Well, that was a bit rowdy. Whoever thunk that golf would present us with supporters that make the Millwall crew of the 1970s seem like the Billie Barry kids?
By Saturday afternoon the folk at Bethpage felt obliged to flash a ‘Spectator Etiquette’ message on the screens around the place, warning that “overly intoxicated attendees will be removed from the premises”.
You’d half a notion, though, that the person whose level of wit peaked at shouting “potatoes” and “cabbage” at Shane Lowry are just as tiresome when sober, if, perhaps, a little less loud. Sometimes booze isn’t the issue, it’s the owner of the gullet it’s poured down.
The hosts could, of course, have opted to stop selling intoxicating liquid to the U!S!A! throngs, but when the cheapest beer at the venue was $15, for a teeny tin, that would have been a lotta loot to surrender.
RM Block
Understandably, the red mist descended over the players, our Shane and Rory bearing the brunt of it all, although Robert MacIntyre handled it quite beautifully.
When the crowd was taunting him and Viktor Hovland, loudly enumerating how many seconds it was taking them to putt, he just rolled his eyes and said: “I’m surprised they can count.” In the banter stakes, that was 1-0 to Yurop.
Besides, if they’d had a can of beer for every second Patrick Cantlay took to take his putts, they’d be pumping their tummies out ’til November. “Ewen, you could probably tell us your biography by the time he hits this one,” said Nick Faldo. Ewen, as in the Murray man, reckoned Rory could have downed “a three course meal” during the process.
The Ryder Cup is mighty. There was a spell during Saturday’s four-balls when the standard was so other-worldly, the little roundy thing on every green – in technical jargon, the hole – was being peppered by incoming missiles. And all you could do, really, was purr at the effortless excellence of it all.
But, since Methuselah was a boy, the problem with the Ryder Cup, as we know, is the guff that engulfs it. “It’s incredibly heated out here, this is precisely why the Ryder Cup is the biggest team event in the world,” said Andrew Coltart at one stage. It’s probably not even in the top five of world team events. Maybe even the top 10. What’s it they say? Stop already, Andrew.
And so hell-bent is Paul McGinley on portraying the competition as the greatest sporting show on earth, he comes perilously close to likening the role of the captains to that of, say, the Duke of Wellington in wartime. He’s the guff master.
He must have had ear plugs in too on Saturday. “Do you think the fact that they are charging $750 a day to get in here has stopped the real rowdy guys from coming in, instead we’ve got the prawn sandwich brigade in?” he asked Hunter Mahan, who was alongside him in the Sky commentary box.
And with that: “F*** YOU RORY!”
Poor old Ewen and Andrew certainly weren’t donning ear plugs because they were worn out from apologising for the fruity language. One member of the crowd suggested that Rory was in the midst of a homosexual relationship with his caddie, another asked him how his relationship was going with his wife, and another called him an overrated Leprechaun. “FREEDOM,” shouted another as he was about to strike his ball, at which point he turned and said, “Shut the f*** up.”
That was, Laura Davies conceded, quite rude of Rory, but, she said, “I think he got his message across.”
Shane, meanwhile, was treated to chat about his wife and his weight, Ozempic getting no end of mentions. His response when he downed that eagle was reasonable enough: “COME ON! F*** YOU!”
It was all marginally bonkers. It was then that Sky needed to step in and declare, ‘it’s only golf’, but they were too busy fixating on the ‘Outcome IQ To Win The Match’ stats that kept popping up on the screen, as meaningful as Expected goals (xG) in football, and wondering, so to speak, if the Duke of Wellington would have paired Rory with Tommy Fleetwood or our Shane.
At least Yurop’s followers provided some light relief. “Can we play you every week?” they bellowed. They’ll have to hold their breath until Adare Manor in 2027, by which time the U!S!A! crew might have exited rehab.
