Rory McIlroy thinks Keegan Bradley holds some responsibility for the fan abuse that he endured during the Ryder Cup.
The American fans at Bethpage Black subjected Rory McIlroy to relentless abuse, over the first two days in particular.
There was much anticipation about the build-up to the event about the raucous New York fans, so much so that Luke Donald used VR headsets to prepare his team, but few expected the National Guard to be called in order to protect McIlroy and his playing partner, Shane Lowry.
Collin Morikawa tried to hype up the crowd in the build-up to the event, and he wasn’t alone in that. McIlroy admitted that it was their right, as the home team, to create a home advantage.
But he also said that the American captain, Keegan Bradley, failed to do something which could have cooled tensions and helped prevent the abuse hurled at McIlroy and his family.
Rory McIlroy said Keegan Bradley should have done something to calm the Ryder Cup crowd
Some Americans, most notably Justin Thomas, attempted to quiet the crowd as the abuse of McIlroy intensified. However, Bradley defended the New York fans after the event, calling them “passionate” and adding that, from what he saw, they were pretty good.
Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, McIlory said that as US captain, he should have tried to calm the crowd down.
He said, “Keegan and I have I’ve talked about this. I think you have to play into the home-field advantage.
“But I think whenever, during the competition on Friday night and Saturday night, after the stuff that we heard on the course, I think there was an opportunity for either Keegan or some of the teammates to be like, ‘Let’s just calm down here. Let’s, you know, let’s try to play this match in the right spirit.’
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“And some of them did that, but obviously Keegan had the biggest platform of the week as the captain. And I feel like he could have said something on that Friday or Saturday night, and he didn’t. But in fairness, Sunday was a little bit better. It seemed like the rhetoric was sort of calmed down a bit.”
The abuse was Bradley’s fault, but it would have been nice to see him attempt to calm the fans who had clearly crossed the line at Bethpage. Instead, he defended them, and it might have been his biggest mistake as captain.
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Speaking after the tournament, Lowry said the fan abuse hurt the Americans more than it helped them. It brought the tightly-knit European team even closer together, while some of Team USA were visibly embarrassed by the fan behavior.
It allowed the Europeans to adopt an “us against the world” mentality, which is something they have thrived on through generations of Ryder Cups. By subjecting them to this abuse, the fans gave this powerhouse of a team the feel of plucky underdogs.
Bradley made a number of key mistakes as captain. His setup of Bethpage Black and pairing Harris English with Collin Morikawa are the two that spring to mind. But his biggest mistake might have been his inaction with the fans.
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Not only did he fail to calm the crowd, but he also encouraged their “passionate” behavior, and that gave McIlroy and Europe all the motivation they needed to come together and pull off a momentous victory.
Not only would defending McIlroy have been the right thing to do from a moral standpoint, it would have given Bradley’s team their best opportunity to win the Ryder Cup.
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