 14th man—or group really—that has become an integral part of making those lads likeable, a behind-the-scenes squad that Donald has come to rely on to help inspire his players amid the tall task of winning a Ryder Cup on the road.

RELATED: How Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton stole the Bryson Show’s thunder

Introducing the content team behind Ryder Cup Europe.

I caught up with Tom Jackson (center above) this week, Group Director of Content, Ryder Cup Europe, at Bethpage to understand more about the content he and his team produce, how it’s done and why it’s become such a vital part of motivational strategy for the Europeans.

“This week is so important to us,” Jackson said. “Obviously, we only get this chance once every two years, so everything we do builds to this week.”

The team is led by a handful of producers at Ryder Cup Productions but the workforce grows to more than 50 during Ryder Cup week itself. The team will produce content for the players, for Team Europe’s social media channels, documentaries, an official film and branded content for partners and sponsors.

Getting images of European players hanging loose and having fun is a key part of what the Ryder Cup Europe social team is trying to do. Jared C. Tilton

According to Jackson, it all back in 2014 with Paul McGinley captaining the Europeans at Gleneagles. “He asked us to produce some videos to show the players in the team room and it went from there.”

Those videos, a mixture of humor and motivation, landed very well with Captain McGinley and his players. Jackson said they haven’t looked back since.

“Every captain is different and has a slightly different story they want to bring to their captaincy,” Jackson said. “As soon as they are announced as captain, we sit down with them and begin fleshing out what their vision is for the next two years, what themes are important to him and how he feels he can best motivate the players and inspire the fans.

“Each is unique in how they want to lead and inspire the team, as well as the supporters. And that is represented in what we produce.”

RELATED: Scottie Scheffler isn’t playing like himself and it’s killing the U.S.

In 2018 in France, under the captaincy of Thomas Bjorn, the crew produced a motivational video that was shown to the team on Wednesday night of Ryder Cup week. The video featured former European captains Brian Huggett, Sam Torrance and Jose Maria Olazabal. Again, it resonated with the team and following their success at Le Golf National, Bjorn agreed that it could be shared with the fans.

“We saw the impact that video had on the team and the fans and knew we were onto to something,” said Jackson as he showed me the video on his phone.

On Tuesday of this week, they released their 2025 version. Under the leadership of Donald, they created a piece titled “Our Time, Our Place” built around the theme of European success on U.S. soil and featuring nearly all of the 37 European players who have successful won an away Ryder Cup.

“It took us about a year to produce, honestly,” Jackson said proudly.

“The idea started with Luke pretty soon after Rome, when he accepted the captaincy again for New York. He didn’t want to do things the same way, he knew captaining an away Ryder Cup would be a completely different monster to a home one. From the first meeting, he wanted the theme of 2025 to be about joining the legends of European golf that have won in the U.S.”

“Thus, “Our Time, Our Place” became the motto and we went to work.”

For Jackson and his team, the goal was to speak to every one of European players who won in the U.S. that they could. Two have passed away (Seve Ballesteros and Gordon Brown) but ultimately over the course of a year, 34 former players spoke to the production team and were included in the video.

Needless to say, the video landed well, both inside the European Team Room, who viewed the video ahead of its public release, and outside with golf fans across the world.

More importantly, the theme and motto became key to everything Donald did behind the scenes to give his team a chance to win at Bethpage. Check out this video about how the motto drove the way Europe set up its back room this week.

Beyond their marquee pieces, such as the Donald video this year or Bjorn’s ex-captain piece, the team is constantly with the players and back-room staff, producing and publishing content in order to give fans a glimpse at what makes Team Europe so special.

Luke Donald started working on this motto for his 2025 team for almost two years, shortly after being picked to captain again.

Just this week, we’ve seen players discussing Viktor Hovland’s obsession with UFOs, McIlroy and Shane Lowry playing darts, Matt Fitzpatrick on his gaming, an inside look at range sessions, team room reactions to pairings and more.

“It’s a huge operation. One of the key reasons it all works so well is the consistency of our team. Our team works on the DP World Tour and see the players week in and week out. There’s a trust there that can’t just be built one week every two years.”

This is a key aspect of the European team. Unlike the American team that is organized and hosted by the PGA of America, the European team represent the DP World Tour and with that comes the familiar faces of Jackson’s team.

Richard Heathcote

Where the U.S. players may only see PGA of America personnel at the PGA Championship or Ryder Cup, the European crew see most of the top name players on their team 10 to 15 times each year.

“It makes such a difference. It allows us to get closer to the players and their teams. Honestly, we view ourselves as part of Team Europe and not just a content team covering them.”

And the content shows. It’s impossible to quantify what impact it has on the golf course during each Ryder Cup, but ask the fans or any of the players in the European team room, and you’ll find there’s many that believe it gives them an edge.

