The Break: The Ryder Cup is here

Can the Americans defend home turf, or will the European side win yet another Ryder Cup on US soil?

Author

Ryan Ballengee
September 24, 2025

Can the American side prevail?

After the last 13 years of the Ryder Cup, this might seem like a silly question. The Ryder Cup has been a laugher since 2014, with no match in that stretch being particularly competitive. The nadir came in 2021, when the European side was drubbed 19-9, in part thanks to an aging European side that was outmuscled by the Americans and far more outnumbered than usual in support because of COVID-19 travel restrictions. However, in 2023, the Europeans reloaded and effectively ended the matches before they started in Italy with a 4-0 sweep of the opening session in Italy.

This time around, though, the Europeans run it back in America with 11 of the 12 guys who won at Marco Simone — and the 12th guy is just a different Hojgaard brother. They have the same spot-start captain in Luke Donald, who fully embraced the role on short-ish notice after Henrik Stenson went to LIV. They have a top dog in Rory McIlroy who hasn’t stopped talking for two years about wanting to win a(nother) road Ryder Cup to cement his legacy. The Europeans are an underdog, but they’re not a massive underdog, even if the Americans look, once again, stronger on paper.

However, the Americans have the home-course advantage, with Bethpage Black favoring the longer-hitting American side and a brute-force approach. The Black is playing some 150 yards shorter than the 2019 PGA Championship, encouraging more aggression and shorter irons into greens. They have the world No. 1 in Scottie Scheffler, who plays in this event for the first time as the unquestioned most dominant player in the sport. They have a captain in Keegan Bradley who quelled his own dream of playing again in the Ryder Cup to be a fulsome leader this week.

But, as you’re probably well aware, the story of many Ryder Cups has little to do with the headlining names and more to do with unsung and unexpected heroes. With practically every player in the field inside the top of the Official World Golf Ranking (and Jon Rahm certainly deserving of that honor based his play), any player can make a huge contribution to their side.

Bryson DeChambeau has a different reputation than he did last time around, and he may delight in playing the showman for a partisan crowd.

Justin Rose knows this is probably his last hoorah, and he wants to be a thorn in the Americans’ side one more time.

The possibilities are endless, but it’s clear that New York has embraced the Ryder Cup and should prove to again be a fantastic host. Let the games begin.

New to the Ryder Cup, or maybe you need a refresher? Here you go!

The World Long Drive world championship is this week in Colorado, and 5-time world champion Phillis Meti joined me recently to go deep on the sport.

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Pay for Play?

A lot — frankly, too much — has been made of the decision by the PGA of America to pay the 12 American team members a $200,000 stipend for competing in the Ryder Cup. In addition to that money, the PGA of America will donate $300,000 per player to the charity of their choosing. Every American player who has spoken publicly about the stipend has said that’s going to charity as well.

The European side has used this as a rallying point and a swipe to make at the Americans, suggesting they don’t compete in these matches for money.

Reality, however, is more complicated than the above, and the complication starts from this truth: The Ryder Cup makes a staggering amount of money.

The American side of the Ryder Cup is controlled by the PGA of America, which has little to nothing to do with the day-to-day professional lives of the players participating this week. They put on the PGA Championship annually, and that’s about all that matters to the players. This week is a massive influx of cash for them, having sold out of tickets that ran into the five figures for the day. Ground tickets, that do include food and non-alcoholic beverages, were running $750 each. The money from this week largely goes into the PGA of America’s coffers, and the players see relatively little tangible benefit. Of course, playing in the Ryder Cup is career-defining opportunity for a lot of US players, even if it’s a sport largely predicated on individual achievement and glory.

Asking for a small piece of the pie to play in the Ryder Cup isn’t outrageous, and it’s not new. The Americans have had this idea in the ether for a quarter-century. Now, though, the Ryder Cup franchise is worth dramatically more then when Ben Crenshaw had a good feeling on a Massachusetts Saturday night in 1999.

For the European side, the Ryder Cup is directly connected to keeping their home-continent tour alive. As has been parroted many times before, the Europe-hosted Ryder Cups fund the European Tour Group’s operations for four years. It’s that big of a deal. The European side knows it, and it’s been drilled into them for a long time. As far as the Europeans are concerned, their compensation (and charitable giving, in a way) is the continued existence of the DP World Tour and its infrastructure.

Things have become more complicated, though, with the PGA Tour — not the PGA of America — subsidizing DP World Tour purses in the last several years. The PGA Tour owns a sizable chunk of European Tour Productions, the TV and content-rights arm of the European Tour Group. They have a relationship, a partnership, that the PGA Tour has said they intend to expand in the long term. Someday, the PGA Tour could well own the European Tour Group, and that may make this subject even more complex.

But, let it be said that no one involved in the Ryder Cup is entirely doing this out of the goodness of their heart. There are important financial implications for all organizations involved. And all of that goes out the window for the players on Friday morning.