The Break: No More Free Rydes

Hi everyone! In The Break today, it’s time to dig into the news that the PGA of America will pay US Ryder Cup players a $200,000 stipend to compete at Bethpage Black next year.

In the Black at the Black

The PGA of America board has voted to compensate the dozen US Ryder Cup players for 2025 with a $500,000 per-player allowance. Of that money, $300,000 will go to the designated charity of a player’s choice, and then the player gets a $200,000 stipend for being on the team.

Pay has come to the Ryder Cup.

After Hatgate in Italy in 2023 — which was a whole mess of rumors, whispers, denials and Monday Italian weddings — it seemed like the topic of paying Ryder Cup players was not going away. It didn’t. It wasn’t as loud and in public as Joe Lacava got at Marco Simone, but it was percolating.

Several players, American and European, made their feelings known in public.

The Americans mostly said the right things, saying they didn’t need pay but wouldn’t shun it. Tiger Woods hoped players would get $5 million and give it all to charities of their choice.

The Europeans, knowing what the event means to the DP World Tour, suggested they’d pay to play in the Ryder Cup.

In the end, the PGA of America changed the compensation package for the first time since 1999, increasing the charitable giving per player by $100,000 and introducing the stipend.

The Ryder Cup has long been billed as something bigger than golf. The 1979 inclusion of continental Europe in the Ryder Cup came just as Jack Nicklaus was hitting the downside of his career. Things were changing. The Europeans won on American soil in 1987, and the War on the Shore in 1991 at Kiawah Island took things to a new level.

The budding rivalry created genuine fan interest, and that, eventually, became increasingly commercialized — just like all major sports. With big rights fees, corporate partners and larger ticket prices came more complications, including a realization by the players that the Ryder Cup was making a lot of money, in large part thanks to their talents.

The PGA of America owns the American side of the Ryder Cup. However, they use PGA Tour players (and LIV Golf players) to form their teams. The PGA of America benefits from what some players have seen as free labor. What that means to each player is still very much a spectrum, ranging from players wanting solely to be compensated to those who just want more of a say in where the Ryder Cup money goes — either within the PGA of America or outside of it — to do the most good.

The Europeans see the Ryder Cup differently largely because of the beneficiary of the money. The Ryder Cup is tremendously important to the operation of the DP World Tour’s parent company. Their share of Ryder Cup Europe, and the money that comes from European-hosted Ryder Cups, goes a long way in funding the tour every four years. The European players recognize and know how important this competition is for their present and future. That’s, in part, why they revere the past seemingly so much more than their American counterparts. Their European forebears got this competition to this point and, in many ways, made their careers possible.

The reason why all of this might feel off, wrong or just lead to a sense of uneasiness is because the Ryder Cup hasn’t previously paid players to play.

But just look around. Practically everything has changed.

Money has taken over professional golf (again, just like in the rest of pro sports) in a way that has turned off lots of viewers and fans. The PGA Tour-LIV Golf saga, now entering a fourth LIV Golf season, has fragmented the game as so many players scratch and claw for their share of the windfall brought on by Saudi interest in the professional sport.

As millionaires quibble over billions, the Ryder Cup was seen as some kind of respite — but just a respite from the players cashing in, not over the presenting bodies themselves cashing in.

The PGA of America is a member organization, yes, but it’s also a big business. They have large rights fees for their biggest championships, the PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup. They’re maximizing revenue for those events in any logical way they can. As the curve turns more vertical on year-over-year income growth, what shouldn’t the players — the entertainment — get a piece of that?

Really, the problem is timing. The Ryder Cup is just another thing in golf where money is at the heart of the issue. A lot of golf fans, including the well-off ones, are tired of it.

Pay the players. Hopefully several of them set the precedent that the stipend also goes to a charity of their choice.

By paying the players, though, the PGA of America puts more pressure on them — if that’s possible. Imagine how unkind the New York crowd might be toward an American player getting paid $200,000 to not win a single point and lose a match 8 and 7?

The only part of this that doesn’t sit well with me is that the European players are unlikely to get the same kind of compensation, even in 2027 when the competition returns to European soil. The Ryder Cup didn’t get to this point because of a one-sided affair, and compensation shouldn’t be one-sided either.

If anything, the change is bulletin-board material for the Europeans, who have no shortage of it, real or imagined. So if Luke Donald’s dozen show up to Bethpage and keep control of the cup, it might just be because they decided to prove that the 17-inch trophy is worth way more to 24 otherwise well-paid pros than a massive per diem.

The Links

PGA Tour Q-School wrapped on Sunday, with six players, including medalist Lanto Griffin, getting 2025 PGA Tour cards

Patty Tavatanakit and Jake Knapp, both UCLA products, teamed up to go wire-to-wire at the Grant Thorton Invitational