Main Image: Supplied

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That indictment may seem harsh, condemning an entire nation based on one Friday’s evidence. Sure, the American team offered little to celebrate, getting outplayed for most of the day. But this wasn’t some late-arriving Los Angeles crowd more concerned with the afterparty. These fans woke at 3 a.m. some never sleeping at all, camping out to claim first-tee seats. The 3,500-seat amphitheater packed within minutes of the 5 a.m. gate opening, two hours before the first match would come through. This is what Ryder Cup desperation looks like: once every four years on home soil, maybe once in a lifetime in your backyard if geography smiles on you. The first tee is supposed to be transcendent—that rare moment where golf sheds its country club politeness and becomes tribal theater. Players are supposed to get choked up by the reception or fight nerves in front of a crowd doing everything possible to tip the scales.

Instead, the unforgettable scene was aggressively forgettable.

RELATED: The early Friday stat that should have U.S. fans most worried

Maybe it was exhaustion, those early wake-up calls extracting their toll. Maybe the deafening DJ, who seemed convinced 50,000 people had paid Ryder Cup prices to hear his playlist, had beaten them into submission. But excuses don’t explain away what should have been a wall of sound reduced to scattered, uncoordinated bleats. This wasn’t a golf crowd—it was a social media event with golf happening nearby. Phones stayed raised, voices stayed lowered. When an emcee desperately tried to orchestrate a USA chant, the crowd couldn’t even synchronize three syllables. U…S…A became a stuttering mess, proof that Keegan Bradley wasn’t the only American making mistakes that morning.

The DJ and emcee are easy targets, but they were symptoms, not the disease. They reflected a crowd that had fundamentally misunderstood its assignment. Throughout the opening session, American galleries remained politely reserved while their team got dismantled. The morning’s biggest roar? Nine a.m., when hops stations opened for business.

Here’s the damning truth: The Europeans were doing their part to keep things quiet, yet somehow a home crowd still couldn’t muster defiance. A crowd that defers to its opponents isn’t formidable—it’s defeated before the first shot is struck. We know better is possible because European galleries, match after match, tournament after tournament, generate their own electricity, and that includes Friday. It’s worth remembering due to COVID protocols that Europeans couldn’t travel to Whistling Straits in 2021. That pent-up energy came flowing out to those that showed up to Long Island. They didn’t wait for permission or their team to play well. They just show up and make noise.

This exposes the fundamental difference between us and them. European fans don’t just understand their role; they’ve mastered it in ways Americans seem constitutionally incapable of grasping. They operate on an different creative plane, crafting unique chants for individual players and belting out anthems that wouldn’t sound out of place echoing through a Manchester pub at 2 a.m. Silly, but huge in heart and soul. Their jeers cut deep while somehow staying above the belt. Patrick Cantlay, for example. In Rome 2023, when reports surfaced that he was protesting player payments by going hatless, European galleries turned gossip into theater within hours: “Hats off to the bank account!” By Friday at Bethpage, they’d evolved the anthem: “Cantlay’s got his hat on hip hip hip hooray, Cantlay’s got his hat on so he must be getting paid.”

RELATED: Michael Jordan said what every U.S. golf fan was thinking after Friday’s ugly morning session

It borders on grade-school rhyming, yet captures exactly what Ryder Cup crowds should be—passionate, creative, and fundamentally good-natured even when taking shots.

Americans? We offer “USA! USA! USA!” and … well, that’s our entire playbook. When we do attempt creativity, it’s usually just cruelty with a punchline. Rory McIlroy faced F-bombs, taunts about his Pinehurst collapse, and invasive comments about his personal life—earning him every right to flash that one-finger salute Friday afternoon. These moments draw uncomfortable chuckles from fans too embarrassed to fully acknowledge what they’re hearing.

The irony of Friday is it didn’t approach the worst-case scenarios everyone feared about American crowd behavior. Conversely, that uncouth passion—the very thing we worried about—would have been a massive improvement over the indifferent silence that actually showed up.

Friday delivered a blow to the mythology of the tough, rebellious New York sports fan. Sure, there’s an argument that the PGA of America—with its $1,000 tickets and endless corporate hospitality tents—priced out the blue-collar voices that make Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium and past Bethpage tournaments genuinely intimidating. When you turn sporting events into luxury experiences, you shouldn’t be surprised when the crowd behaves like they’re at the opera. But that’s the easy excuse. The truth is that something inherently separates how Americans cheer from how Europeans support, and their way simply works better. It’s about understanding that being a great sports fan requires inventiveness, commitment, and a willingness to look slightly ridiculous in service of something larger than yourself.

We know this stings. America was built on rejecting European supremacy, and we love reminding those across the Atlantic that we bailed them out of two World Wars. But refusing to acknowledge what happened at Bethpage is refusing to acknowledge reality—and reality doesn’t care about our national pride. Maybe it’s not entirely our fault. Europeans might simply be better at the fundamental human experience of collective joy. They gave the world democracy, capitalism, the printing press, and Italian cuisine. We gave them the Real Housewives franchise and Twitter outrage. When it comes to creating moments of shared passion and community celebration, it’s not even a fair fight.

But fair fights don’t win Ryder Cups. If American fans want to make this a contest over the weekend, they’ll need to summon the passion that never appeared on Day 1. They don’t need to be their most polite selves or worry about looking foolish, and the question isn’t whether American fans can find that fire. It’s whether they’re willing to swallow their pride long enough to learn from the very people they’re supposed to defeat.

