The Ryder Cup is often a golf tournament which brings out the very best in players but unfortunately, it sometimes brings out the worst in them as well.
We witnessed both sides of the coin during the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black this year.
There was some truly exceptional golf played by both teams, but some unsavory behavior from certain sections of American fans marred the occasion.
The behavior of the US Ryder Cup fans turned nasty at one point, with personal insults being hurled at the European players and their wives.
‘Golf is a sport not befitting of the scenes we witnessed at Bethpage‘, many fans, players and golf journalists alike claimed.
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However, the Ryder Cup has the innate ability to evoke unbridled emotion like no other golfing event can.
And that was very much the case 68 years ago when England played host to the 12th edition of the competition.
PGA Tour winner described English Ryder Cup fans as ‘the most miserable’ people
Back in 1957, Great Britain defeated the United States in the Ryder Cup at Lindrick Golf Club in Nottinghamshire.
It wasn’t even a closely-fought contest in the end, with the home side running away with it by a scoreline of 7.5-4.5.
Great Britain got off to a great start in the singles matches when Eric Brown defeated Tommy Bolt by a score of 4&3.
Bolt, a 15-time PGA Tour winner and the 1958 US Open champion, was no match for Brown on the day.
So much so, in fact, that Brown told Bolt, “Even you knew when the games were drawn that you never had an earthly hope of beating me,” after defeating him in the singles.
Bolt didn’t take kindly to those remarks, unsurprisingly so. He wasn’t a huge fan of the treatment he received from the English fans either.
In the aftermath of his defeat to Brown, the American took his frustrations out on the Lindrick Golf Club galleries.
He accused the English fans of being ‘the most miserable bunch of people you could ever have the misfortune to run into in a supposedly civilized world‘.
Harsh indeed for the 15-time PGA Tour winner.
However, Bolt’s comments prove one very important thing.
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Modern-day golf fans seem to think that the Ryder Cup used to be nothing more than an exhibition event.
It has been claimed that the real animosity between the two sides began at Kiawah Island back in 1991.
However, that is simply not true. The needle between the British team and the United States dates back long before the War on the Shore.
Tommy Bolt surely didn’t have genuine hatred for the English Ryder Cup fans. It’s just that emotions regularly spill over during the biennial event, and that simply cannot be helped.
In fact, it could be argued that the needle between the two sides is actually what makes the competition so enthralling to watch.
That said, there is no place in the game for personal insults being directed at the players from the fans, and that simply cannot be allowed to happen again moving forward.
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