Tempers boiled over at Bethpage Black on day two of the Ryder Cup on Saturday.
Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry received an awful torrent of abuse from the American fans at Bethpage during their Ryder Cup four-balls clash with Justin Thomas and Cameron Young.
And now Rich Beem has delivered a damning verdict on the role that the PGA of America played in the flurry of insults hurled at the European players.
Numerous American Ryder Cup fans were removed from the premises on Saturday at Bethpage as jovial banter quickly crossed over into unnecessary personal jibes.
McIlroy and Lowry did well to keep their heads, and they would have been delighted with their 2 up win over Thomas and Young.
However, professional golfers should never be forced to play when the atmosphere becomes toxic like it did on Saturday on Long Island.
After his match, McIlroy said he expected a rough ride from the fans at the Ryder Cup, but he surely didn’t expect the levels of vitriol aimed at him.
And now numerous high profile figures in the game are calling for change.
Rich Beem calls out PGA of America after ‘unacceptable’ Ryder Cup incident
Saturday at the 2025 Ryder Cup will go down as a dark day in the history of American golf.
And that’s not just because the United States team was on the wrong end of the biggest beating during the first two days of the Ryder Cup since 1979.
The behavior of certain fans at Bethpage Black was quite simply unacceptable.
And Beem, when speaking to Sky Sports in the UK after the action ended on day two at Bethpage Black, called for instant change.
He said: “It’s from the wrong person. The MC out there was a female comedian who has had a lot of success as of late. Apparently her husband is a massive golfer so they’ve been on social media quite a bit, and she’s not a golfer.
“So you put an MC like that who hasn’t been around the game, who doesn’t really know the nuances of it.
“To go out and say that, wow, the PGA of America, whoever picked her to do that, missed the mark by a wide margin. There are so many other things you could have done, so many other people you could have brought to the table and yet they chose this direction to go.
“That’s unacceptable, we need to do better as a society. We don’t need to throw this stuff out what Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry heard today. Come on, they’re golfers who live in America, yet we’re abusing them that poorly in the name of winning a competition.“
What happened on the first tee at Bethpage and how Rory McIlroy chant started
Before play began on day two, the PGA of America had a comedian booked in to hype up the crowd on the first tee.
However, things turned unnecessarily nasty, when the comedian began a vulgar chant, with the crowd joining in.
Here is the video below. Warning: language includes expletives.
There was absolutely no need for that and there is no room in our sport for the behavior we witnessed on the first tee at Bethpage.
The decision from the PGA of America to book the comedian who had limited knowledge about the game and its traditions was naive to say the least and really poorly thought-out.
Cynics might even suggest that it was spiteful.
They must do better and in fairness to the great nation of the United States, the majority of the population would agree with that sentiment.
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