McEwan: Not even the Ryder Cup is safe from golf’s gluttonous peacocks

It’s the morning of September 26, 2025, and all eyes are on Bethpage State Park in New York.

O say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, Patrick Cantlay is about to lead off the USA in the Ryder Cup wearing a smile as wide as Long Island itself and – gasp! – a baseball cap.

A man who should never have needed a reason to cover his dome suddenly has several hundred thousand of them. Or at least he will if the rumours prove true.

The Telegraph reports that the PGA of America is setting aside $4million to divide between the 12 players who make next year’s US Ryder Cup team. I hesitate to say ‘qualify’ because six of them will be handpicked at the discretion of captain Keegan Bradley, which makes the whole prospect even grubbier. But we’ll move on…

For those keeping count, $4million split 12 ways work out at around $330,000 per player. Currently, American Ryder Cuppers receive $200,000 to donate to a charity of their choice – let’s say, The Patrick Cantlay Foundation – but this increased stipend will apparently come with no such condition. Spend it how you want, chaps. Don’t worry about keeping receipts.

If ratified by the PGA of America board, for the first time in the near 100-year history of the match, US players will be paid to play. There is – so far – no indication that their European opponents will be similarly compensated.

It’s no secret that many in the Uncle Sam contingent believe (and long have believed) they should be financially rewarded for taking part. It’s a saga that dates back at least a generation and which could extend to several volumes.

It reached a crescendo in Rome last year, however, when it was reported that Cantlay and Xander Schauffele were grousing behind the scenes about receiving not so much as a crumb, never mind a slice, of the pie. The Ryder Cup is big business, a money-spinner for the PGA of America and DP World Tour. Why, Cantlay and Schauffele are said to have wondered aloud, are we not seeing any kind of personal kickback? We are the stars, after all. Without us, there’s no match.

It’s not an entirely unreasonable complaint. It’s just unlikely to elicit much support from golf fans, who have become increasingly disillusioned by the abundance of money now available to the game’s top players. Throwing an additional $400,000 at multi-millionaires – each with multiple lucrative endorsements and the opportunity to play for another seven-figure cheque next week, and the week after, and the week after that – is objectively disgusting, particularly to those who have to choose between heating and eating.

That money won’t change any golfer’s life. They probably won’t even notice when it’s deposited in their bank accounts. They just know they want it. Worse, they’ve convinced themselves they deserve it.

The elephant in the team room is the tangible, meaningful difference the money could make if distributed differently. From improved training for PGA professionals to the expansion of ‘get into golf’ activities and community programs, if there’s $4million going spare, putting it to good use must be the first and only consideration. If investing it in tour pros seems like a complete waste, that’s because it is.

The other edge of this particular sword is what fans are being charged to attend.

The PGA of America took great delight yesterday in announcing that match day tickets for Bethpage have sold out. “As expected,” they proclaimed, “demand was enormous with more than 500,000 registrants entered in the random selection process and orders filled from across the United States and 47 countries around the world.”

Written between those lines is a thinly-veiled “F.U.” to those who took umbrage at the price. Practice days started from around $225, with that figure climbing to $750 for match days. For context, that’s up from around £52 for a practice day in Rome last year, where match day tickets settled around £210.

Sell-out or otherwise, the prices for Bethpage are almost unprecedentedly scandalous and it’s hard to escape the conclusion that fans are being fleeced to cover the cost of the players’ compensation. Regardless, a huge proportion of the interested audience has been priced out of attending.

That should be a source of immense shame for the PGA of America, which, according to its own mission statement, exists “to promote enjoyment and involvement in golf among the general public.” Instead, it had the gall to distribute a triumphant statement, thumbing its nose at those who can’t afford its contemptible tariffs.

Men’s professional golf is on a worrying trajectory. Self-serving, gluttonous peacocks abound, each tailed and deified by private cabals of fanboys and yes-men. Yet for some reason, their insatiable greed is being met with acquiescence rather than the scorn it deserves.

The Ryder Cup was one of the last bulwarks of playing purely for honour, for something that cannot be measured on a balance sheet. As we know, the majority of the game’s tours jumped that shark a long time ago. Even the amateur game has caved somewhat to pecuniary temptation, with the introduction of ‘NIL’ deals and such like.

But the Ryder Cup. It had a purity about it. It existed almost in its own space, orbiting the day-to-day, week-to-week vulgarity of modern golf.

Alas, it appears, no more. The contest is falling victim to the greed epidemic.

Bravo, lads. You somehow managed to ruin it.

⁠O! say does that star-spangled Banner yet wave, O’er the Land of the free and the home of the brave?

The answer to that question, one suspects, will probably cost you.

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Michael McEwan is the 2023 PPA Scotland ‘Columnist of the Year’ and ‘Writer of the Year’

Michael McEwan is the Deputy Editor of bunkered and has been part of the team since 2004. In that time, he has interviewed almost every major figure within the sport, from Jack Nicklaus, to Rory McIlroy, to Donald Trump. The host of the multi award-winning bunkered Podcast and a member of Balfron Golfing Society, Michael is the author of three books and is the 2023 PPA Scotland 'Writer of the Year' and 'Columnist of the Year'. Dislikes white belts, yellow balls and iron headcovers. Likes being drawn out of the media ballot to play Augusta National.

Deputy Editor