FARMINGDALE, NEW YORK | A soft sun shone on Bethpage Black on Monday, making the difficult golf course look as benign as it ever has. On such a day, even a course considered to be among the most testing in the world, one with bunkers that spread over eight acres and one that has a warning about its difficulty on the first tee, looked gentle and undemanding beneath the sunshine.
Countless buggies whirred silently around the property. Police and security guards were stationed at most turns, sometimes to stop your progress, sometimes to point you in the right direction. Flags fluttered limply and mowers moved slowly hither and yon. Planes on their way to and from JFK Airport, an hour’s drive along the road, passed high in the sky, like insects at the top of a window pane.
The first day of Ryder Cup week 2025 was the lull before the storm that will arrive soon after dawn on Friday when the earliest of the 50,000 spectators expected each day start to arrive. As those of us on the property discovered yesterday, arriving visitors will be greeted by so much red there can’t be a spare tin of red paint or a yard of that coloured canvas left in the whole of New York State. If I was given a dollar for every yard of painted material on the grounds of Bethpage Black, whether canvas, plastic or wood, I would first say “thank you very much” and then die a happy and rich man.
At normal times the two-storey clubhouse sits discreetly behind the first tee and the fairway that doglegs to the right with the entirety of the 18th hole in view to the left. For this momentous week, the view from that building is of the back of a 60-foot high grandstand that wraps around the first tee and the 18th green with seats for 3,117. That big sign that reads “Welcome to Bethpage State Park, ‘The People’s Country Club’” and is normally so noticeable to those walking to the first tee was overshadowed by the grandstand.
To get a mental picture, think of the 2018 Ryder Cup at Le Golf National in Paris when 6,500 were seated and there was standing room for another 150 to look over the first tee and 18th green. Think also of the 2,148-seater grandstand at Gleneagles in 2014 and the 4,800 spectators who ringed the first tee at Marco Simone in Rome two years ago. As a metaphor for how the Ryder Cup has grown in popularity, the way the accommodation for spectators around the opening and closing holes has grown takes some beating.
There were actions that could be described as tactical by both teams. All 12 U.S. team members, their caddies and coaches huddled on the firstt tee with their national anthem playing loudly before going out to play starting at 8:30 in three four-balls: DeChambeau, Griffin, Thomas and Young, followed by English, Henley, Scheffler and Spaun with Burns, Cantlay, Morikawa and Schauffele bringing up the rear.
Mid-afternoon the two captains sat side by side with the Ryder Cup between them and answered questions from journalists, the first of many such press conferences they will endure in the next six days. It was a love-in with each captain stressing how much he liked the other …
This was an idea Keegan Bradley, their captain, had thought up some time ago. “I wanted them to share a moment on the first tee,” he said. “It was powerful out there. Every second that the guys are together and can have a powerful moment, I think that brings them closer together. Sometimes in your life and in your career, you have to take stock in what’s happening around you. And for that moment this morning I think the guys were really taking that in and enjoying it and that was a beautiful thing.”
Europe’s players, meanwhile, did not go on to the course. They had done their reconnaissance on Monday and Tuesday of last week. Instead they were spotted on the property, mingling one with another and with officials. They were identified by their salmon pink sweaters, the same colour as favoured by their victorious predecessors at the 1987 Ryder Cup at Muirfield Village in Dublin, Ohio.
Further news: as the week unfolds they will wear the colours worn by the three other Europe teams that were victorious in the U.S. – those of 1995, 2004 and 2012. It was a demonstration of the kind of detail that Europe teams have often demonstrated in recent years. “We have to celebrate our past,” Luke Donald, the Europe captain said. “Three of the past four away matches have not been close and we have only won away four times starting in 1987. My job is to bridge that gap. I think it’s motivating to the guys that it can be done [victory in the U.S.], that it has been done and we’re here to try and do it again.”
Mid-afternoon the two captains sat side by side with the Ryder Cup between them and answered questions from journalists, the first of many such press conferences they will endure in the next six days. It was a love-in with each captain stressing how much he liked the other, how well he knew the other and both saying how much they looked forward to the coming contest and sharing a beer together on Sunday evening.
It was a good start to a week that as time goes on will not be so peaceful and in which relations between the two sides may not be quite so warm.