Main Image: Ben Jared

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Mind you, there’s “plenty of golf still to be played” as anybody associated with both teams was quick to say ahead of the start of afternoon fourball play. But the performance that the Europeans put on in the opening session (or the Americans failed to put on) is a bit foreboding when you look back at the history of the Ryder Cup. And that’s what Elias Sports Bureau did, digging up a variety of stats to contextualize what happened to both sides and what that might mean in terms of predicting the ultimate outcome on Sunday.

RELATED: What was supposed to be America’s secret weapon never showed up

For instance, according to ESB, this is the first time that Europe has won the first three matches played in a Ryder Cup when it’s been held in the U.S. And it’s just the third time in the last 27 Ryder Cups that the Europeans have earned at least three points in the first session, the other two times coming in 2004 and 2023. At both of those Ryder Cups, they won the overall match with the U.S. by at least five points.

But it’s this stat that potentially should be most concerning to U.S. Ryder Cup team fans. The U.S. has overcome a 3-1 or worse deficit in the opening session to win the Ryder Cup only two times. The first was in 1949 at Ganton Golf Club in England, the U.S. winning 9-7. The second was all the way back in 1971, when the Americans rallied to win at Old Warson Country Club in St. Louis (and comfortably with a 18½-13½ total).

RELATED: Michael Jordan said what every U.S. golf fan was thinking after Friday’s ugly morning session

An aside … Europe has actually overcome that same 3-1 or worse deficit in the first session to win the Ryder Cup three times (1957, 1985 and 2018 in France).

Main Image: Andrew Redington

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This month’s cover story dives into Keegan Bradley, who now faces the biggest test of his career as U.S. Ryder Cup captain. Bradley has thrived in the heat before, but leading Team USA places him under a different kind of pressure, one that could define his legacy.

We also track the latest developments from the PIF Global Series. After a headline-making stop in London, all eyes now shift to Houston as the series continues to shape the female game.

On the G4D Tour, Kipp Popert continues to push boundaries in the game. Already one of the most decorated players in the adaptive space, he now has his sights set on a fourth straight title at Wentworth.

Closer to home, Karim Salaam is doing his part to keep golf alive in Lebanon. With resources scarce and challenges everywhere, Salaam’s work is both rebuilding a sport and protecting a nation’s pride.

In our “How To Play” section, European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald shares a bunker technique that will help you eliminate fat shots and play with confidence under pressure. Plus, Michael Thorbjornsen’s swing is under the microscope in our latest analysis.

For course lovers, we spotlight Bethpage Black, one of golf’s most demanding tests, and break down what makes a great matchplay venue. Then, from the brutal stretches of Bethpage to the artistry of Cypress Point, we uncover the elements that separate good from great!

All this and plenty more in the September 2025 edition of Golf Digest Middle East.

The issue is again free to our loyal audience. You can scroll through the ISSUU link provided here or download it to your favourite device for later. Alternatively, pick up a copy at your favourite golf club. Whatever option you take, we hope you enjoy the read.

The post Get your FREE 2025 September edition of Golf Digest Middle East here! appeared first on Golf Digest Middle East.

Building on from the success of the Second Life Container Initiative, which has seen DP World collect and redistribute 350,000 golf balls to beneficiaries all over the world, the Clubhouse will continue on the journey of growing the game and make it more accessible to as many people as possible.

Each Clubhouse will be uniquely designed based on the needs of the beneficiary, from golf equipment to storage to training aids. Leveraging DP World’s smart logistics capabilities, the Clubhouses will be delivered to underserved grassroots golf programs across the globe. Each unit will provide a safe and engaging environment for young people to continue to learn and develop their game.

DP World Clubhouse

DP World donated its first Clubhouse in Cape Town, South Africa today, in partnership with the Sally Little Golf Trust. The Sally Little Golf Trust’s objective is to educate and empower young women, using golf as a medium to teach the life skills golf embraces: honesty, integrity, respect, cooperation, perseverance, concentration, and self-motivation, with the goal of a better higher education.

Daniel van Otterdijk, DP World Chief Communications Officer said “At DP World, we believe in creating opportunities to empower young people, as they are our future. The Clubhouse initiative is a brilliant example of how we can use our resources and global sports partnerships to open doors for the next generation—bringing golf, and the life skills it teaches, to communities that might not otherwise have access. We’re especially proud to have launched this programme in partnership with the Sally Little Golf Trust, whose incredible work empowering young women through golf aligns perfectly with our values.”

As one of the world’s leading trade and logistics solution provider, DP World moves thousands of shipping containers every day. Many of these shipping containers become redundant over time but this new initiative has created another way to give the containers a second life, while also making the game more accessible to young players worldwide.

The future expansion of the Clubhouse initiative will be linked to key moments in the global golf calendar, in connection to DP World’s role as title partner of the DP World Tour and a Worldwide Partner of the Ryder Cup, set to take place this September at Bethpage Black in New York.

MORE: DP World Ambassador Fleetwood celebrates India Championship launch

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