Rory McIlroy and Team Europe won the Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black, fulfilling a promise made two years prior.
Despite losing his individual match to Scottie Scheffler, McIlroy expressed pride in the team’s overall accomplishment.
McIlroy stated that winning an away Ryder Cup in New York silenced many doubters.
FARMINGDALE, N.Y. – With a Peroni sitting in front of him, Rory McIlroy made a proclamation two years ago that put the United States’ Ryder Cups hopes in 2025 at Bethpage Black on notice.
“I’ve said this for the last probably six or seven years to anyone that will listen,” McIlroy said in Rome in 2023 after the Europeans trounced the Americans to win back the trophy. “I think one of the biggest accomplishments in golf right now is winning an away Ryder Cup, and that’s what we’re going to do at Bethpage.”
Two years later, McIlroy and the Europeans kept that promise, even if he lost his daylong duel to world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler by one hole and the rest of his teammates nearly coughed up what appeared to be an insurmountable lead heading into the final day of competition.
Scheffler won the match. Europe won the Ryder Cup, 15-13, and McIlroy once again took to the podium for a news conference, but with a different beer (Stella Artois), this time. Once the Europeans finished off the Americans in Rome, McIlroy and his teammates turned their attention to “trying to do something that everyone thought was pretty impossible to do,” he said.
“Not just win here in America,” he said, “but in New York.
“When you think about the last away Ryder Cup, about what people were saying about decades of American dominance, whether it was home for them or away, and to be able to do what we’ve done in Rome and then here, you know, it shut a lot of people up.”
McIlroy, whose double-bogey on No. 10 and bogey on the par-3 14th cost him in the 1-up victory for Scheffler, said he didn’t have a lot left in the tank during his final match of the tournament.
“I didn’t feel I put up that much of a fight against Scottie. He wasn’t at his best, either,” McIlroy said. “If we were at our best, the level of golf would have been better. When you win a Ryder Cup, it isn’t about you. It’s about the team, and we did enough to get the job done.”
That’s not to say there wasn’t some solid golf. On the par-5 13th, McIlroy recovered after his second shot somehow wound up underneath the stands behind that hole. Both birdied the 15th, with McIlroy sinking his putt from the fringe. He turned to face the crowd, arms outspread, and pounded his chest twice. Scheffler answered with a birdie putt of his own and raised his putter with his left arm while making two fist pumps with his right.
McIlroy and Scheffler facing off was the rare instance of the world No. 1 (Scheffler) facing the second-ranked player (McIlroy). It was Scheffler’s lone victory of the week and left him with a 1-4 record at Bethpage.
“I don’t really think about that stuff very often,” he said of the matchup against McIlroy. “Like I said, I was just proud to be able to get a point up on the board. We needed to get some red up on the board early and we were able to do that.”
“I don’t think we should ever accept that in golf,” McIlroy said. “I think golf should be held to a higher standard than what was seen out there this week.”
Golf unites people, McIlroy said. It’s an ideal medium for life lessons, such as etiquette and playing by the rules and respect.
“Sometimes, this week, we didn’t see that,” he said. “So, no, this should not be what is acceptable in the Ryder Cup.”
Before the 2027 Ryder Cup in Ireland, McIlroy will be sure to instruct the fans that “what happened here this week is not acceptable.”
“And for me, it’s – you know, come and support your home team. Come and support your team,” the career major grand slam winner said. “I think if I was an American, I would be annoyed that people – I didn’t hear a lot of shouts for Scottie today, but I heard a lot of shouts against me. It’s like, support your players. That’s the thing.
“Look, it was a rough week for all of us. But at the same time, we shut them up by our performance and how we played, and we tried to – I chirped back a few times because it got to me a few times, but we tried to handle everything that came our way with class and poise, and for the most part, I felt like we did that.”
He certainly silenced those haters in the end.
“It’s nice to be right,” McIlroy said.