Should you be gripping your driver till your hands bleed and slamming tee markers over the news that a daily competitive round ticket for the 2025 Ryder Cup at New York’s Bethpage Black will cost $749, chill out.
It’s the Ryder Cup, which devours over-hype as fuel more ferociously than 18-wheelers consume diesel. Madness always reigns with this event.
Should you think it’s a bit early for warnings that the Ryder Cup has sold its soul and is doomed to succumb to greed? Not really, and as a reminder, harken back to late autumn of 2012 when there were stories of astronomical prices to rent homes and rooms (500 to 1,500 Euros) around Gleneagles in Scotland, which was going to host the 2014 Ryder Cup.

Argued those responsible for pricing accommodations and tickets for the Gleneagles spectacle: In light of Europe’s stunning victory at Medinah in 2012, the demand was going to be at a fever pitch and, sure enough, fans and visitors came in droves. Hefty ticket and rental prices were paid.
America, it appears, does not have a monopoly on capitalism.
What is a personal memory of that 2014 Ryder Cup—beyond Phil Mickelson playing Fletcher Christian to Tom Watson’s William Bligh with his Sunday evening mutiny—was the housing many of us media types were extended. It was a detox, and while it was comfortable and we were well watched after, it struck me that patients were being displaced all for love of country, continent, golf, and money. Lots and lots of money.
Likely, this isn’t what a seed merchant had in mind back in the 1920s, but Samuel Ryder has been dead for 88 years now, so it’s not like the PGA of America or DP World Tour have to be concerned with ruffling family feathers.
Besides, in a world where citizenries are obsessed with celebrities in all walks of entertainment, this is the universal mantra: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth over-doing. So as much as a huge slice of America would sensibly take $749 and feed a family of four for a month, thousands of fans will plop down a piece of plastic and get themselves a ticket. Sigh.
Putting on face paint and wearing red, white, and blue costumes while chanting “USA, USA, USA” in an effort to drown out the “Ole, ole, ole, ole . . . Ole, oles”—well, it is a biennial ritual that produces incredible theater. That much cannot be denied; the competition somehow always steals the show.
You just have to accept all the silliness and ill will that comes with it. And, good gracious, does the silliness and ill will overflow.
Remember 1997, when No. 11 in the standings, Jose Maria Olazabal, made the team because No. 10, Miguel Angel Martin, was deemed hurt with a wrist injury? Only Martin refused to back down and lobbied for his spot, authoring a month-long soap opera, much of his venom pointed at European captain Seve Ballesteros.
Behind the scenes, Colin Montgomerie and Bernhard Langer lobbied for Olazabal so it was a unified Euro team that won behind Ballesteros’s spirited leadership.
Likely, 2025 won’t produce that sort of contentiousness (at one point, Martin threatened to sue the European Ryder Cup team), but you better believe that fielding teams will produce many headlines in months to come.
Expect to read plenty about LIV members Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton pushing to play for Europe. The DP World Tour is playing hard ball, but Rory McIlroy wants them, and the gut tells me they will be there.
There is less love for LIV golfers on the U.S. side. The respect for Brooks Koepka’s big-game talent makes him welcomed, should he qualify, but there’s resentment toward Bryson DeChambeau. Remember, he was party to a lawsuit against the PGA Tour and while that has long since been dropped, bad feelings exist.
Beyond the angst that biennially consumes captains who want “their” players to show form (Keegan Bradley is looking at you, Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth, Nos. 20 and 41 in the standings; Luke Donald would prefer No. 30 Shane Lowry to pick it up), there are layers of nonsense that somehow produce stop-the-presses storylines.
We’re speaking of 2002 when Tiger Woods was blasted by European writers. Why? Because he went out at the crack of daylight to practice, per his accustomed routine on the PGA Tour. But reporters claimed fans were irate and they lambasted Woods. Laughable.
Silliness grew exponentially in 2006 when U.S. captain Tom Lehman thought it would be a supreme bonding move to send all 12 of his players out at the same time for a practice round at the K Club. Instead, it was like rush hour on the George Washington Bridge and Irish fans laughed wildly.
Why did the Americans lose in 1997 in Spain and in 2010 in Wales? According to conspiracy theorists, captain Tom Kite spent too much time driving Michael Jordan around and wasn’t there to match Ballesteros move for move in the former. In the latter, the Europeans won because of better rainsuits.
The phrase “hydrostatic tester” was weaved into many dispatches out of Celtic Manor and when we weren’t laughing at the storyline, we were shaking our heads, wondering why the Ryder Cup always produces these harmless stories that get big press.
The current publicity about exorbitant ticket prices reminds of the ugly tenor headed into the 1999 Ryder Cup. Woods, Mickelson, Mark O’Meara, and David Duval thought the PGA of America should share the enormous proceeds, and while the players were roundly criticized in the press, their efforts led to what is considered an equitable compromise.
Players do not get paid; they do, however, receive $200,000 each to donate toward a charity of their choice.
Or, if you take next year’s $749 price, players get the proceeds of about 265 tickets as their stipend, which factored out over 12 players means that about 3,975 of these very expensive tickets help charitable causes.
Doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way, eh?
Comparing market prices for home rentals with the obscene prices the PGA of America is charging for DAILY gen admin tickets is absurd. The PGA of America puts on the Ryder Cup with volunteers who are not only UNPAID, but they have to PAY out of their pockets for their gear. Not to mention that the players are UNPAID as well.
I went in 1999, had tickets for all six days for $600pp total. With inflation, next year’s prices for all six days would be $1,123. Instead, they’ll cost $3,183. And that’s for just 8 matches on Fri and 8 on Sat, only TWO of which you’d be able to watch from start to finish each day. And eight of the 16 matches on Fri and Sat are FOURSOMES, so only 16 balls in play TOTAL! $749pp per day to watch at most 2 full matches (and just 8 players).
Don’t try to make excuses for the PGAoA, don’t try to sugarcoat is.
That’s freaking insane. So insane, I – who for decades would get up at 1:30am ET to watch the start of the RC when it was across the pond – will NOT be watching next year, and probably never will again. The PGA of America can go pound sand.